Urban Renaissance as Intensification: Building ... - SAGE Journals

47(3) 556–583, March 2010

Urban Renaissance as Intensification: Building Regulation and the Rescaling of Place Governance in Tokyo’s High-rise Manshon Boom André Sorensen, Junichiro Okata and Sayaka Fujii [Paper first received, November 2007; in final form, January 2009]

Abstract During the past decade, Tokyo has seen a massive building boom, despite a prolonged economic slump since 1990. Since the 1980s, central government has enacted a steady stream of building code changes that allow much larger buildings. This paper argues that the recent wave of private investment in high-rise intensification has been instigated by these changes to building regulations, so that the form of urban restructuring and the distribution of winners and losers in the process are shaped by the central state, a reverse of the previous trend of decentralisation of planning powers. This restructuring of central/ local government relations can be understood as a creative rescaling of governance power that disrupted established democratic institutional frameworks of decision-making and conflict resolution. This study highlights both the centrality of land assets in Japan’s developmental capitalism and the continuing importance of the distinctive institutional legacies of the developmental state in structuring Japanese urban governance.

1. Introduction As the world’s largest city-region, the centre of gravity of the leading developmental state and the capital of the first non-Western developed country, Tokyo occupies a prominent if contested place in urban theory. During the past

decade, Tokyo has seen an extraordinary boom of high-rise residential development, despite the fact that between 1992 and 2006 Japan experienced its worst and most prolonged recession in over a century. Although other cities around the world have seen a wave of property investment and inner-city intensification during

André Sorensen is in the Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto, 455 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2G8, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. Junichiro Okata is in the Department of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. E-mail: [email protected]. Sayaka Fujii is in the Department of Urban Engineering, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaragi, Japan. E-mail: [email protected]. 0042-0980 Print/1360-063X Online © 2009 Urban Studies Journal Limited DOI: 10.1177/0042098009349775

this period, in Tokyo the impact has been particularly dramatic, as Tokyo was formerly a predominantly low- and medium-rise city apart from a few high-rise office clusters such as Marunouchi and Shinjuku. This paper examines this profound transformation of Tokyo’s urban form, asking: Why is this restructuring of urban space occurring? Why now and why the apparently sudden shift from low- and mid-rise to high-rise building forms? What have been the roles of the central state, the local state and market actors? What can we learn about global city governance and the remaking of urban space from the most recent transformations of Tokyo? Since Friedmann’s seminal world city hypothesis and research agenda was published in 1982, Tokyo has regularly been grouped with London and New York as one of the top three global cities (Friedmann and Wolff, 1982; Friedmann, 1986; Sassen, 1991). As frequently argued, however, Tokyo is a very different global city from London and New York, because it is a centre primarily for Japanese capital not global capital, is still a heavily manufacturing-based economy and has neither the high levels of immigrant population nor the other imperial legacies of London and New York (White, 1998; Hill and Kim, 2000; Newman and Thornley, 2005; Waley, 2007). The most developed argument that the Tokyo case is distinct has been based on the proposition that in contrast to London or New York—that are described as more market-centred—Tokyo is the capital of a ‘developmental state’ in which the role of state engagement in urban economic restructuring processes is pervasive and often decisive (Hill and Fujita, 2000; Hill and Kim, 2000, p. 2187; Kamo, 2000; Saito, 2003; Newman and Thornley, 2005). The developmental state literature has been a productive analysis of governance and development in several Asian countries during the past 30 years, with Japan representing the leading exemplar of the developmental strategy of state prioritisation of economic

URBAN RENAISSANCE AS INTENSIFICATION 557

growth through activist state involvement in industrial and financial policies, infrastructure choices and spatial planning and co-ordination (Johnson, 1982; Deyo, 1987; Woo-Cumings, 1999; Sorensen, 2002; Saito, 2003). Although much scorn was directed at the developmental state model after the Asian financial crisis of 1998, the fact that South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia borrowed multiple aspects of the Japanese strategy suggests that the model provided relevant and credible approaches to important policy issues (Deyo, 1987; Johnson, 1995). The developmental state analysis has also contributed to larger debates about the varieties of capitalism (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Campbell et al., 2006) and the varied responses of different national planning cultures to global political economic change (Sanyal, 2005; Peck and Theodore, 2007). Here, the developmental state analysis is important because it has contributed to several linked research questions addressed by world cities and globalisation research. In particular, a major question has been whether the increasingly globalised world economy is leading to greater convergence in patterns of urban restructuring and urban governance arrangements, with a reduced role of national states and an increased role for competitive local governments and market actors. A prominent theme of much of the early globalisation and world cities literature was that the rise in importance of world cities is associated with a decreasing significance of nation-states in the face of a shift of power to supranational organisations and agreements such as the World Bank, IMF, GATT and the European Union (Friedmann, 1986; Sassen, 1991; Knox and Taylor, 1995). Heightened intercity competition for a share of this new economic base is widely agreed to have prompted demands for decentralisation of power and resources to localities to enable them to innovate and compete more effectively in the emerging world economy,

558 ANDRÉ SORENSEN ET AL.

again reducing the role of nation-states in urban governance (Knox and Taylor, 1995; Hall and Hubbard, 1996; Gibbs and Jonas, 2001). Some took this farther to project the eclipse and withering away of the nation-state, as economies restructured around competitive city-regions (for example, Omae, 1995). Tokyo has been presented as a case that challenged these propositions about the declining role of the nation-state and growing convergence of urban restructuring processes in world cities, particularly in the pages of this journal (Hill and Fujita, 2000; Hill and Kim, 2000; Fujita, 2003).1 Specifically, these papers argue that there are still highly diverse and varied national and regional variants of capitalism, with distinctive roles of state and market in processes of urban restructuring and that the developmental state institutions of activist national governments mean that restructuring processes can produce quite varied outcomes. Fujita puts it characteristically unequivocally Tokyo’s policy response to global challenge continues to be shaped within Japan’s statecentred developmental capitalism rather than through the new finance-centred growth regime. Globalisation is not producing a common, global, urban form that transcends national institutions, politics and culture (Fujita, 2003, p. 270).

In this view, multiple varieties of capitalism continue to produce diverse urban outcomes and globalisation is not necessarily producing convergence. In this context, Waley’s (2007) recent suggestion that capital is playing a growing role in the transformation of Tokyo’s urban space is significant. While largely agreeing that the developmental state created a differently working urbanism from the AngloAmerican model, Waley argues that capital is increasingly important in restructuring Tokyo. He challenges the suggestion that the state remains the decisive player in Tokyo, instead ascribing to capital the primary role

in urban restructuring, with the state on the sidelines cheerleading, reduced to facilitating corporate urban development projects and profitability. By downplaying the role of the developmental state as the primary actor and planner, and suggesting that the national state is much reduced, even toothless, while local government is ‘increasingly sidelined’, Waley appears directly to challenge the interpretations of Hill, Kim and Fujita. The current paper argues that, while Waley is convincing in arguing that this literature underplays the significant and growing role of capital in Tokyo’s on-going urban restructuring, that change is the direct result of state policy and continues to be shaped by the institutional frameworks of the developmental state, that remain distinctive in their impacts on urban restructuring. In developing this argument, it is necessary to look more closely at two largely neglected issues in the debate on the governance of world city Tokyo. The first is the importance of urban land, land development and land valorisation in the developmental state model. This paper argues that the recent wave of private investment in high-rise intensification has been a product of central government attempts to bolster property development profits through a selective manipulation of building regulations, so that the form of urban restructuring and the distribution of winners and losers in the process continue to be shaped by the state. The second issue is the on-going restructuring of central–local government relations that can usefully be understood as a creative rescaling of governance power. As shown later, efforts by central government to promote land development profitability through urban intensification resulted in a sharp recentralisation of regulatory authority over urban development and redevelopment, a shift that runs counter to the previous trend of decentralisation of planning powers. This suggests a need to reconceptualise the impacts of globalisation on urban governance.

1.1 Urban Land Assets in the Developmental State

Although there is a large literature on the developmental state, the significance of land as capital asset, accumulation strategy and political currency is seldom noted. Instead, the developmental state literature focuses on several other characteristics that allowed east Asian states to achieve accelerated economic growth. These ‘industrial policy’ strategies are generally held to include: strong (often authoritarian) states whose economic policy-makers were effectively insulated from particularist pressures, particularly from traditional élites and other social classes that benefited least from rapid industrialisation; effective state controls over foreign exchange, credit and licences that provided incentives for private firms to follow state guidance; and close corporatist linkages between state and dominant industrial conglomerates that provided channels of communication and policy co-ordination (Johnson, 1982; Deyo, 1987; Haggard, 2004). None of the major works on the developmental state shows any interest in the role of land development, urban policy or land as capital asset as a part of the Japanese model. It may be that the role of land was ignored because, following economic base theory, developmental state analysis focused primarily on policies designed to support the basic sector of industries producing export products, while urban growth and investment were understood as a non-basic sector, dependent on the basic export sector for growth, and were therefore of little interest in explanations of that growth (Glickman, 1977). This blind spot continues in the ‘varieties of capitalism’ literature—to which work on the developmental state contributed greatly—that has recently been a major theme in comparative political economy (see, for example, Hall and Soskice, 2001; Weiss, 2003; Campbell et al., 2006). Even Peck and Theodore, who in a recent paper argue that the varieties of capitalism model


provides important insights about the spatial diversity of contemporary capitalism, and argue that economic geography has much to contribute to that analysis, entirely neglect the role of urban land as capital asset and accumulation strategy in their discussion (Peck and Theodore, 2007). This blind spot is surprising, as the central role of land development in contemporary capitalism is widely acknowledged (Haila, 1991; Healey, 1992; Fainstein, 1994). Urban political economists since Harvey (1973) have identified urban property development as a ‘second circuit of capital’ that involves the extraction of surplus value from real estate investment (Harvey, 1973, p. 312; Feagin, 1987). As Harvey notes, Lefebvre argued in 1970 that, as the share of surplus capital invested in industry declined, so the share invested in speculation in urban construction grows (Lefebvre, 1970, p. 212, cited in Harvey, 1973, p. 312. During the past decade, that analysis has been spectacularly borne out by the explosion of property investment in global cities such as Dubai (Pacione, 2005; Davis, 2007). As Savitch put it Unlike Aberdeen and Houston (whose value lies in oil) or Detroit and Turin (whose value lies in automobiles), world-class cities derive their value from land. It is the strategic value of land and its dynamics of economic agglomeration that make New York, Paris, and London so different (Savitch, 1990, p. 170).

The growing role of landed property as capital asset and investment vehicle is also underlined, of course, by the recent collapse of sub-prime mortgage markets and the ensuing global financial crisis. It is significant that, while the mainstream developmental state literature virtually ignores property development, other scholars have argued that land as asset, as bank collateral and as potential development profit is central not only to the Japanese economic model but also to its political system, through


deep ties between the development and construction industries and the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) (Yamamura, 1992; Tsuru, 1993; Woodall, 1996; Kerr, 2002; Feldhoff, 2007). Although land development is everywhere an important industry, the role of land in Japanese developmental capitalism was distinctive in two main ways. First, the Japanese government has long been deeply involved in manipulating land values; and, secondly, the financial system for long operated almost entirely on the basis of land as collateral for loans, creating what Wood (1992) described as the ‘land-standard’ on which the Japanese economy and financial system was built. The key role of land assets in Japanese growth is underlined by the dramatic and prolonged collapse of the Japanese economy after the bursting of the land bubble in 1990 and the ensuing 18 years of negligible economic growth. Especially after the creation of the National Land Agency in 1974, the national government became deeply involved in the monitoring and regulation of ‘official’ land prices (Fukuoka, 1997; Sorensen, 2002, p. 243). Every plot of land had four official prices, that were each different from market prices by unknown amounts and were variously used to set rates for inheritance taxes, land taxes and capital gains taxes, and as official benchmark prices of the land price monitoring and transactions control systems (Kirwan, 1987; Yamamura, 1992; Kerr, 2002). Significant powers were established to create land price control districts where all transactions were monitored, and sales at ‘excessive’ prices could be cancelled, although that power was never used and administrative guidance (persuasion/coercion) prevailed instead (Fukuoka, 1997, p. 166). That system was established in the wake of Japan’s second post-war period of land value inflation in the early 1970s (Tsuru, 1993, p. 160), in principle to prevent land price inflation—a task at which it failed utterly during the late 1980s—but in practice

as a means of imparting a degree of stability, certainty and official sanction to the reliance on land as ever-growing collateral for bank lending, that far exceeded market-traded equities as the primary source of investment capital for Japanese corporations. By the 1980s, major corporations had vast amounts of capital assets in the form of land, against which they could borrow at relatively low interest rates (Tsuru, 1993, p. 163; Kerr, 2002, p. 351). Tsuru notes that between 1970 and 1988 corporations gained unrealised capital gains—the difference between book value and market value—on their land assets of some 400 trillion yen, or about 3 trillion 1988 US dollars (Tsuru, 1993, p. 162). Corporate land assets also helped to inflate stock values, amplifying the asset bubble of the 1980s and exacerbating the collapse of 1990 (Dehesh and Pugh, 1999). The collapse of the bubble has been followed by 18 years of steady decline in average national land values, with slight increases in Tokyo land values only since 2006. This created catastrophic problems for the financial system, which required repeated government bail-outs of trillions of yen to clean up non-performing loans that were guaranteed by land as collateral. And financial crisis produced economic crisis, with negligible economic growth from 1990 to 2005. These linked financial, economic and land value problems created powerful incentives for the central government to promote renewed profitability in the land development sector, a major method of which has been regulatory changes designed to promote intensification in central Tokyo, that have been promoted as ‘compact city’, ‘urban revitalisation’ and ‘urban renaissance’ strategies. 1.2 Rescaling of Central–local Government Powers

These linked crises of Japanese developmental capitalism and the pressure on central government to resolve them bring us directly to

the second major issue this examination of Tokyo world city renaissance sheds light on: the selective restructuring of central–local government relations. Whereas the past halfcentury saw a secular and gradual shift of power from central to local government with a gradual strengthening of local government authority in the regulation and management of urban space (see Sorensen, 2002; Hein and Pelletier, 2006; Ishida, 2006), the urban renaissance and building code deregulation policies examined here reverse that trend, making central government the primary instigator of urban intensification. The changes examined here therefore challenge the suggestion that globalisation is leading to a decreased significance of nation-states amid the decentralisation of power and resources to localities and support the arguments of Hill and Kim (2000) and Fujita (2003) that the hypothesis of global convergence in governance structures is mistaken. The idea that there is more diversity in processes of governance changes associated with globalisation has since been extended beyond the Japanese case. For example, Kohl and Warner (2004, p. 858) suggest that the impacts of neo-liberalisation are not simply about a retreat of the state, but are often more a restructuring of state functions that have critical implications for cities. Similarly, Tsukamoto and Vogel (2007, p. 31) argue that, although in some cases globalisation has led to decentralisation, in about half the cases they examined the reverse was true—nationstate interventions in world city governance favoured increased centralisation. They suggest that in fact processes of political decentralisation and recentralisation were quite diverse in different places, depending on particular circumstances and local trajectories, and that recent research often misses significant direct strategic involvement by central states in world city governance. Here, Brenner’s (2004) concept of rescaling is useful in redirecting the analysis of


the roles of national/local states in urban restructuring. He suggests that recent change processes should be understood not simply as a weakening of national states, but a rearticulation of state powers over space, that creates new state spaces, new ways of articulating capital in the creative destruction of existing regulatory regimes and the elaboration of new, temporary, spatial fixes (Brenner, 2004). This analysis fits the Tokyo case described here, where as discussed later, the abrogation of existing regulatory arrangements and creation of new regulatory logics have allowed a reshuffling of the costs and benefits of urban citizenship between residents, property owners and land developers, leading to new and intense conflicts over redevelopment and intensification. As Swyngedouw concisely puts it: rescaling is an intense and ongoing sociospatial struggle in which the reconfiguration of the spatial scale of governance takes a key position (Swyngedouw, 2000, p. 63).

We argue that the deregulation and re-regulation of development in Tokyo examined here represent an important case of such a creative rescaling of urban governance. This paper details the process and outcomes of planning deregulation and re-regulation over the past two decades. The next section briefly outlines the Japanese planning system, focusing particularly on the distinctive central government power to change unilaterally the allowable built form of every building plot in the country by revising the national Building Standards Law (BSL). The third section details the processes and nature of successive changes to the building code and the introduction of the Urban Renaissance policy, while the fourth section presents case studies of two recent developments in central Tokyo that were made possible by these regulatory changes. A concluding section summarises the major characteristics of the restructuring of urban space in Tokyo, outlines several distinctive


aspects of the Japanese case and discusses the implications for our understanding of the contested governance of urban space in Tokyo.

2. Regulating the Built Form of Japanese Cities To appreciate Tokyo’s urban restructuring processes during the past few decades it is important to understand several distinctive characteristics of urban regulation in Japan. Although the Japanese planning system regulates development in quite different ways from most other developed countries, it would be a mistake to see Japan’s famously chaotic cityscapes as the product of a free market. In fact, built form has long been tightly regulated, not in terms of land use, which is relatively unrestricted, but in terms of permitted building envelope, which has been much more strictly controlled. Indeed, urban space is so valuable in the big cities that buildings routinely use 100 per cent of the permitted volume and changes to the rules can initiate a massive response by the development industry. Japan has a long city planning tradition, with the first national planning law passed in 1919 being based on the 1889 Tokyo City Improvement Ordinance that dealt specifically with modernising the capital city Tokyo. The City Planning Law and the Urban Buildings Law of 1919 formed a relatively comprehensive system to plan for the development of cities, including a land use zoning system and a building code (see Ishida, 1987; Sorensen, 2002, p. 114). The zoning system, as in other countries, was designed to allow planning authorities to specify and enforce different land uses and built forms in designated areas. The Japanese version of zoning had two distinctive characteristics. First, only the names of the different zones were specified in the City Planning Law, while the Building Standards Law contained the detailed regulations of what land uses were allowed and specified allowable building

heights, built form and building materials. This separation of the type of zones allowed and the detailed regulations over what can be built in them is important for understanding the changes discussed later. A second distinctive feature of zoning in Japan is that zoning was never used in a very restrictive way to prevent mixing of land uses. The three zones of the original act each allowed virtually all land uses and were intended more to indicate the types of land uses that were expected and to give guidelines on built form. For example, higher buildings and densities were allowed in commercial zones, while residential areas were to have narrower streets and industrial areas larger blocks and wider roads. The major revision to the planning law of 1968 maintained the same structure, but increased the number of permitted zones to 8, while the reforms of 1992 further increased that to 12 (Sorensen, 2002, p. 301). One further crucial feature of the Japanese planning system is the fact that it has always been a national planning system, with little discretion allowed for local governments. The City Planning Law and Building Standards Law are both national government laws, that specify a range of permitted planning interventions, beyond which local governments could not go. For example, local governments had no legal authority to create special purpose zones beyond those specified in the national law, nor could they modify the permitted land use, density or other requirements of zones beyond the range of options permitted by national law. Further, until a major decentralisation of planning authority passed in 2000, local government ordinances and bylaws had no legal status and could not be defended in court if they went beyond the limits specified in national planning law (for details, see Sorensen, 2006). Until the present day, only national government can make changes to planning law and any changes to national laws automatically apply everywhere throughout the country.


Table 1. Length of roads in all Japanese cities, towns and villages, by width, in km (percentages in parenthesis)

Less than 3.5 metres

Total Over 5.5 metres From 3.5 to 5.5 metres Total 459 000 (100)

8 700 (1.9)

56 000 (12.2)

395 000 (86.0)

Of which too narrow for automobiles 160 000 (34.8)

Note: totals may not add due to rounding. Source: Japan Statistics Bureau (2007, p. 384).

Until the 1990s, most Japanese urban areas remained relatively low rise, albeit relatively high in population and jobs density. Outside a few commercial centres such as the Marunouchi district of central Tokyo and the new business sub-centres of Shinjuku, Ikebukuro and Shibuya, there were very few buildings over 10 storeys and the vast majority of buildings were between 2 and 5 storeys high. The main reason for this was not absolute height regulations, although those were applied in #1 Exclusive residential areas, but the slant plane restrictions of the Building Standards Act, that since 1919 had restricted the permitted building envelope to an area below a sloped plane drawn from the opposite side of the street that any building plot fronted on, as explained later. This meant that plots fronting a narrow road were permitted only low-rise buildings, while plots fronting a wide road could build much higher, an arrangement designed to prevent the creation of lightless canyons along narrow streets, as well as restricting high-rise buildings to streets that had more capacity to handle greater volumes of traffic. This regulatory regime combined with street patterns to produce distinctive and often rather successful patterns of urban form in many Japanese cities. Most Japanese streets are extremely narrow. Apart from central business districts and some intercity highways, the vast majority of urban streets are still less than 3.5 metres in width (see Table 1). Since the 1950s, an ambitious programme of cutting

and widening arterial roads (toshi keikaku doro) through existing urban areas has been pursued, so the common pattern is a macro grid of broad arterials superimposed on micro grids of narrow lanes. Along the arterials, tall buildings of 10–12 storeys became the norm, while on the narrow streets buildings of 2–3 storeys prevail. The narrow interior streets cannot take much traffic and act as traffic calming zones that virtually all through traffic and trucks avoid and for which special miniature garbage collection trucks, fire engines, etc. have had to be created. The combination of narrow roads, tiny fragmented plots and the BSL’s slant plane restrictions served to protect many rather quiet, low-rise neighbourhoods even in the heart of major metropolitan areas such as Tokyo, as—although redevelopment of individual buildings was common—significant increases in floor area or height could seldom be achieved. While most buildings were low-rise, high population densities were achieved by very small housing plots, small units and a very high proportion of urban areas being built-up because of the narrow roads and scarcity of parks or other urban public facilities. One further element of the regulatory framework that served to strengthen the controls over tall buildings in Japanese cities was primarily a result of the first round of conflicts over high-rise construction in the 1970s. As part of the thorough revision of the City Planning Law passed in 1968 and


the accompanying revision of the BSL in 1970, the strictly enforced absolute height limit of 30 metres for all buildings was abolished because engineering advances had rendered this approach obsolete. Only the Exclusive Residential Zone #1 introduced in the 1968 City Planning Law retained an absolute height limit, of 10 metres. Exclusive Residential Zone #1 was, as the name suggests, intended to be primarily low-rise housing areas and uses considered compatible such as churches, schools, small shops, etc.; when the rezonings under the new system had been largely completed in 1975, this zone comprised about 20 per cent of the national urban area (Sorensen, 2002, p. 222). A much greater area (about 49 per cent) was zoned either Exclusive Residential #2 or Residential, which each allowed a much wider range of land uses including small manufacturing enterprises, universities and department stores, restaurants and office buildings, and had no absolute height limits. With the removal of the 30-metre height limit, and in a context of rapid urban-economic growth, extensive low- and medium-rise areas were suddenly ripe for redevelopment into higher buildings and the early 1970s saw a rush of inner-city condominium building, the so-called ‘manshon boom’ (condominiums are universally referred to as ‘manshon’ in Japan). The manshon boom prompted spirited opposition movements in many areas, in part because such high-rise buildings brought with them increased local congestion and noise, but especially because tall buildings blocked direct sunlight to neighbouring houses for part of the day. In Japan, direct sunlight is considered a primary requirement for residential quality of life, houses are routinely oriented towards the sun and an important part of the daily routine is to hang bedding out in the sun to air. The construction of high-rise condominiums in residential areas precipitated a wave of local opposition movements that drew on the energy and expertise of the

wider environmental movement of the time (McKean, 1981; Ishizuka and Ishida, 1988, p. 30). To defuse the crisis, the government passed an amendment to the BSL in 1972 that allowed local governments to create height control zones with a maximum building height of 10 metres that could be designated as a supplementary layer over other land use zones. Such height control zones were designated throughout central Tokyo by local governments to protect residential areas. This was not the end of the conflict, however, as many residential areas still had no building height limits and citizens’ movements were at the peak of their political strength. A Tokyo-wide coalition of sunshine rights groups launched a series of court cases against developers of high-rise buildings, demanding compensation from builders who blocked sunlight to neighbouring buildings. In 1972, the Supreme Court decided that Article 25 of the constitution which guarantees ‘minimum standards of wholesome and cultural living’ protected the right to sunshine and that builders who blocked sunshine to nearby properties could be liable for damages (McKean, 1981, p. 113). In 1973, the coalition presented their own proposal for a sunlight protection ordinance (Hiatari Jôrei) to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (Ishizuka and Ishida, 1988, p. 30). The Ministry of Construction (MOC) then revised the BSL to include many of the proposals by the citizens’ movement and those revisions came into effect in 1976. This required all local governments to create their own bylaws specifying minimum hours of unimpeded sunlight cast to the north of new buildings on the winter solstice when the sun is at its lowest. While not preventing high-rise buildings, this did restore an element of certainty, for both residents and developers, over what could be built. This history makes it clear that the regulation of built form is a highly contested matter and that the revisions to the BSL examined here should be seen not as mere tinkering

with an obscure technical formula, but as a highly charged political act.

3. History of Changes to the Building Standards Law The 1970s were the high point of the urban environmental movements’ political power and since then the national government has passed a steady stream of revisions to planning laws, most of which served to weaken regulatory capacity. This paper focuses on changes to the BSL and their consequences, as there is a substantial literature on other aspects of planning deregulation (Hebbert and Nakai, 1988; Hayakawa and Hirayama, 1991; Otake, 1993; Upham, 1993; Inamoto, 1998). The profound impacts of these changes on urban restructuring are examined in the case studies in section 4. The shift to a weakening of planning regulations starts in earnest in the early 1980s. While the environmental movements and progressive local governments had put enormous pressure on the conservative national government from the late 1960s through to the mid 1970s, the LDP had regained the political high ground by declaring a new urban policy and passing long-delayed major revisions to the City Planning Law in 1968, approving 14 anti-pollution laws in 1970, initiating a new welfare system in 1973 and a new National Land Planning Law in 1974 (Barrett and Therivel, 1991, p. 39; Sorensen, 2002, p. 225). This set of policies contributed to the restoration of the electoral fortunes of the LDP by the end of the decade, to the point where the party regained its majority control of both houses of the national parliament in the dual elections of 1980, allowing a major shift in its policy stance in favour of deregulation, fiscal restraint and reductions in welfare spending (Pempel, 1998, p. 188). This turnaround became particularly evident under the 1982–87 administration of Prime Minister Nakasone, who was an


enthusiastic supporter of the neo-liberal policies of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. While deregulation and a reduction of the role of the state in the economy were a core part of the emerging neo-liberal orthodoxy, planning deregulation is particularly resonant in Japan as farmers (in their capacity of urban fringe landowners) and the real-estate and construction industries who benefit most from a weaker development control regime, were and are core supporters of the LDP. Presenting deregulation as a way to stimulate urban housing investment and consumer demand while improving the quality and size of housing, the Nakasone administration moved quickly on taking office in 1982. One of Nakasone’s first initiatives was to direct the Ministry of Construction (MOC) to review all areas in Tokyo that were zoned Exclusive Residential #1 in order to rezone them Exclusive Residential #2 in which highrise buildings could be built so that Tokyo could grow more like Manhattan (Hebbert and Nakai, 1988, p. 386; Miyao, 1991, p. 132). This was a clear and overt challenge to the authority of local governments, that had only recently been given responsibility for zoning in the 1968 planning law revision. Further, many of the Tokyo ward governments2 had engaged in protracted public participation processes in establishing their new zoning plans during the 1970s, and the boundaries of Exclusive Residential #1 zones had been one of the most contentious issues. Local governments were unsurprisingly reluctant to revise their plans and most refused to remove the popular zoning protections for inner-city residential areas. A second initiative came in March 1983 with an order from the MOC to all local governments to encourage development by relaxing regulations, increasing permitted floor area ratio (FAR) allowances and rezoning residential areas to commercial areas to allow higher-density development (Hayakawa and Hirayama, 1991, p. 153; Otake, 1993, p. 243). According to


Otake (1993), the Ministry of Construction was deeply divided on the issue of deregulation, with one group supporting Nakasone’s Tokyo-Manhattan vision and another group of urban planners opposed to deregulation policies that they predicted would lead to other serious problems. He argues that it was Nakasone’s direct intervention that tipped the balance in favour of the deregulators. So far, the attempts at deregulation were primarily carried out through pressure on local governments to permit higher-density building by revising permitted floor area ratios (FAR) and carry out rezoning, etc. Such revisions constitute changes to official plans, however, and require public notification and official planning amendments that provide opportunities for public opposition and protest, with clear political risks for proponents. It was unsurprising that even conservative local administrations were reluctant. As a way around this obstacle, the Nakasone administration turned to revisions to the national BSL, which merely required tiny changes in wording to achieve very significant increases in permitted built intensity. This strategy had the huge political advantage of being completely invisible to the average citizen, being changes to obscure regulations requiring no notification and no political risks for local administrations. Significantly, when approved, they applied automatically to all urban areas throughout the country. 3.1 Cumulative Weakening of the Building Standards Law

The opening move in the transformation of the building code was a series of changes to the slant plane restrictions (shasen seigen), which since the first Japanese building code of 1919 had defined the permitted building envelope for every urban land parcel (Sorensen, 2002, p. 116). Designed primarily to limit the bulk and height of buildings and prevent them from looming over neighbouring buildings, the initial slant plane restriction defined

the limit of permitted building envelope by drawing a sloping line from the opposite side of the street the building fronted on. In residential zones, the slope was set at 1.25:1, while in commercial and industrial zones the slope was 1.5:1 (meaning a vertical rise of 1.5 metres over a horizontal distance of 1 metre; see Figure 1). Crucial is the fact that the line is drawn from the opposite side of the street, so narrow streets will permit only shorter buildings, and wider streets taller ones, and buildings can get taller farther away from the street. This system was the primary cause of the proliferation in Japan of oddly shaped buildings with pyramidal tops, particularly during the bubble economy years of the 1980s when floor space became so extraordinarily valuable—builders were simply building out to the maximum permitted building envelope. The first weakenings of the slant plane restrictions were carried out in 1987 at the end of Nakasone’s term in office. One change limited the slant plane restriction to within a certain distance from the opposite side of the street (between 20 and 50 metres depending on the zone and FAR), beyond which point the building can rise vertically (see central part of Figure 1). A second change in 1987 was to ease the slant plane restriction to encourage buildings that were set back from the street. The starting-point of the slant plane restriction was set back from the far edge of the street by an equal distance as the building set-back shown as distance S in Figure 1. Both those changes applied to the street frontage of the site, while a third one implemented in 1987 applied to the sides of building sites that bordered neighbouring buildings. This was similar to the second one, in that for buildings that are set back from the edge of the property, the slant plane starts from a point 20 or 31 metres above ground (depending on the zoning) set back an equal distance from the edge of the property as the building (see Figure 2). This did not apply in Category #1 Exclusively Residential Zones, as those have


Table 2. Successive and cumulative weakening of building standards law Year

Revisions to Building Standard Law (BSL)

1968 1970 Revisions of the BSL required by the 1968 CPL revisions Abolishment of absolute height limits except in #1 Exclusive Residential zone Introduction of FARs and slant plane restriction on the north side Increase from 4 to 8 types of zone in CPL and BSL 1976 Introduction of Sunlight Regulations 1980 1982 1987 Increase of FAR of the sites along wide streets Addition of 12-metre absolute height limit for #1 Exclusive Residential zone Weakening of slant plane restrictions 1988 Introduction of District plan with bonus for redevelopment areas 1992 Introduction of site size regulations for exclusively low-storey residential zones 1993 1994 Basements of houses no longer counted in calculation of FAR 1995 Weakening of FAR required by the width of the streets in certain residential zones Weakening of slant plane restrictions on the street sides Establishment of the Promotion of Decentralisation Law 1997 Floor area of corridors, elevators, common space no longer calculated in FAR of condominiums 1999 Privatisation of the examination of building permits Establishment of the Promotion of All Decentralisation Law 2000 Weakening of regulations on building area ratios 2001 2002 Establishment of the Urban Renaissance Special Measure Law

Revisions to related laws Major revision of the City Planning Law (CPL)

Introduction of District plan Urban planning deregulation policies of Nakasone Cabinet

Major revision of CPL Introduction of master plan Increase from 8 to 12 types of zone Establishment of the Administrative Procedure Law Establishment of the Basic Environment Law

Establishment of the Promotion of Decentralisation Law

Urban Renaissance Policy of Koizumi Cabinet


Table 2. (Continued) Year

Revisions to Building Standard Law (BSL)

2003

Appointments of Development Policy for Priority Urban Redevelopment Areas Introduction of sky exposure criterion Weakening of FAR and slant plane restrictions in selected residential areas

Revisions to related laws

Figure 1. Changes to slant plane restrictions on the street frontage.

absolute height restrictions of 10 metres (Fujii et al., 2006). Another less significant change to the slant plane restrictions in 1995 allowed a steeper angle for the slant plane in Exclusive Medium-High Rise Residential areas where the street is over 12 metres wide. These changes made possible much larger and taller buildings than before. Nakasone’s changes to the slant plane system certainly contributed to the frenzy of real estate development of the bubble economy period, that proved so destructive socially and economically, and contributed so dramatically to Tokyo’s urban problems, including social polarisation, housing unaffordability and homelessness, central-city population decline, destruction of historical buildings and urban sprawl (see, for example, Hayakawa and Hirayama, 1991; Douglass, 1993; Oizumi, 1994). In this débâcle, the weakening of the slant plane system was certainly not the most important factor, but it has had enduring

and cumulative impacts in combination with other measures. Two main responses of the government are relevant here. The first was the attempt to jump-start renewed economic growth by massive spending on public works, arguing yet again that investment in infrastructure had high multipliers and would contribute to ‘development’ of the nation. This was remarkably unsuccessful and resulted primarily in the unprecedented public indebtedness of national, prefectural and municipal governments that now greatly constrains public policy (Jinno, 1999; Shirai, 2005; Schebath, 2006). The second response was a renewed determination to use planning and building standards deregulation to encourage construction investment. 3.2 Boosting Floor Area Ratios

The next major set of changes to the BSL concerns the system of floor area ratios (FAR) that were first introduced with the 1970 revision.


Figure 2. Changes to slant plane restrictions on the sides of building sites.

FAR is simply the ratio of permitted floor area to the land area of the building plot. Each land use zone was permitted a range of possible FAR that were designated by municipal governments when they revised all zoning plans in the early 1970s. At this time, many municipal governments designated rather generous FAR allowances, particularly in the mixed-use residential zones, so that few buildings could actually use their maximum allowable FAR because the slant plane regulations were more restrictive. Ironically, this was one argument for easing of the slant plane restrictions: property owners were not even able to use their full allowable FAR. The first of a series of major changes to the way FAR ratios are calculated was made in 1994, when the law was revised to exclude the area of basements (the floor area below ground level) from the calculation of total floor area. This was a reasonable move and was presented as a measure to allow homeowners in high-density single-family residential areas to create a little more space in their homes without increasing the bulk of buildings above ground. The problem was that the MOC failed to define adequately ‘ground level’ in the new law, which refers only to ‘average ground level’. In hilly areas, the

average ground level was not easy to calculate and there were several cases where builders insisted that it meant only the street level at the front of the plot. A number of notorious buildings were constructed on steeply sloped sites that had a street entrance at the top of the site, where much larger buildings were constructed than would have been possible before. The ministry effectively admitted its oversight when in 2004 it proposed that local governments define ‘ground level’ themselves in local ordinances. A much more significant boost to FAR ratios was the decision in 1997 no longer to include shared spaces of corridors, stairs, elevator shafts and lobbies in the calculation of the total floor area of condominium buildings. This suddenly allowed much larger buildings, even where no other changes to zoning or building regulations were made, and was a major cause of the boom in condominium construction since the late 1990s. Another significant deregulation was made at the same time, the ‘contiguous site planning system’ (Rentan Sekkei Seido) that allowed two plots to be considered as one plot so that the one with less road access could ‘borrow’ the road frontage of a neighbouring plot that was eligible for a higher FAR because of its road


frontage. Previously this was only possible if the plots were actually legally joined into one. Although not exactly a change to the BSL, a measure passed by the central government in 1999 to privatise the systems for examining and awarding building permits has certainly contributed to the weakening of building controls. Until 1999, local governments were responsible for examining building permit applications to ensure that planned buildings were in compliance with the law, including engineering standards, height and bulk, land use, etc. Applicants for building permits now have a choice of going either to the local government office, as before, or paying a private consultant to examine their application and issue the building permit. As building permits must be issued within three weeks of application for all compliant projects, the examination process did not give local governments any discretionary power. It was not uncommon, however, for local governments to use ‘administrative guidance’ to persuade applicants to delay submission of an application while negotiation with nearby landowners was facilitated, as in the two case studies in section 4. The privatisation of responsibility for processing and issuing building permit applications makes that impossible, as now local governments are only notified when the permit is issued. The new system also opens the possibility of conflict of interest, as the consulting companies can now process and examine building permit applications of some of their major clients. Perhaps not coincidentally, during the past four years there has been a continuing series of major scandals involving falsified earthquake engineering studies and dangerously flawed buildings. Perhaps the most explicit attempt to seize planning responsibility from recalcitrant municipal governments was former Prime Minister Koizumi’s ‘Urban Renaissance’ policy passed in April 2002 as the ‘Special Urban Renaissance Law (Toshisaisei tokubetsu sochi hô) (Okata, 2002). This act established an

urban regeneration office within the Prime Minister’s Office with the authority to designate Urban Renaissance Areas in which landowners (or developers or organisations which represent the landowners) in a defined district can propose (with the consent of two-thirds of the landowners in the district) changes to the official city plan including zoning regulation and the road plan within the district, or replacement of the existing city plan by a special district plan allowing much higher FAR for developments within the district. The municipal city planning committee responsible for the city plan in the district has to approve or refuse the proposal within 6 months of the application. This greatly reduces the need for local government co-operation over rezoning to allow high-rise development. The national government argued that local government planning processes and requirements to consult local residents meant that it takes too much time to change zoning or to apply special incentive zoning for redevelopment. The main advocates of these measures have been the largest property development companies, which stand to profit from the ability to develop much larger buildings. The goal is again to promote a ‘competitive global city’ by providing a large supply of efficient and larger floorplate office space, through inner-city intensification. The strategy is to promote ad hoc special rezoning to encourage high-rise redevelopment. Two more measures were passed in 2003 to allow easier construction of high-rise buildings. The first was the introduction of a completely new approach to the regulation of the building envelope, as an optional substitute for the slant plane regulations, available at the discretion of builders. Called the ‘Sky Exposure Criterion’, it substitutes a performance regulation for the detailed specifications of the slant-plane-defined building envelope. Developers can now opt to disregard applicable slant plane regulations if they can show that their proposed building results in the same

or less impacts on daylight, ventilation and other environmental impacts on surrounding buildings as would result from a building that conformed to them. The goal is to allow more flexibility in built form and, in practice, usually results in taller, narrower buildings. The second change of 2003 was relaxation of FAR controls through the introduction of the ‘High-rise Residential Building Promotion District’ (Kôsô Jûkyo Yûdô Chiku) that allowed local governments drastically to increase allowable FAR ratios without needing to change the zoning of an area. The new designation could be implemented as a simple overlay zone on any Residential areas with an existing FAR of over 400 per cent. In designated areas, the FAR increases from 400 to 600 per cent and the slant plane changes from 1:1.25 to 1:1.5. This change is at the discretion of local governments and few have made use of these new powers, so the impact has not been significant, yet. Under pressure from central government, both Chiyoda-ku and Minato-ku in central Tokyo did designate some areas.

4. Case Studies The two case studies presented here were both prominent cases that achieved a certain notoriety because of the vigorous protests of neighbourhood groups. We do not claim, therefore, that they are necessarily typical or statistically representative of all recent redevelopment projects, but merely that these projects illustrate the kinds of changes made possible by successive changes to the BSL. Many hundreds of such developments have been built throughout the Tokyo area in recent years. 4.1 Komazawa

The Komazawa area is located in Setagaya ward in the south-west of central Tokyo, just west of the trendy Shibuya sub-centre. Suburban development in Setagaya accelerated in the 1920s with the building of Japan’s


first garden suburbs at Den-en Chofu and Tamagawadai (see Watanabe, 1980). Setagaya ward, including the Komazawa area studied here, is considered to be one of the best residential areas in Tokyo because of its combination of proximity to central Tokyo, excellent rail transit infrastructure and quiet, leafy, stable residential neighbourhoods. The area is served by the private Tôkyû Den-en commuter line originally built in the 1920s to serve the garden suburbs and the national highway Route 246 and Metropolitan Expressway # 3 run through the area from east to west. Lining these two major roads are rows of mid-rise office and residential towers of about 10 storeys. Building heights drop sharply further from the two main roads, with residential areas of mid–low rise adjacent to the 10-storey buildings and, a little bit further, are quiet residential areas of two-storey detached houses. The site of the controversial development in this case is bordered on the south by Route 246. A part of the site was developed during the bubble economy period as an office building of 10 storeys, the maximum that could be built at that time. Soon after completion, the developer of the office tower went bankrupt and the building was left empty. Then another developer acquired the office building and started buying houses and shops adjoining it. In total, the developer acquired 2500 square metres of land. Figure 4 shows the area in Setagaya Ward immediately surrounding the site of the development examined here, at a scale large enough to show the height of each building. Data are from 2001. Route 246 is the wide road cutting across from lower left to upper right. The area is typical of Tokyo suburbs developed during the first half of the 20th century, with extremely narrow roads that followed pre-industrial landownership patterns, some of which have been widened, and cut across by new grids and major highways. Also notable are the large number of dwellings in the interior of blocks that have no


Figure 3. New residential high-rise in Komazawa.

street frontage. The area is predominantly low-rise housing of 2 storeys, with a significant number of 3–4 storey apartments, schools and other institutional uses scattered throughout. Lining Route 246 especially are higher buildings, with many of 5–10 storeys and a few 11–15 storeys. Until the 30-storey building discussed here was built, there were no buildings higher than 15 storeys. The developer made a plan for construction of three rental apartment buildings including a high-rise condominium building of 30 storeys on the southern part of the site fronting Route 246. The two other buildings stepped down, with an 8-storey medium-rise building and a low-rise building on the northern part of the site, since this part fronted only on a much narrower road. Figure 5 shows how the changes to the BSL since 1987 allowed a

structure that was much more than twice as tall as would have been possible before. The 30-storey high-rise building is one of the first super-high-rise residential towers developed in a mid–low rise residential area. The buildings contain over 300 one-room housing units for single-person households and all units were for rent. When the plans for these buildings were made public in 1997, people in the neighbourhood were shocked, because no-one believed that buildings higher than 10 storeys could be built in this area. They were also concerned that all the units were tiny one-room rental apartments, that would all be inhabited by single people, with no family units, and the liklihood of a high turnover of units because no units were for sale. While the influx of a new and different population was a concern,


Figure 4. Location and vicinity of Komazawa case study.

the main issue was the astounding height of the building, which would tower over everything nearby and would set a precedent for a wave of demolition and rebuilding. A detailed examination of several recent movements in opposition to super-highrise residential towers may be found in Fujii et al. (2007) but, briefly, nearby residents established the ‘Residents group to protect Komazawa’s environment’ (Komazawa no kankyô wo mamoru jûmin no kai) and tried

to negotiate with the developer. They made three main demands: that the building be reduced in height to 15 storeys; that half the units be larger, for family use; and that the buildings be set back from the edge of the property to allow more space for pedestrians and landscaping. The local government environment committee supported the residents’ demands and argued that measures should be taken to mitigate wind problems and falling objects accidents, and that some community


Figure 5. Permitted building envelope before and after deregulation.

space should be built into such a massive development. The developer rejected these demands and a long process of negotiation ensued, in which the local government tried to mediate a compromise. The developer’s final offer was to set back the buildings by 1 metre, to reduce the building height by 2.2 metres (by shaving a few centimetres off each floor) and to include a community meeting room in the building. The residents’ group felt that this was inadequate and refused to negotiate any further. At this point, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government stepped in, applying its 1978 ordinance to mediate disputes over mid-rise and high-rise buildings that was one legacy of the earlier sunlight rights movements. The dispute resolution committee recommended that the height of the tallest building be reduced by half and that half the units be family-sized. The developer rejected this proposal outright and went ahead with the building permit application process. The

residents’ group then applied for a court injunction requesting compensation for loss of sunlight and wind damage and a reduction of the building height by half. Eventually the judge in the court case proposed a negotiated settlement: the developer would pay the mounting costs of the court case, include a community meeting space and install two wind meters. The residents group, terrified of the huge legal costs if they lost, accepted. The building was completed in January 2002, almost as originally proposed, demonstrating the limited capacity of local government or local protest to prevent unwanted buildings. 4.2 Arakawa

Arakawa is located in the eastern part of Tokyo in a traditional inner-city area (shitamachi), where houses and factories are densely packed together and average incomes are much lower than in the up-market area of Komazawa.3 Along major arterial roads


Figure 6. Location and vicinity of Arakawa case study.

many high-rise office and residential buildings of about 10 storeys had been built, but away from the major roads the pattern was one of narrow roads, densely built-up small houses, commercial areas and small factories. Figure 6 shows the area surrounding the development examined here. The major arterial road crossing from upper left to lower right is Kannana Dori, the Seventh Orbital highway, and the area is also crossed from east to west by an elevated commuter heavy rail line and Tokyo’s last remaining light rail line (the Tokyo Electric Railway—Tokyo Dentetsu) north of the 7th orbital. The area has two main street patterns: the area south of

the heavy rail line, that was redeveloped with Land Readjustment projects after the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake into a regular grid of wider streets; and the area to north of the railway that was not so redeveloped, that retains a more traditional pattern of very narrow roads and many houses fronting on footpaths. As in the Komazawa case study area, the vast majority of buildings are less than 4 storeys in height, with significant numbers of buildings over 5 storeys only in the southern area with wider roads, and buildings of over 10 storeys only along the 7th orbital. There were no buildings over 15 storeys until the building of the 31-storey tower examined here.


Arakawa Ward was greatly impacted by the intense land speculation of the bubble period. Many houses and factories were demolished and some of them were redeveloped as office buildings of 10–15 storeys, but the site that we look at here was relatively small, at only 2600 square metres, and had been vacant for a long time, so few local residents thought that something would actually be built here. In February 1998, a development company bought this site and made a development plan for a 31-storey condominium of 170 housing units. Neighbouring residents learned of the plans in August when the required signboard detailing the building height and other specifications was erected on the site and notification leaflets were distributed to about 40 nearby households. As in Komazawa, this was a huge shock to local people, because nothing close to that tall had ever been built nearby. Some major redevelopment projects had taken place in the area, but they were all on large factory sites of several hectares. It was perceived as a major threat to the neighbourhood, because with the hollowing-out of the Japanese manufacturing base, many small and medium-size factory sites nearby could in future become available for redevelopment, raising the prospect of massive changes in the area. The development of a 31-storey tower on this tiny site opened the possibility of many more such buildings in the area. The local residents quickly organised the ‘Group to protect the living environment of downtown Arakawa’ (Arakawa shitamachi seikatsu kankyô wo mamoru kai). Most of the neighbouring residents participated in the group. They first tried to negotiate with the developer and asked for a change to the plan. The developer, however, ignored their requests and applied for development permission and a building permit. The group then submitted a petition opposing the development to the local assembly, which adopted the petition overwhelmingly. At this point, several assembly members and local government officers tried

to mediate the situation. They persuaded the developer to talk with the residents’ group. In February 1999, talks among four groups including the developer, the inhabitants, the assembly members and the local government planning department were organised. Initially, the developer simply rejected all demands and the conflict became increasingly acrimonious, with local residents attempting to block deliveries to the site with picket lines and civil disobedience. They also submitted a petition with 5200 signatures on it requesting that the local government pass a law restricting the height of buildings to 15 storeys maximum, but many landowners in the area were opposed and the local government refused to pass the proposed regulation. Eventually, after failed mediations initiated by TMG, more protests and a threat of legal action by the developer that greatly scared the residents’ group, the developer and opposition movement agreed to a reduction of the building height by only 1 metre in total. They also agreed a reduction of parking spaces, the rearrangement of a parking lot for bicycles, more landscape plantings and the creation of a small public open space behind the building. The building was completed in 2002. Some minor concessions were achieved, but no meaningful reduction of the height of the building.

5. Discussion and Conclusions Although as Waley (2007) shows, there have been many large redevelopment projects occurring in recent years in Tokyo, it seems likely that the main vector of urban transformation in Japanese cities in future will not be the showcase buildings like Mori Building Corporation’s Roppongi Hills that have garnered such attention, but the high-rise condominiums that are popping up on small sites all over Japan. This section looks at the main implications of these changes: first in terms of planning and, secondly, as questions of the rescaling of urban governance in Japan.


Figure 7. New high-rise residential tower in Arakawa Ku.

First, there are clearly important planning implications of these changes, as they allow major changes in built form and massive intensification of land use, population density and floor area, without any system to consider appropriate locations for such intensification and the resulting urban pattern. As a result, this transformation of urban areas is simply occurring wherever there is a wide road and a plot of land owned by an eager developer. While in some locations carefully designed

intensification of urban areas can have positive impacts, major intensification will almost certainly create serious urban problems in some places. Yet at the moment there is no way to link intensification to an urban policy or urban design strategy. This is clearly a policy that is primarily about short-term profits and economic stimulus, not about long-term liveability. This use of planning regulations to spur economic growth appears highly problematic because the long-term consequences


in terms of urban form, urban quality of life, urban infrastructure and the distribution of the costs and benefits of intensification are not taken into account. Further, a huge bonus of density has been granted to property developers with little capacity to negotiate any public benefits in return. The increased property values that result from much higher permitted floor area ratios and building density are so significant that many developers would be willing and able to provide significant public benefits in return for density increases, such as public space and affordable housing units, as is common in many other countries and as used to be the case in Japan with the Plaza Bonus system. It is not easy to create effective and equitable systems to capture what in the UK is called planning gain, and in the US is referred to as linkage fees, but it seems unfortunate to deny local governments a mechanism to negotiate some community benefits from intensification, particularly as that intensification is generating considerable conflict. The fact that all of the gain in land values from changes to building regulations is allocated to property developers confirms that the primary goal is economic stimulus and underlines the importance of land development in Japanese capitalism. The developmental state institutions of national planning laws and powers, that had earlier allowed the mobilisation of national resources to promote rapid economic growth, are redeployed in favour of strategies to enhance land asset values. It is true that the restructuring of Tokyo is carried out increasingly by private capital, as claimed by Waley (2007), but the distinctive and continuing institutional legacies of the developmental state identified by Hill, Kim and Fujita remain fundamental, as Tokyo’s restructuring is initiated by state action and forms a central plank of a national plan to restore the Japanese financial system and economy using urban land as a strategic national resource for asset accumulation.

Secondly, the very active use of revisions to the BSL by central government effectively overruled local planning regulations and procedures. This rescaling of regulatory authority over the built environment from local to national government has had profound implications for governance of place and local democracy. In most research on globalisation, such rescaling is seen as the shift of governance authority from national to supranational, or from national to local and regional governments, either way reflecting a weakening of central state power. In the Japanese case of building regulations examined here, the shift in governance authority is from local governments back to central government, in efforts to circumvent local opposition to high-rise intensification. In an effort to revitalise a flagging property development industry, central government sidestepped the regulatory frameworks established over many decades and unilaterally changed the rules of the development game. The resulting building boom again sparked intense opposition to development plans for high-rise office and residential towers in neighbourhoods where only low-rise buildings had been permitted before. This use of regulatory authority by central government makes it much more difficult for local people to participate in planning processes, or to assert their own values and priorities in opposition to development capital. The weakening of local control over planning policy is one of the most startling features of the changes to the Building Standards Law over the past 20 years. The changes to the BSL discussed in this paper override local constraints to built form established in local zoning ordinances and master plans, and apply to all urban areas throughout the country, even though the primary target for intensification is central Tokyo. The Urban Renaissance Law explicitly undermines the authority of local government plans in the areas designated and allows private landowners and their representatives to propose changes to city plans.

By privatising the building permit system, the central government has further reduced the limited leverage local governments had in negotiating public benefits in return for development permit approval. By making many of the changes to the BSL through simple changes in regulation and administrative interpretation, the government has avoided public debate and has ensured that for most people these changes are neither transparent or even understood until it is too late. A fundamental role for urban planning is often considered to be to provide a system to mediate conflict over urban space, acknowledging that there are often differences of opinion about what are appropriate limitations on allowable development in any given area. No one, neither the high-rise developers nor the neighbourhood activists opposing them, can claim to have the only legitimate interpretation of what should be allowed. Cities are by their very nature shared spaces, in which one person’s actions have diverse impacts on many others. The extremely limited bargaining power of either civil society groups or local government demonstrated in the cases examined here is startling. It seems fair to conclude that the revisions to the BSL outlined here have greatly exacerbated conflict, while disempowering residents and local governments in favour of major property developers. It also seems clear that the heightened levels of risk and uncertainty in this environment pose significant mediumand longer-term risks to all property owners in Japanese large cities. Some will benefit greatly from the opportunities created, while others—certainly the great majority—will see primarily costs, in a massive redistribution of the costs and benefits of urbanisation. In a democratic system, and Japan is undoubtedly a democracy, one might imagine that if this was a significant issue for those who lose, they would simply not re-elect the government and ensure that the policy is changed. Some would suggest that, as the


electorate has not yet changed the government, this must not be an important political issue. Several factors, however, make it unlikely for this to become a national political issue. Certainly the most important factor is that these changes to planning regulations are made at the national level, but affect only a few people at a time in the big cities. Most people in Japan have not heard about these deregulations and will not be affected by them in any case. This makes it very difficult to mount a national political campaign over such policies, which effectively insulates the government from pressures for revision. This is clearly a powerful argument for locating such policy-making at a local level, so that those affected by the policies are the electorate of those making the policies. Thirdly, this case supports the suggestion of Brenner and Theodore that neo-liberalisation is not simply a ‘rolling back’ of state regulation and a ‘rolling forward’ of the market, but in fact is a complex reconstitution of state-economy relations in which state institutions are actively mobilized to promote market-based regulatory arrangements (Brenner and Theodore, 2005, p. 102).

The process of deregulation and re-regulation of land development in Tokyo demonstrates a creative mobilisation of developmental institutions to enhance land development profits and assets. In this process, the recentralisation of regulatory initiative from local to national government has played a key role. As Swyngedouw has argued The continuous reshuffling and reorganisations of spatial scales are an integral part of social strategies and struggles for control and empowerment (Swyngedouw, 2000, p. 70).

Place governance is in this view a contested and dynamic arena, in which shifts of spatial scale of governance mechanisms are crucial aspects of attempts to gain or retain power.


Kohl and Warner (2004, p. 858) similarly suggest that the impacts of neo-liberalisation are not simply about a retreat of the state, but are often more a restructuring of state functions that have critical implications for cities. In Japan, the state has effectively used a reshuffling of the spatial scale of regulatory control as a strategy to undermine longestablished regulatory frameworks that had offered considerable protection to low-rise vernacular urban neighbourhoods from high-rise urban redevelopment projects. The disruption of established democratic institutional frameworks of decision-making and conflict resolution has thus been a key product of the policies described here. The Japanese case suggests that rescaling is important primarily as a disruption of established place governance frameworks and compromises, that in this case served to undermine local democratic input into urban governance, to shift the balance of power in favour of asset accumulation and against liveability, and to increase conflict over urban intensification.

Notes 1. And see the responses by Friedmann (2001) and Sassen (2001). 2. The city of Tokyo is divided into 23 wards (Ku) each of which has an elected Mayor and Assembly, and carries out municipal governance responsibilities such as planning and local service delivery. 3. Arakawa ranked 21st out of 23 wards on both GDP per capita and household income in Jacobs’ data, while Setagaya was 7th out of 23 (Jacobs, 2005).

References Barrett, B. and Therivel, R. (1991) Environmental Policy and Impact Assessment in Japan. London: Routledge. Brenner, N. (2004) New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brenner, N. and Theodore, N. (2005) Neoliberalism and the urban condition, City, 9(1), pp. 101–107. Campbell, J. L., Pedersen, O. K. and Hall, J. A. (2006) National Identity and the Varieties of Capitalism: The Danish Experience. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Davis, M. (2007) Fear and money in Dubai, Topos, 58, pp. 62–70. Dehesh, A. and Pugh, C. D. J. (1999) The internationalization of post-1980 property cycles and the Japanese ‘bubble’ economy, 1986–96, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 23(1), pp. 147–164. Deyo, F. C. (Ed.) (1987) The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Douglass, M. (1993) The ‘new’ Tokyo story: restructuring space and the struggle for place in a world city, in: K. Fujita and R. C. Hill (Eds) Japanese Cities in the World Economy, pp. 83–119. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Fainstein, S. S. (1994) The City Builders: Property, Politics, and Planning in London and New York. Oxford: Blackwell. Feagin, J. (1987) The secondary circuit of capital: office construction in Houston, Texas, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 11, pp. 172–192. Feldhoff, T. (2007) Japan’s construction lobby and the privatization of highway-related public corporations, in: A. Sorensen and C. Funck (Eds) Living Cities in Japan: Citizens’ Movements, Machizukuri and Local Environments, pp. 91–112. London: Routledge. Friedmann, J. (1986) The world city hypothesis, Development and Change, 17, pp. 69–84. Friedmann, J. (2001) World cities revisited: a comment, Urban Studies, 38(13), pp. 2535–2536. Friedmann, J. and Wolff, G. (1982) World city formation: an agenda for research and action, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 6(3), pp. 309–344. Fujii, S., Arita, T. and Omura, K. (2006) The impact of the ‘urban renaissance’ policy in Japan: the analysis of deregulation in the building standard law of Japan, in: Proceedings of International Symposium on Urban Planning, 2006, pp. 451–461. Fujii, S., Okata, J. and Sorensen, A. (2007) Inner-city redevelopment in Tokyo: conflicts over urban

place, planning governance, and neighborhoods, in: A. Sorensen and C. Funck (Eds) Living Cities in Japan: Citizens’ Movements, Machizukuri and Local Environments, pp. 247–266. London: Routledge. Fujita, K. (2003) Neo-industrial Tokyo: urban development and globalisation in Japan’s state-centred developmental capitalism, Urban Studies, 40(2), pp. 249–281. Fukuoka, S. (1997) The structure of urban land administration during the bubble economy: control systems and their operations, Sôgô Toshi Kenkyû [Comprehensive Urban Studies], (62), pp. 165–179. Gibbs, D. and Jonas, A. E. G. (2001) Rescaling and regional governance: the English Regional Development Agencies and the environment, Environment and Planning C, 19(2), pp. 269–288. Glickman, N. J. (1977) Econometric Analysis of Regional Systems: Explorations in Model Building and Policy Analysis. New York: Academic Press. Haggard, S. (2004) Institutions and growth in east Asia, Studies in Comparative International Development, 38(4), pp. 53–81. Haila, A. (1991) Four types of investment in land and property, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 15(3), pp. 343–365. Hall, P. A. and Soskice, D. W. (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hall, T. and Hubbard, P. (1996) The entrepreneurial city: new urban politics, new urban geographies?, Progress in Human Geography, 20(2), pp. 153–174. Harvey, D. (1973) Social Justice and the City. London: Edward Arnold. Hayakawa, K. and Hirayama, Y. (1991) The impact of the minkatsu policy on Japanese housing and land use, Environment and Planning D, 9, pp. 151–164. Healey, P. (1992) Rebuilding the City: Property-led Urban Regeneration. London: E. & F. N. Spon. Hebbert, M. and Nakai, N. (1988) Deregulation of Japanese planning, Town Planning Review, 59(4), pp. 383–395. Hein, C. and Pelletier, P. (Eds) (2006) Cities, Autonomy, and Decentralization in Japan. London: Routledge.


Hill, R. C. and Fujita, K. (2000) State restructuring and local power in Japan, Urban Studies, 37(4), pp. 673–690. Hill, R. C. and Kim, J. W. (2000) Global cities and developmental states: New York, Tokyo and Seoul, Urban Studies, 37(12), pp. 2167–2195. Inamoto, Y. (1998) The problem of land use and land prices, in: J. Banno (Ed.) The Political Economy of Japanese Society: Vol. 2 Internationalization and Domestic Issues, pp. 229–264. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ishida, Y. (1987) Nihon Kindai Toshikeikaku no Hyakunen [The Last 100 Years of Japanese Urban Planning]. Tokyo: Jichitai Kenkyusha. Ishida, Y. (2006) Local initiatives and decentralisation of planning power in Japan, in: C. Hein and P. Pelletier (Eds) Cities, Autonomy, and Decentralization in Japan, pp. 25–54. London: Routledge. Ishizuka, H. and Ishida, Y. (1988) Tokyo, the metropolis of Japan and its urban development, in: H. Ishizuka and Y. Ishida (Eds) Tokyo: Urban Growth and Planning 1868–1988, pp. 3–35. Tokyo: Centre for Urban Studies. Jacobs, A. T. (2005) Has central Tokyo experienced uneven development? An examination of Tokyo’s 23 Ku relative to America’s largest urban centres, Journal of Urban Affairs, 27(5), pp. 521–555. Jinno, N. (1999) Public works projects and Japan’s public finances, Social Science Japan, 17, pp. 6–9. Japan Statistics Bureau (2007) Japan Statistical Yearbook. Tokyo: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication. Johnson, C. A. (1982) MITI and the Japanese Miracle, the Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925– 1975. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Johnson, C. A. (1995) Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State. New York: W. W. Norton. Kamo, T. (2000) An aftermath of globalisation? East Asian economic turmoil and Japanese cities adrift, Urban Studies, 37(12), pp. 2145–2165. Kerr, D. (2002) The ‘place’ of land in Japan’s postwar development, and the dynamic of the 1980s real-estate ‘bubble’ and 1990s banking crisis, Environment and Planning D, 20(3), pp. 345–374. Kingston, J. (2004) Japan’s Quiet Transformation: Social Change and Civil Society in the Twentyfirst Century. London: Routledge/Curzon.


Kirwan, R. M. (1987) Fiscal policy and the price of land and housing in Japan, Urban Studies, 24, pp. 345–360. Knox, P. and Taylor, P. J. (Eds) (1995) World Cities in a World System. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kohl, B. and Warner, M. (2004) Introduction: scales of neoliberalism, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28(4), pp. 855–858. McKean, M. (1981) Environmental Protest and Citizen Politics in Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Miyao, T. (1987) Japan’s urban policy, Japanese Economic Studies, 15(4), pp. 52–66. Miyao, T. (1991) Japan’s urban economy and land policy, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 513(January), pp. 130–138. Newman, P. and Thornley, A. (2005) Planning World Cities: Globalization and Urban Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Oizumi, E. (1994) Property finance in Japan: expansion and collapse of the bubble economy, Environment and Planning A, 26(2), pp. 199–213. Okata, J. (2002) The mistake of the Urban Renaissance Office which promotes urban redevelopment without citizens’ consensus, Economisuto [Economist—Japanese edn], (4), pp. 46–49 (in Japanese). Omae, K. (1995) The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies. New York: Free Press. Onishi, T. (1994) A capacity approach for sustainable urban development: an empirical study, Regional Studies, 28(1), pp. 39–51. Otake, H. (1993) The rise and retreat of a neoliberal reform: controversies over land use policy, in: G. Allinson and Y. Sone (Eds) Political Dynamics in Contemporary Japan, pp. 242–263. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Pacione, M. (2005) Dubai, Cities, 22(3), pp. 255–265. Peck, J. and Theodore, N. (2007) Variegated capitalism, Progress in Human Geography, 31(6), pp. 731–772. Pempel, T. J. (1998) Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Saito, A. (2003) Global city formation in a capitalist developmental state: Tokyo and the waterfront sub-centre project, Urban Studies, 40(2), pp. 283–308.

Sanyal, B. (2005) Comparative Planning Cultures. New York: Routledge. Sassen, S. (1991) The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sassen, S. (2001) Global cities and developmentalist states: how to derail what could be an interesting debate: a response to Hill and Kim, Urban Studies, 38(13), pp. 2537–2540. Savitch, H. V. (1990) Postindustrialism with a difference: global capitalism in worldclass cities, in: J. Logan and T. Swanstrom (Eds) Beyond the City Limits: Urban Policy and Economic Restructuring in Comparative Perspective, pp. 150–174. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Schebath, A. (2006) Fiscal stress of Japanese local public sector in the 1990s: situation, structural reasons, solutions, in: C. Hein and P. Pelletier (Eds) Cities, Autonomy, and Decentralization in Japan, pp. 81–100. London: Routledge. Shirai, S. (2005) Growing problems in the local public finance system of Japan, Social Science Japan, 8(2), pp. 213–238. Sorensen, A. (2002) The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the 21st Century. London: Routledge. Sorensen, A. (2006) Centralization, urban planning governance, and citizen participation in Japan, in: C. Hein and P. Pelletier (Eds) Cities, Autonomy, and Decentralization in Japan, pp. 101–127. London: Routledge. Swyngedouw, E. (2000) Authoritarian governance, power, and the politics of rescaling, Environment and Planning D, 18, pp. 63–76. Tsukamoto, T. and Vogel, R. K. (2007) Rethinking globalization: the impact of central governments on world cities, in: R. Hambleton and J. S. Gross (Eds) Governing Cities in a Global Era: Urban Innovation, Competition, and Democratic Reform, pp. 15–31. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tsuru, S. (1993) Japan’s Capitalism: Creative Defeat and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Upham, F. (1993) Privatizing regulation: the implementation of the large scale retail stores law, in: G. Allinson and Y. Sone (Eds) Political Dynamics in Contemporary Japan, pp. 264–294. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Waley, P. (2007) Tokyo-as-world-city: reassessing the role of capital and the state in urban restructuring, Urban Studies, 44(8), pp. 1465–1490. Watanabe, S. (1980) Garden city, Japanese style: the case of Den-en Toshi Company Ltd, 1918–1928, in: G. E. Cherry (Ed.) Shaping an Urban World, pp. 129–144. London: Mansell. Weiss, L. (2003) States in the Global Economy: Bringing Domestic Institutions Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. White, J. (1998) Old wine, cracked bottle? Tokyo, Paris and the global city hypothesis, Urban Affairs Review, 33(4), pp. 451–477.


Woo-Cumings, M. (1999) The Developmental State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Wood, C. (1992) The Bubble Economy. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press. Woodall, B. (1996) Japan under Construction: Corruption, Politics and Public Works. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Yamamura, K. (1992) LDP dominance and high land price in Japan: a study in positive political economy, in: J. O. Haley and K. Yamamura (Eds) Land Issues in Japan: A Policy Failure?, pp. 33–76. Seattle: Society for Japanese Studies.

Urban Renaissance as Intensification: Building ... - SAGE Journals

Urban Renaissance as Intensification: Building ... - SAGE Journals

Suggest Documents

Central Scotland as a Polycentric Urban Region - SAGE Journals

Radiological restrictions of using red mud as building ... - SAGE Journals

as Critique - SAGE Journals - Sage Publications

Cooking as Inquiry - SAGE Journals - Sage Publications

New Silver-Gold Intensification Method of ... - SAGE Journals

IRB as Poetry - SAGE Journals

Physicians of the future: Renaissance of polymaths? - SAGE Journals

Renaissance Urbanization, Urban Design, and Urban Planning ...

Engineers and urban malaria - SAGE Journals

Backstreets, Barricades, and Blackouts: Urban ... - SAGE Journals

The Rural-Urban Interface - SAGE Journals

Rethinking Sustainable Urban Regeneration - SAGE Journals

Voluntarism as Occupation - SAGE Journals

Building the Executive Dashboard - SAGE Journals

Urban Languages in Africa - SAGE Journals

Urban Sustainability During Industrialization: The ... - SAGE Journals

The management of urban services - SAGE Journals

Creating Temporal Junctions through Urban ... - SAGE Journals

Splintering Urban Populations: Emergent ... - SAGE Journals

Entrepreneurialising urban informality: Transforming ... - SAGE Journals

Building the Devil's Tuning Fork - SAGE Journals

The Mediator as Leader - SAGE Journals - SAGE Publications

Occupational Therapists as Case Managers - SAGE Journals

Multistakeholder Collaboration as Symbolic ... - SAGE Journals