Plan to make Tokyo city fit to live in

Press, 11 October 1978, Page 16

Plan to make Tokyo city fit to live in

By

MARK MURRAY

in Tokyo

The Japanese Government has decided to shoulder the crushing burden of making Tokyo fit for human habitation.

It has decided that the nation’s capital is so overcrowded and beset with problems that the only answer is virtually to rebuild from scratch.

The National Land Agency has announced a five-year programme to produce a comprehensive plan for remaking Tokyo into a liveable metropolis. During the next 30 or 40 years, it envisages merging Tokyo with the three adjacent prefectures of Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa leading to decentralisation of metropolitan functions, redevelopment of the central core and drastic re-allocation of industry.

Twice this century, Government planners had the chance to build an attractive city when Tokyo was destroyed by earthquake in 1923 and again by fire bombing in 1945. But each time reconstruction developed without a master plan. Thus, an almost total lack of forethought allowed factories to spring up in the midst of heavily congested residential areas which are already labelled “certain disaster zones,”

should a major earthquake strike as many scientists predict.

Tokyo has grown fat, swallowing up former satellite cities into a sprawling nightmare of 12 million people that can take half a day to cross.

Housing is inadequate and cramped, and a garden is an almost impossible luxury for the vast majority of people. High prices have forced salaried workers further and further out into the grey suburbs, with three to four hours of commuting common for the millions funnelling into the central area where the country’s top universities, major businesses and all Government offices are concentrated.

One of the world’s most advanced public transport systems is dangerously overloaded and roads are hopelessly inadequate to cope with a car ownership boom over the last 15 years. The city’s ability to provide essential services is near breaking point. A drought this summer which led to water rationing provided a foretaste of things to come. This is the third time there has been talk of remodelling. In the early 1960 s the late Ichiro Kono, when he was Construction Minister, suggested a new capital be built in an undeveloped part of

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the country. In the mid--19705, during an earthquake scare, officials considered a more limited goal of moving essential Government offices out to a safer location.

The new Land Agency plan also includes a proposal for construction of a new capital. Tokyo will then be converted into a super metropolis of an estimated 35 million people by merger with the surrounding prefectures. The agency envisages decentralising the present concentration of education and business in central Tokyo, with the emphasis on orderly development of existing and new satellite cities with enough job opportunities and amenities to keep their populations at home. After that ,the older inner city areas will have to be knocked down and rebuilt. These are now a nightmare of narrow streets and claustrophobic wooden houses, often below sea level, which experts warn will be death traps in an earthquake — either from fire or inundation from the sea. No one has yet estimated the cost of the Government plan, and it is unlikely the present generation .of Tokyo residents will see much benefit. For them the city will remain an unliveable necessity.