JAPANESE URBAN ARTIFICIAL ISLANDS: AN OVERVIEW OF PROJECTS AND SCHEMES FOR MARINE CITIES DURING 1960S-1990S

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide a short but comprehensive overview of the historical evolution of the concepts of the " artificial urban island " and " marine city " devised and developed in the context of Japanese architecture and urban planning during the second-half of the twentieth century. These concepts were a consequence of the severe shortage of buildable land for new industrial and freight complexes, as well as for housing and public facilities. From the futuristic urban morphologies of Metabolism and Kenzo Tange's plans, which developed as polemic rejection of late modernist architectural principles, to the engineering approach of official government planning schemes, based on the provision of massive-scale public infrastructures, this study is a chronological survey of the main marine city projects conceived in Japan during the last 4 decades. This paper further analyzes and highlights the connection between the urban forms and planning paradigms of the artificial islands and briefly investigates the needs and ambitions behind these urban marine prototypes. Preface In contemporary Japan the spread of interest in highly innovative and advanced urban prototypes such as the marine cities dates back to the late 1950s and lasted for more than a decade, during which several schemes of landfill islands and artificial marine environments were developed. Most of those schemes were to be located in the shallow waters of Tokyo Bay, the economic, political and cultural center of Japan, which became a privileged area for many utopic urban projects. 1 A combination of factors simultaneously present at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s (economic growth, urban expansion, technological innovation, the dawn of a consumerist society) set the " cultural milieu " , in Japan and other industrialized countries, which led to a growing interest and progressive acceptance for the theme of marine cities as an alternative urban environment. This new spirit fostered and inspired bold and ambitious architectural proposals and urban plans over the succeeding years. In particular, many coastal Japanese cities experienced a serious shortage of suitable areas for new construction in their central districts as well as the need to renew or improve their existing infrastructure. The years of rapid economic growth from 1955 to 1973 were characterized by a progressive increase in the capital accumulation derived from unprecedented expanding exports, and to keep pace with this economic prosperity the Japanese metropolises required more room both for industrial and residential use. New networks for energy supply and mass transportation were designed and built to support the economic expansion at expense of residential and public use areas in the city centers. This in turn contributed to further urban sprawl and pollution. Especially the awareness of the growing strategic importance of the waterfronts of large metropolitan areas due to the fast development of container vessel transportation fostered the improvement of obsolete port infrastructure and the construction of new harbour facilities to host larger cargo ships. This prompted the execution of massive reclamation works to create artificially new sites for larger industrial areas, petrochemical complexes and energy plants as close as possible to trade and shipping routes. 2 As an important and long lasting consequence of the economic miracle of the 1960s, large areas of Japanese coastline near big cities witnessed a progressive process of radical topographic transformation. Many port cities, such as Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and Kobe, were abruptly altered and the natural shape of their urban waterfronts and shorelines were totally changed especially after 1960 due to vast programs of landfill activity lasted for more than two decades. The massive scale of waterfront transformation and extension, along with the spread of the artificial land into the sea and the development of new warehouse and factory complexes supported by a system of new railways networks boosted a rapid growth of port areas throughout the