Post-suburban Tokyo? Urbanization, suburbanization, reurbanization

Abstract

Japanese cities exploded during the rapid growth era of the 1950s and 60s, in a wave of decentralization from their super-high-density central areas into expanding rings of suburban development. In the 1970s and 1980s increasing wealth and rapid growth of car ownership and use fuelled continued suburban sprawl that appeared little influenced by any planning processes, as factories, schools, waste management plants and housing surged outward in search of cheaper peri-urban land. And since the 1990s the deregulation of retail location in response to United States (US) government pressure and with the support of major Japanese retail chains prompted yet another round of unplanned sprawl as new retail forms proliferated on arterial roads and highways in unregulated parts of the urban periphery. Yet in fundamental ways the post-suburbia hypothesis of a qualitatively new metropolitan settlement pattern fits poorly with the experience of Japanese cities. This chapter seeks to understand why this is so, and what lessons may be learned from such differences.