TALKING HEADS This year, for the first time in almost a decade, Vancouver was nudged off the top spot in the annual Global Liveability Survey. Australia’s Melbourne was heralded as the best place to reside, followed by Vienna, the Austrian capital, and then Canada’s Pacific metropolis. Conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the survey assesses cities across the world in five areas: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. At number 12, Osaka was the highest-ranked Asian city, with Tokyo at 18. While the Japanese capital has a population of around 13 million people, the Tokyo sprawl runs uninterrupted for kilometers into surrounding prefectures. The architect Edward Suzuki called the city “overdeveloped” in an interview last year. “Cities ought to have an optimum size to be livable; Kyoto is an example of a perfect size,” he said. Paul Noritaka Tange is president of the architectural firm Tange Associates and the son of the late Kenzo Tange, the architect of such buildings as the Yoyogi National Gymnasium and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. iNTOUCH’s Nick Jones sat down with the Club Member to glean his thoughts on the design of Tokyo. Excerpts: Paul Tange
Tange: I think Tokyo is a very livable city, a fantastic city; everything works. And it’s one of the best organized cities in the world for comfort, safety and everything that you take for granted but might not find so easily outside of Japan.
Tange: Of course, to create a city, you have to have a healthy economy and, unfortunately, we have been in a recession for 20 years. If we had had constant growth, I think the waterfront area would have developed differently. With the scarcity of land, we could have 50 percent more land on the water than we have now and literally create another center.
iNTOUCH: What about in terms of urban design?
iNTOUCH: Is it possible to switch the model of a city after such a long time?
Tange: Urban design is not one of Tokyo’s strong points. It’s a rather chaotic city. It goes back to the Edo period when it was created as the new capital and things grew in a radial way. This kind of urban structure has a limit and the center will be a problem. If you think of a growing city like Beijing, it’s a similar thing. Now they’re on the sixth ring road and the center is jammed. This is the reason why my father, Kenzo Tange, proposed linear cities in the 1960s. He already saw that radially growing city formation was not suitable for industrial-oriented societies, so he created a [plan for] a linear city going towards the waterfront.
Tange: I think it’s very possible if we create the right kind of transport system. The trouble with sub-centers is there is not much connectivity, so we have to think of the transport system as a whole. In Tokyo, you can see where all the main [transport] arteries are because that’s where the tall buildings are, but it’s usually just one street. But if you’re only connecting sub-centers with each other, you end up with a limited transportation network that leaves out the areas in between.
iNTOUCH: How livable a city is Tokyo?
iNTOUCH: Despite Tokyo being by the sea, it’s not regarded as a waterfront city.
iNTOUCH: I understand that central Tokyo’s nighttime population is about a third of its daytime population. Should more people be living in the center?
Tange: A big mistake. This is a very sad phenomenon. In the Edo period, the rivers and waterfronts were really active gathering places, but industrialization from the Meiji period on destroyed everything. The city was opened to the world, and the first thing they did was create these warehouses on the waterfront.
Tange: The ideal city [model is a place to] live, work and play, and Manhattan is one of the successful cases. But the history of Tokyo is not like that. That’s why many wards are trying to bring people back to the center. So when they build office buildings in Chiyoda and Minato wards and a few other places, [the local governments] require the owners to build residences on the site or somewhere within the ward.
iNTOUCH: The Tokyo Bay development of Odaiba has had its critics. What are your thoughts?
iNTOUCH: So are multiuse developments like Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown the answer?
Tange: I think everything should be multifunctional. Most of the city’s land-use plan is wrong. The Edo period was very good because nobody owned the land. The government owned the land and the users borrowed it. Once land became available to own, people wanted to protect their land. Unfortunately, the history of Tokyo made it very difficult to consolidate these [private] plots [for other uses]. That’s the reason it took Mr [Minoru] Mori 25 years to consolidate the land [for Roppongi Hills]. And the reason why Shinjuku has such a high number of skyscrapers is because it used to be a reservoir, so it was a large parcel of land available for development. iNTOUCH: Presumably then it will be difficult to build similar multiuse developments unless the law is changed. Tange: Even [leased] land rights are very strong here. And so widening of streets is a problem because the government cannot force people to give up the land and then compensate them. iNTOUCH: How is Tokyo likely to develop? Tange: I think we have to…change the [land] regulations and laws. Another policy I strongly recommend is deciding what to preserve in the city of Tokyo, not only the temples and similar kinds of buildings, but modern architecture as well. We need to balance growth and preservation of the city character. iNTOUCH: Tokyo is not regarded as a classically beautiful city, but what are its redeeming features? Tange: Visually, it’s the energy of the street. That is something we should keep: the exciting street life and inspiring little gathering spaces. o Member insights on Japan 33