Trends of Revitalizing Central City Peripheries in Tokyo

Abstract

Due to Tokyo's tremendous expansion from the late 19th century until today and the immense rise in social and ecological central city problems that it brings with both the actual boundaries between the city center and its periphery as well as the conceptual notions of periphery and city center have been in a constant state of flux. This paper discusses two major Japanese trends in conceptualizing periphery and city center. Stimulated by western ideas of urban reform such as Ebenezer Howard's Garden city and the New Town movement from the early 20th century onward until the 1990s' solutions for urban problems were looked for outside the metropolitan areas. In contrast, spurred on by the central city redevelopment and redensification boom during the last ten years a new trend of redesigning central city areas as peripheries is discernable. Focusing on the recovery and regeneration of two types of urban areas, Tokyo's riverside areas and its waterways on the one hand and of so-called roji, traditional small- scale and low-rise mixed-use areas in residential neighborhoods, on the other, this trend is linked to the necessity to make Tokyo more attractive and liveable, in short sustainable, and to create a metropolis that meets the demands of the 21st century.