Institutionalization of Transit-Oriented Development in Tokyo 1868–1945

Abstract

Many advocates of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) consider Tokyo an exemplary transit metropolis that uniquely relies on private railways. To better understand this enduring practice, this study traces its institutionalization before 1945. It concludes that following the Meiji Restoration, former feudal elites founded a private railway industry consisting of joint-stock companies when the state lacked funds. As a semi-public effort, the industry served the industrial and political pursuits of Meiji Japan. To defend the industry, these elites frustrated the attempt to nationalize railways in 1892 and weakened the extent of the nationalization in 1907. The latter directed private railway capital to the suburbs. By 1929, the elites had incrementally legitimized private railway conglomerates that developed railways and landed properties, including housing estates and commercial facilities, along railway corridors in Osaka and, later, Tokyo. Inspired by railway suburbs and garden cities in the Anglosphere, Japanese TOD was developed as a localized institution in a developmental state: a ‘standard operating practice’ framed by the iron triangle of industrialists, politicians, and bureaucrats. Because its defenders preserved the institution from wartime regulation and automobilization, this semi-public institution, balancing private and state pursuits, contrasted with its global counterparts, and continued to influence post-war Tokyo.