Date:May 18, 2009 (Mon.) 16：00～18：00
Venue: Meeting Room, the 3rd floor, Inamori Foundation Memorial Hall
Presentation：Hidenobu Jinnai（Hosei University),
Commentator：
Shigeo Fujii（Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University）
Takanobu Iwashiro (Hosei University)
In conventional urban engineering studies, the central focus has traditionally been on the scrap-and-build approach, with little consideration regarding the nature of existing cities. Objecting to this conventional approach, Professor Jinnai went to Italy to study methods of architectural history to “read” city.. Upon returning home, he proceeded to conduct a study on the Shitaya district of Tokyo, demonstrating that a unique space with a unique sense of order had been created in this area and had persisted through the ages. Extending his field study from the uptown to the downtown of Edo (Tokyo) using old maps of the city, Professor Jinnai went on to show that Edo had the character of a “city of water,” or of what could be called an eco-city. Thus for example roads ran through ridges and the living spaces of old worriers were located in the hills, whereas local communities were formed around valley roads, resulting in an organic structure well-suited to the terrain. Professor Jinnai called this “urban morphology,” a pattern of urban structure that has been passed down in roughly the same form through generations, with today’s Tokyo avenues retaining roughly the same layout as those of the former city of Edo. Interest in this phenomenon has increased since the 1970s and 1980s, when the concepts of amenity and the life environment were imported into Japan from the UK.
The rich interaction in the Edo period between urban inhabitants and their aqueous environment, mediated through water transportation, fisheries and rituals, lived on, with new meaning, into the Meiji era, despite the appearance of the modern urban space evidenced in construction of modern bridges and promenades. These interactions, however, were lost in the 1960s and 1970s, a period of rapid economic development. Nonetheless, in the 1970s, industrial plants started pull away from the Tokyo waterfront, making room for the return of the aqueous environment, for the return of fish and of people, and the waterfront has since achieved remarkable progress.
Professor Jinnai went on to cite and describe various efforts in districts of Tokyo (Tsukudajima, Fukagawa, Setagaya, Omiya Hachiman, Hino, etc.) to reclaim, maintain and assign various meanings to the interaction between urban inhabitants and their city’s natural environment.
Following Professor Jinnai’s presentation, Mr. Takanobu Iwaki digested Prof. Jinnai’s research method and applied it to the case of Bangkok, Thailand, which combined maps (old-style maps and GIS), field study (interviews and location survey) and literature search. By pursuing changes over a longer span of time, Mr. Iwaki suggested that problems faced today are made much clearer.
Discussion continued with Professor Shigeo Fujii, who began by introducing activities of the “Global Center for Education and Research on Human Security Engineering for Asian Megacities.” Professor Fujii pointed out that, due to differences between urban foundations constructed in different eras in the methods and systems for drawing and discharging water, there was a need to consider water works and sewage treatment systems specifically suited to the conditions of each individual Asian city.
Various questions were also raised in the general discussion session. Discussion touched on the commonalities shared between cities that live together with their aqueous environment, on positive aspects of commercial and industrial activities co-existing within the environment, as well as on the question of what elements contributed to the formation of Edo as an eco-city (ecological conditions such as terrain and geography, inhabitants’ view of the world, urban planning). Participants engaged in a productive exchange of views on these and other topics.
(Kimura Shuhei)