Edge City Denied? The Rise and Fall of Tokyo’s Outer Suburban “Business Core Cities”

Abstract

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Chinese

The tradition of planning for polycentricity in Tokyo saw outer suburbs designated as Business Core Cities (BCCs). However, as the national economy and population growth have stagnated and Tokyo’s needs as a world city have come to the fore, the outer suburbs have been left exposed. Despite attempts to reinforce outer suburban growth with the BCC policy, Tokyo’s is a story of edge city denied. At a time when attention has turned to planning for the increased urbanity of suburbs or arresting inner suburban decline, Tokyo speaks to a phenomenon of outer suburban decline barely conceivable in mature economies.

Keywords

polycentric city regions Business Core Cities edge cities Tokyo outer suburban decline

Introduction

In contrast to the nucleated dispersion of people and jobs made popular in the notion of edge city (Garreau 1991) in the United States, employment and population dispersion across European cities has been more muted in light of greater urban containment, the lesser embrace of automobility, and conscious efforts by planners to steer development to new towns and suburban centers. Attempts to plan the polycentric metropolis have been stronger still in East Asia, albeit under a variety of economic, demographic, spatial, and transportation planning frameworks.

Among East Asian cities, Tokyo has perhaps the longest continuous tradition of planning for a polycentric metropolis (Sorensen 2001). However, it presents a cautionary tale of planning for polycentricity in the context of changes in economic fortunes and demographic patterns. Discourse on urban shrinkage has been evident in Japan from the 1960s but has only figured strongly as part of national and local urban planning policy from the 2000s (Hattori, Kaido, and Matsuyuki 2017). The increasing gravity of Tokyo’s outer suburbs seemed inexorable as recently as the 1990s to the point that it demanded the designation of outer Business Core Cities (BCCs; Gyomukaku-toshi) and spatial imaginaries that aggrandized them as a counterweight to the twenty-three special wards of Tokyo. However, as the national economy and population growth have stagnated and the needs of Tokyo to compete internationally as a world city agglomeration have come to the fore (Tsukamoto 2012), the status of the outer suburbs has been called into question (Sorensen 2011).

In this article, we set ourselves two related research questions. First, and updating Sorensen (2001), how have the outer suburbs of Tokyo performed in economic and population terms during the period 1995 to 2010? Second, how have BCC policies contributed to this performance? We address the first question with reference to a review of policies and secondary data. We address the second question with recourse to secondary data on BCCs and original interview research on two outer BCCs—Tachikawa City and Hachioji City.

We begin by setting our Tokyo case in a wider context of urban polycentricity. We pass on to describing the methods used to collect the data upon which this article is based. Drawing on secondary and original interview data we recount how, despite the attempts of planners to reinforce outer suburban growth based around existing transit infrastructure, and despite some of the superficial “free market” similarities with the United States (Li and Monzur 2018), Tokyo’s is a story of edge city denied. We conclude by noting some of the wider international implications of the Tokyo case. At a time when planners in many mature national urban systems have turned their attention to increasing the urbanity of suburbs (Charmes and Keil 2015; Dunham-Jones and Williamson 2009; Phelps 2016) or arresting inner suburban decline (Hanlon, Vicino, and Short 2006), Tokyo’s outer suburban BBCs speak to barely conceivable outer suburban decline that may become widespread internationally.

Planning for Polycentricity in Tokyo

A diverse literature speaking to the emergence of distinctly polycentric urban regions in the United States notwithstanding, modified bid rent theory provides insights into the rise of new suburban employment centers (Erickson and Gentry 1985) with edge cities (Garreau 1991) in particular often naturalized as the most vigorous part of the outer suburban economy. It is little surprise that much of the interest in concentrating population and employment dispersal into suburban centers by way of transit-oriented development, new urbanist, smart growth, and compact city principles have come to the fore in the U.S. setting as planning orthodoxies despite conceptual limitations (Neuman 2005) and practical (Dunham-Jones and Williamson 2009) and political (Phelps 2016) obstacles.

Employment and population dispersion across European cities has been more muted in light of greater urban containment and the lesser embrace of automobility. While parallels to edge cities exist in Europe, these manifestations tend to have significant historical antecedents (Phelps et al. 2006) and are more compact and closer to historic city centers than their U.S. counterparts (Bontje and Burdack 2005). The process of suburbanization in Europe is also marked by thoroughly planned experiments in new town deconcentration (Desponds and Auclair 2017).

Attempts to plan the polycentric metropolis have been stronger still in East Asia (Laquian 2005). City authorities in China have sought to manage the decentralization of employment and population to new towns and new business districts (Boyang, Weidong, and Dunford 2014; Wu and Phelps 2011). South Korea has been attempting to decongest Seoul, notably through a series of new towns (Lee and Shin 2012). Among East Asian cities, Tokyo has perhaps the longest and continuous tradition of development of and planning for a polycentric metropolis: “a persistent feature of … plans since the early 1930s has been the concept of a polynuclear metropolitan structure” (Sorensen 2001, 2).

Tokyo’s Polycentricity

At a coarse scale, “Tokyo has a typical monocentric or concentric spatial structure and a high employment concentration in the center, but at a fine scale view, the distribution has been revealed to be expanding along the railroads to the suburbs, and both the main CBD [central business district] and the suburbs are polycentric” (Li and Monzur 2018, 255). Some brief historical perspective is required in order to understand this doubly polycentric structure.

During the 1920s and 1930s, new subcenters emerged in Tokyo with the development of transport infrastructure at those locations offering changes in travel modes to compose a set of inner suburban centers such as Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Ikebukuro that now serve as urban subcenters in the expanded urban agglomeration of Tokyo. These were joined a little later by a number of new town-style satellite cities and university campus towns, again at railway stations, but further into the then rural hinterland (Sorensen 2001).

In the postwar years, initial attempts to channel development into a polycentric structure were guided by the regulatory ideals of greenbelt restrictions accompanied by the further development of major new towns after the British experience under the First National Capital Region Development Plan of 1958—prepared under the “National Capital Region Development Act” of 1956. In this plan, the Tokyo metropolitan area was classified into “Existing Urban Areas” (Kisei-shigaichi), “Suburban Areas” (Kinko-chitai), and “Urban Development Areas” (Shigaichi-kaihatsu-kuiki); the greenbelt was planned to cover Suburban Areas, and satellite industrial and residential cities were planned to be developed within Urban Development Areas of the outer suburban territory. Whilst the conceptual debates for formation of a polycentric structure have a long history in the planning affairs of Tokyo, this plan of 1958 was the first to incorporate the concept of a polycentric structure into an official administrative plan (Togo 1993). Under this plan, dispersion of industrial functions into the suburbs was largely successful, being promoted by the “Law concerning Restriction on Factories in Existing Urbanized Areas of the Metropolitan Region” of 1959 (abolished in 2002). However, dispersion of office functions was limited only to development of urban subcenters within the Special Ward Area, not suburban centers (Togo 1993).

Failures of enforcement and opposition from suburban municipalities ensured that the greenbelt never materialized, but government continued to seek to rationalize development into a polycentric structure.¹ Since this time, the idea of a “multi-polar urban structure” has consistently held central place in plans to solve Tokyo’s continuing problems of overconcentration in the CBD, albeit that the approach has shifted from one of regulation to the cajoling of development into particular locations of the provision of infrastructure and public facilities and designations that brought additional planning and economic development powers to incentivize development (Sorensen 2001, 20). However, the Second and Third National Capital Region Development Plans of 1968 and 1976 could not proactively cope with dispersion of office functions partly due to change in socioeconomic circumstances (Togo 1993). Consequently, as Togo (1993) mentions, proactive debates about dispersion of office functions were delayed until the “Capital Reform Plan” (Shuto-kaizo-keikaku) of 1985 prepared by the National Land Agency, a national-level governmental body (established in 1974, and dissolved in 2001), as well as subsequent plans such as the Fourth National Capital Region Development Plan of 1986. The Capital Reform Plan of 1985 activated planning debates about dispersion of capital and office functions into suburban centers. At the prefectural level as well, Tokyo Metropolitan Government prepared the First Long-Term Plan of Tokyo Metropolis of 1982, prepared under Governor Suzuki, which aimed at the formation of a polycentric structure within its administrative district and which was incorporated into the Capital Reform Plan of 1985. The Capital Reform Plan of 1985 was then materialized in the Fourth National Capital Region Development Plan of 1986, as a national-level statutory plan, which proactively aimed to achieve formation of a polycentric structure (Togo 1993). After announcement of this fourth plan of 1986, the “Multi-Polar Patterns National Land Formation Promotion Act” of 1988 was enacted to legitimate policy measures for development of suburban employment centers.

This latter act established BCCs as suburban employment poles with accompanying planning and implementation measures. Whilst planning debates about office dispersion surfaced from the late 1970s, effective policy measures for office dispersion only materialized in this act (Togo 1993; Miyake 2005). The planning and implementation measures ensured by the act will be explained later. Currently, the act has designated fifteen BCCs consisting of twenty-three suburban municipalities, with some BCCs covering several suburban municipalities (Figure 1; see also Table 2, below). Although some are located in the inner suburbs, the BCCs are in the main dispersed across the outer suburban realm of the Tokyo metropolitan area to serve as regional cores.

Figure 1.

Location of Business Core Cities.

Edge Cities and Business Core Cities Compared

Garreau (1991) defined an edge city in terms that are considered to be U.S.-specific. In fact, his criteria are sufficiently general for the term to be explored in a European (Bontje and Burdack 2005; Phelps et al. 2006) and Japanese context (Ichikawa 2006).² Table 1 contrasts the logic of edge cities with that of BCCs promoted in Tokyo. There are several observations that can be made.

Table 1.

Edge Cities and Business Core Cities (BCCs) Compared.

	Edge City (U.S.)	Business Core City (Tokyo)
Key infrastructure	Freeway/exit ramp oriented	Railway/mass transit oriented
Sense of place	Ostensibly new	Rarely new
Main development actors	Private sector	Public sector
Economic base	Diverse: back offices but also some corporate headquarters and research and development	Specialized: primarily public sector and corporate back office or local branches
Sustainability	Some agglomeration economies	Few agglomeration economies
Jobs/population balance	More jobs than bedrooms	Twice as many residents as jobs

Source: Authors’ summary.

First, it is what is not found in Garreau’s (1991) criteria that most defines the U.S. specificity of an edge city—its basis in highway-driven accessibility. This “exit ramp economy” specificity of U.S. edge cities is simply not found in Tokyo, where it is the dense weave of rail and subway lines and even the associated business strategies of private rail companies that have provided the framework for a measure of polycentricity in patterns of urbanization (Aveline-Dubach 2015).

Second, Ichikawa (2006) in the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training’s report, noted the irrelevance of Garreau’s fifth “sense of place” criteria in the Tokyo context where few subcenters could be considered newly created and given other place-based contrasts between the two types of subcenters.

Third, U.S. edge cities have an apparent spontaneity derived from their private sector-led development in response to the cheaper land/accessibility nexus found at the periphery of city regions. Of course, the spontaneity of edge cities is more apparent than real; it is well understood that federal, state, and local government interventions contributed considerably to the growth of suburbs. Yet in comparison, BCCs in Tokyo are an attempt to use policy to steer development and have rested significantly on the attraction of public sector activities (Takahashi 1998).

Fourth, it seems clear that edge cities and BCCs concentrate different economic functions. The former have been focal points for the attraction of corporate regional and division headquarters and research and development functions that began to congregate in the suburbs after World War II (Mozingo 2011; Muller 1997). However, BCCs have typically only accommodated back offices or local branches of corporations or, more often, public institutions (Oki 2011; Sato 2010).

Fifth, partly as a consequence, BCCs might be considered less sustainable in economic terms than their U.S. edge city counterparts—though the evidence is ambiguous. Lang (2003) questions the sustainability of edge cities given the lack of agglomeration economies, yet many edge cities have had more diverse economic structures than commonly recognized (Bingham and Kimble 1995) and may generate agglomeration economies within a polycentric urban structure (Phelps 2010).

Sixth, the balance of employment to population in BCCs is the opposite of that for U.S. edge cities. BCCs can embody sizeable concentrations of jobs but typically have twice as many residents as jobs. Moreover, the rate at which they have added jobs has generally been modest and frequently lower than the rate at which they have added population.

It is to a consideration of some of these contrasts between edge cities and BCCs and the current fortunes of Tokyo’s outer suburban BCCs that we now turn.

Methods

We mobilize a mix of methods and data in this study. Our first research question is oriented to understanding the context of differential growth and decline across the Tokyo metropolitan area—something we address in an analysis of recent trends in population, employment and land prices across special wards and suburban municipalities based on secondary statistical data. In order to address our second research question regarding the effects of BCC policies specifically on the economic and population dynamics of outer suburbs in Tokyo’s polycentric urban structure, we assemble factual information on the designation, location, scale and indicators of progress of BCCs; review relevant planning and economic development documents; and draw on original interview-based research. In particular, we draw upon interviews from field research that included a total sixteen face-to-face interviews on location. Interviews were conducted in November 2015 with representatives from local and metropolitan government land use and transportation planning and economic development departments, representatives of the real estate industry, and industry associations and academics. There are limits to and opportunities associated with the use of interviews with elite informants (Cochrane 1998). Here, since our focus is on policy and its effects, we believe the sample of elite-centered interviews with public sector planners and representatives of private sector real estate companies was appropriate. The limited number of interviews is mitigated by the facts that meetings typically lasted a minimum of one hour and frequently extended to two hours or more based around key policy documents and invariably were with the most senior representatives—chief executives, directors, deputy directors, and section heads—within the respective organizations. In the case of Tokyo Metropolitan Government, they also included both current and past senior figures enabling some historical perspective.

We concentrate on examining the fortunes of two nearby but contrasting outer BCCs—the historic city of Hachioji City and the newer Tachikawa City, both in the outer western reaches of Tokyo Metropolis. These cities are constituents of the Hachioji-Tachikawa-Tama BCCs. Our fieldwork sought to establish the contribution of BCC policies when set against other factors such as accessibility, land availability, and demographic changes shaping the recent fortunes of these two outer suburbs.

Edge City Denied

To set the efficacy of BCC policies in context, it is important to recognize that they represent just one determinant of the fortunes of Tokyo’s outer suburbs. Others include the planning of the region as a whole and the inherent locational advantages and historical trajectory of individual places.

Whither Tama Silicon Valley?

Commenting at the beginning of the new millennium, Sorensen (2001, 24) noted how “the defining features of population change in the Tokyo region are thus the deconcentration of population from the central area within and immediately around the Yamanote loop line, and the increase of population in a broad band of between 20 to 40 km from Tokyo station”—an area that includes our case study cities. Sorensen noted how, since the 1930s, transportation planning has tended to make good deficiencies in land use planning—catering for increased accessibility in outer suburbs in light of the failure to contain urban expansion. In this connection, it is important to note how transportation planning has also contributed differentially to the growth of inner and outer suburban centers. The central twenty-three special wards have a well-established radial-orbital pattern of road and rail compared to the suburbs where the radial-orbital pattern is still fragmented with an orbital road (2nd Tokyo Outer Loop Road) planned to connect BCCs not yet completed (Interview 1: Former Director General, Tokyo Metropolitan Government, November 16, 2015).

Indeed, the move to the outer suburbs of Tokyo during the 1960s through 1980s witnessed the designation of BCCs along with outer-suburb-oriented infrastructure investment and spatial planning visions—the western suburbs emerging as a counterweight to the central twenty-three special wards. Some of the emerging transportation needs of the outer suburbs were met by the Tama Monorail completed in 2000 (5.4 kilometers between Kamikitadai Station and Tachikawa-Kita Station opened in 1998 and a further 10.6 kilometers between Tachikawa-Kita Station and Tama Center Station opened in 2000)—an outer suburb-to-suburb transit connection someway in advance of the few that exist elsewhere.³

A number of spatial imaginaries mooted by outer suburban authorities and the private sector have come and gone. Hachioji City (known as “City of Mulberry” after its silk industry) formed part of a “silk road” corridor (along the National Route No. 16) promoted along with the idea of the “Big West” (Interview 2: Secretary General, The Hachioji Chamber of Commerce and Industry, November 18, 2015) in the 1970s and 1980s. The spatial planning vision of “Tama Silicon Valley” was mooted in the 1980s, though it was only officially announced in the mid-2000s. While these reflected the collection of high-technology manufacturing and research and development facilities concentrated in Tokyo’s outer suburbs, they have never become effective as visions for spatial planning. Indeed, these visions have disappeared (Interview 3: Section Head, Urban Development Department, Tachikawa City Government, November 9, 2015) as a measure of intermunicipal competition has emerged across the region. According to the same interviewee, the consortium of Mayors of BCCs is not working well due to the weak political powers (Interview 3). Instead, more fragmented patterns of cooperation have emerged. For example, Tachikawa City, Akishima City, and Fussa City now undertake joint industrial promotion (Interview 4: Section Head, Industrial Promotion Department, Tachikawa City Government, November 12, 2015). Although Hachioji City and Tachikawa City are members of the same Tama Area Film Commission, it is the latter that has worked with Tama City with respect to enable access to old school sites and nearby Tama Monorail sites for filming activities and seeking to leverage on its youthful population and open local culture when compared to neighboring Hachioji City (Interview 4). The BCC policy now exists in the Tama Area in which increasing disparities among municipalities cannot be solved given the lack of tax redistribution powers that are available to the central twenty-three special wards (Interview 5: Section Head, Bureau of Urban Development, Tokyo Metropolitan Government, November 6, 2015).

As Sorensen (2001, 25) noted, the performance of the central area in terms of employment remained strong during the 1980s and 1990s. The central area of Tokyo had seen by far the strongest growth of jobs of any area in the region. That is, population decentralization had lent some economic gravitas to the outer suburban BCCs that they otherwise lacked in comparison to the far more business-oriented, urban subcenters. The growth in population and employment in the designated BCCs continued into the 1990s but by the latter half of the 1990s and into the new millennium had begun to turn negative. With modest population and employment growth continuing in the period 1995 to 2010, our two case study cities of actually faired quite well compared to the outer suburban regional cores of the neighboring prefectures (see Figure 2). Yet the drop in their employment growth is apparent when comparing our data for 1995 to 2010 (Figure 2) with Sorensen’s (2001) figures for 1970 to 1995.

Figure 2.

Population and employment changes during 1995 to 2010.

Data for commercial land prices (from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism) for Tokyo are shown in Figure 3 and reveal the weakness of the outer suburban economies in times of both growth and decline. The national and metropolitan economic and population growth in which the outer suburbs figured prominently was associated not with land price convergence between the suburbs and central areas but with extreme divergence as a “bubble economy” took shape. The outer suburban cities in the Tama Area, Tachikawa City and Hachioji City among them, then enjoyed a brief period in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the bubble economy when their land prices converged on those of the central twenty-three special wards. During this brief moment, the fortunes of Hachioji City and Tachikawa City also reversed, but they have since resumed their historic patterns in which commercial land prices have been stronger for the latter. However, land prices have since started to diverge again in a context of national and metropolitan economic stagnation and overall population decline and are now proportionately wider than at any time during the 1970s, when, for example, the outer suburbs were growing in population and employment, underlining the severity of the present situation in which suburban cities like Tachikawa City and Hachioji City find themselves.

Figure 3.

Trend of land prices for commercial land use.

Back to the City

The suburban realm has been exposed to fluctuations in the policy and planning agendas of Tokyo Metropolitan Government and its governor from those emphasizing welfare and outer suburban development to those emphasizing economic growth and the central twenty-three special wards of Tokyo (Sasaki 2011). According to Sasaki (2011), there are four main aspects to the strong authority and power of the governor of Tokyo Metropolis. First, the governor is directly elected by about one-tenth of the national population. Second, the governor has huge discretionary powers as the head of Tokyo Metropolitan Government with a budget of around 12 trillion Yen (comparable to the national budget of the Republic of Korea) and a staff of about 170,000. Third, the governor has a fixed four-year term secured under the presidential system (in contrast to the prime minister under the parliamentary cabinet system). Finally, the governor can enforce leadership under the independent system (in contrast to the prime minister under the collegial system) (Sasaki 2011).

There have been nine governors of Tokyo Metropolis since World War II, three of which (Minobe, Suzuki, and Ishihara) are notable.⁴ During the late 1960s through the 1970s, Minobe created a reformist metropolitan government during the rapid economic growth period of Japan. He was elected with the strong support of the Social Democratic Party of Japan and the Japanese Communist Party. Shifting from infrastructure-oriented policies pursued by governors up until that point, Minobe emphasized social welfare improvement (Yamazaki 2002). Under his leadership of Tokyo Metropolis, the Tama Area (west of the central twenty-three special wards of Tokyo) was emphasized with a “Twin-Core Structure” (Nikyoku-kozo) proposed by the “Tokyo Concept Plan of Plaza and Blue Sky” (Hiroba to aozora no tokyo-koso) of 1971. This plan sought parity in the development of the central twenty-three special wards and the Tama Area of the western suburbs. Thus, the development of suburban centers came to be officially recognized in the plans under Governor Suzuki (Togo 1993). The concept of Tama Monorail emerged with a length of about sixteen kilometers in the plan of Tokyo Metropolis under Governor Minobe in 1973 (F. Suzuki 1995). This much has been built, though the plans in the 1980s under Governor Suzuki foresaw a total length of ninety-three kilometers.

Governor Minobe’s welfare-oriented policies worsened the fiscal condition of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (Sasaki 2011), precipitating the election of Mr. Suzuki with an economic growth agenda. Governor Suzuki announced the First Long-Term Plan of Tokyo Metropolis of 1982, which proposed “Multi-Core Urban Structure” (Tashingata-toshi-kozo) with suburban centers called “Hearts” (Kokoro) of the Tama Area. This plan was adopted into the Fourth National Capital Region Development Plan of 1986 announced by the central government. He stressed development of urban subcenters within the Special Ward Area. Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Ikebukuro had been already designated as the three major subcenters under the First National Capital Region Development Plan of 1958, followed by Ueno-Asakusa, Kinshicho-Kameido, and Osaki in 1982 and Tokyo Water Front in 1995 to create the appearance of a double-ringed metropolitan structure. Whilst Governor Suzuki succeeded in improving the fiscal condition by cutting social welfare expenditures, his development projects later resulted in its worsening again with the collapse of the “bubble economy” in the early 1990s (Sasaki 2011).

Mr. Ishihara—of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan—became governor in 1999. In 2000, Mr. Ishihara announced “Tokyo Vision 2000” (Tokyo-koso 2000) envisaging “Ringed Megalopolis” (Kanjo-megaroporisu-kozo) comprising the Center Core (Marunouchi Area as well as Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Shinagawa subcenters), South Core (including Minato Mirai 21 in Kanagawa Prefecture), East Core (including Makuhari New Urban Center in Chiba Prefecture), North Core (including Saitama New Urban Center in Saitama Prefecture), and West Core (Hachioji City, Tachikawa City, and Tama New Town in Tokyo Metropolis). Whereas Governor Suzuki’s “Multi-Core Urban Structure” targeted Tokyo Metropolis only, Governor Ishihara’s polycentric vision of Tokyo spoke to Tokyo Metropolis and the neighboring six prefectures, resulting in additional difficulties of coordination and realization (Taira 2002). Although seemingly once again signaling renewed prospects for the outer suburbs, in reality the plan is part of an agenda seeking to prevent the relocation of the capital city from Tokyo Metropolis (Taira 2002). Consequently, after the appointment of Mr. Koizumi as prime minister in 2001, the planning agenda of Ishihara has been aligned with the central government to pursue economic development through revitalization of the metropolitan city center—magnifying the disparities between the center and the outer suburbs.

The results of these shifting priorities are seen in Figure 2 where the performance of urban subcenters (Minato, Shinjuku, Shinagawa, Chiyoda, and Shibuya Wards) and the twenty-three special wards during the period 1995 to 2010 is noticeably better than reported in Sorensen (2001) for 1970 to 1995 due primarily to a series of recent large-scale mixed-use redevelopment projects. Moreover, after the early 2000s, Prime Minister Koizumi’s cabinet (2001–2006) also began to emphasize strengthening of the metropolitan city center for international competitiveness with urban renewal and regeneration promoted by a set of state-led policies such as enactment of the “Act on Special Measures concerning Urban Reconstruction” of 2002, helping to create a strong back-to-the-city movement (Hatta 2006). Thus, the outer suburbs have been subject to a significant refocusing of Tokyo metropolitan and central government political and governmental attention on Tokyo’s (primarily central) world city spaces (Tsukamoto 2012).

Whereas in the era of Ishihara, “Tama Silicon Valley” was promoted to the rest of Japan, today the sentiment is that steering of industry from the twenty-three special wards of Tokyo would damage the position of Tokyo as a world city (Interview 5). At the same time, very recently, the central government led by Prime Minister Abe’s cabinet has also declared an interest in rural areas. As one of our interviewees lamented, the “Tama Area has increasingly become ambiguous.… The central government and Tokyo Metropolitan Government have continuously focused on the Special Wards Area. Recently, the central government has tried to revitalize provincial areas.… Consequently, little attention has been paid to the Tama Area since it is positioned in-between these areas” (Interview 3).⁵

Location and History

The period 1995 to 2010 covered here follows the period 1970 to 1995 explored by Sorenson (2001), enabling us to examine the subsequent transformation of suburban centers.⁶ Although the Tachikawa-Hachioji nexus emerges as an employment center of some note within the Tokyo metropolitan area (Li and Monzur 2018), our research highlights the struggles of both cities and confirms Sorensen’s (2001, 28) earlier observation that “more important than subcentre designation in shaping patterns of employment and population change seems to be the geographic location of the area.”

Underlying the changes in population and employment identified for the period 1970 to 1995 by Sorensen (2001) and for the period 1995 to 2010 here, has been the consistently strong performance of urban subcenters within the central twenty-three special wards of Tokyo. Employment of suburban centers had steadily grown in parallel with population increases during 1970 to 1995 (Sorensen 2001). However, employment growth of these suburban centers (i.e., BCCs) has stagnated during 1995 to 2010, contrasting with population and employment recovery of the urban subcenters (Minato, Shinjuku, Shinagawa, Chiyoda, and Shibuya Wards) within the Special Ward Area in which urban redevelopment has been promoted over recent decades. As such, outer suburban BCCs do not have the mass, quality, or diversity of retail and office real estate to be attractive and liquid local markets to interest real estate investors—especially international investors—when compared to their much larger urban cores (Interview 7: Executive Director, CBRE, November 16, 2015). In this respect, our two case study cities share the problem of attracting significant commercial real estate investment.

Our comparison of Hachioji City and Tachikawa City pits a historic once-freestanding industrial city at the periphery of Tokyo Metropolis against a more youthful, more accessible, and land-rich city. The different fortunes in relation to the demographic changes mentioned earlier are relative, since younger people have been moving out of both cities (Interview 3)—partly a function of those attending outer suburban university campuses seeking employment in central Tokyo. Nevertheless, the obvious points of comparison are also ones that figure actively in competition between the two municipalities (Interview 8: Executive Director, The Tachikawa Chamber of Commerce and Industry, November 17, 2015). Moreover, the longer history of Hachioji City has made change more difficult to engineer compared to the younger Tachikawa City (Interview 5). Some of these basic points of comparison are visible in the scale, morphology, and vintages of development in the two town centers (see Figures 4 and 5). However, they also are present in the strategic priorities and attitudes of the two local governments and even business representative bodies.

Figure 4.

New development and vacant land adjacent to TAMA Monorail near the center of Tachikawa City.

Figure 5.

The largely built-out central area of Hachioji City.

Hachioji City is almost completely built-out, with very few substantial opportunities for the development of major new office or retail developments close to its main rail station when compared to Tachikawa City. From the Meiji era (1868–1912) in which state-led industrial promotion policy for national economic growth was implemented, Hachioji City was centered on sericulture and textile industries. Subsequently, Hachioji City became a giant municipality and industrial city located on the suburban edge of Tokyo Metropolis through a series of postwar administrative annexations (M. Suzuki 1993). The economy of Hachioji City peaked during the 1970s (Interview 2).⁷ Only a fraction of the textile industry remains. Stagnation characterizes other industries where much production has shifted offshore. The declines have typically not been offset by increases in office employment in the central area as might have been desired under the BCC policy. Faced with this situation, Hachioji City Government has been left to diversify its economy by promoting logistics and warehousing zones at junctions of Tokyo’s outer ring motorway, namely, the Metropolitan Inter-City Expressway (Interview 6: Section Head, Urban Development Department, Hachioji City Government, November 12, 2015).

Tachikawa City was created from the merger of Tachikawa Town and rural Sunagawa Town. From the start it has had a twin character, with the rural area suffering depopulation and idle farmland due to lack of succession of ownership (Interview 4). Tachikawa City was previously known as the “City of Army Base,” but now it seeks to brand itself as the “City of Commerce” (Interview 8). Tachikawa City is located approximately fifteen minutes’ travel time closer to central Tokyo than Hachioji City and has significantly more space available near the town center for major new commercial and office developments. Tachikawa City was the location for a major U.S. military base (Tachikawa Air Base). The closure of the military base presented a major “windfall” site close to JR Tachikawa Station and the Tama Monorail. Under Governor Ishihara, who was eager to expand global connections, another military site (Yokota Air Base) was at one time touted as the site for a commercial airport. Under Governor Masuzoe, this idea has now receded (Interview 5), although it is retained in the current Long-Term Vision for Tokyo of 2015. If the Tama Area as a whole has started to lose functions, including those associated with public sector institutions of various sorts (Interview 3), then this process has been felt unevenly across the outer suburbs. Indeed, although considerably smaller than Hachioji City, Tachikawa City appears to have benefitted from transfers of public sector institution branches recently. At present, through redevelopment of the former army base, Tachikawa City accommodates various branches of national-level governmental entities such as the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Finance, as well as national-level research and education institutions such as the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics and National Institute of Polar Research. Moreover, due to physical deterioration, a lack of capacity, and in the advent of a new judicial system, the Hachioji Branch of the Tokyo District Court established in 1959 was relocated in 2009 to Tachikawa City. An interviewee noted how “a local branch of this sort is one of the key identities for suburban cities. Therefore the loss of the local branch has damaged the identity of Hachioji City” (Interview 3).

Business Core Cities Policy

Delays by government to institutionalize a workable system for the dispersion of office functions under the BCC policy during a period of rapid economic growth may be one reason for the policy’s lack of effect in generating distinctive and sustainable polycentricity within the Tokyo metropolitan area (Miyake 2005). Nevertheless, according to one academic commentator, “policy measures of BCCs had good impacts to some extent, in which those measures contributed to creating aspirations (or motivations) of municipal governments” (Interview 10: Professor, Hosei University, November 13, 2015).

However, compared with the United States, dispersion of high-order employment into BCCs is regarded as rather unsuccessful due to lack of stronger “push” and “pull” policy interventions (Oki 2011; Sato 2010). There is mention of the weak regulations including those relating to the location of office functions in the urban areas (as push factors) and weak implementation measures for attraction of enterprises in those suburban activity centers (as pull factors) (Oki 2011; Sato 2010). For an interviewee from Tachikawa City, “policy measures for BCCs are not useful due to limited supportive measures provided by upper-level governmental entities” (Interview 3). More specifically, political pragmatism may be partly to blame in connection with a place like Hachioji City:

The past locational control system (under the “Law concerning Restriction on Factories in Existing Urbanized Areas of the Metropolitan Region” of 1959, which was abolished in 2002) targeted manufacturing factories (and university campuses). In my view, the reason why this system did not target offices is some political issues in which the central government would have needed to struggle with … large-scale private enterprises which possessed substantial influence on the political community. Differently from offices, manufacturing factories of large-scale private enterprises had already located within the urban territory at the timing of enforcement of this locational control system. The existing manufacturing factories were not affected by this locational control system, creating no conflicts between the economic and political communities. (Interview 10)

Prefectural and municipal governments need to cooperatively prepare basic plans for development of BCCs (Gyomukaku-toshi-kihon-koso) and obtain consensus on these plans from in-charge ministers. Within these plans, special districts for promotion of business facilities development, namely, “Designated Districts for Agglomeration of Business Facilities” (Gyomu-shisetsu-shyuseki-chiku), are delimited within their administrative units chosen as BCCs, and “Core Facilities” (Chukakuteki-shisetsu) to be developed within these districts are listed. While Tokyo was by then already largely built-out, often in a highly variable but fine-grained morphology, the extent of those districts designated does vary quite considerably and reflects land availability and the prospects for transformation in each prefecture and municipality.

According to the basic plan of the Hachioji-Tachikawa-Tama BCCs (Tokyo Metropolitan Government 2002), Hachioji City and Tachikawa City were designated as BCCs by the Fourth National Capital Region Development Plan of 1986, with the basic plan of the Hachioji-Tachikawa BCCs prepared in 1995 by Tokyo Metropolitan Government in cooperation with the two cities. After Tama City was newly designated as a BCC under the Fifth National Capital Region Development Plan of 1999, the basic plan of Hachioji-Tachikawa-Tama BCCs was prepared by Tokyo Metropolitan Government in cooperation with the three cities, and was then coapproved in 2002 by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism; the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications; and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (Tokyo Metropolitan Government 2002).

Table 2 describes BCCs and their constituent suburban municipalities, the land area included in “Designated Districts for Agglomeration of Business Facilities” and progress rates of development of “Core Facilities” as of 2006. The Yokohama BCCs (including Minato Mirai 21), Chiba BCCs (including Makuhari New Urban Center), Saitama BCCs (including Saitama New Urban Center), and Hachioji-Tachikawa-Tama BCCs (including Tama New Town) have larger “Designated Districts for Agglomeration of Business Facilities” in relative terms. These are respectively relevant to South Core, East Core, North Core, and West Core in “Ringed Megalopolis” of “Tokyo Vision 2000.” The years of approval are varied, resulting in differentiated progress rates of planned projects. However, among the aforementioned four BCCs, the Hachioji-Tachikawa-Tama BCCs in Tokyo Metropolis had a low progress rate, compared with those of the other three BCCs outside of Tokyo Metropolis.

Table 2.

Key Characteristics of Business Core Cities (BCCs).

No.	BCCs	Constituent Municipalities	Prefecture	Existence or Nonexistence of Large-Scale Development Projects	Areas of Designated Districts for Agglomeration of Business Facilities (hectares)	Year of Approval	Progress Rate (%) (as of 2006)
1	Yokohama	Yokohama City	Kanagawa	Minato Mirai 21	1,876	1993	90.6
2	Kawasaki	Kawasaki City		—	1,182	1997	50.0
3	Atsugi	Atusgi City		—	310	1997	50.0
4	Machida-Sagamihara	Sagamihara City		—	520	2004	60.9
4	Machida-Sagamihara	Machida City	Tokyo	Tama New Town	520	2004	60.9
5	Hachioji-Tachikawa-Tama	Hachioji City			805	1995	47.6
		Tama City
		Tachikawa City		—
6	Ome	Ome City		—	763^a	2009	N/A
7	Kawagoe-Tsurugashima-Hidaka	Kawagoe City	Saitama	—	433^a	2008	N/A
		Tsurugashima City
		Hidaka City
8	Kumagaya-Fukaya	Kumagaya City		—	158	2003	70.0
8	Kumagaya-Fukaya	Fukaya City		—	158	2003	70.0
9	Saitama	Saitama City		Saitama New Urban Center	821	1992	60.0
10	Kasukabe-Koshigaya	Kasukabe City		—	360	2006	10.3
10	Kasukabe-Koshigaya	Koshigaya City		—	360	2006	10.3
11	Tsuchiura-Tsukuba-Ushiku	Tsuchiura City	Ibaragi	—	2,278	1993	45.5
		Tsukuba City		Tsukuba Scientific City
		Ushiku City		—
12	Kashiwa^b	Kashiwa City	Chiba	—	N/A	N/A	N/A
13	Narita-Chiba New Town	Narita City		—	1,036	2004	37.5
13	Narita-Chiba New Town	Chiba New Town		Chiba New Town	1,036	2004	37.5
14	Chiba	Chiba City		Makuhari New Urban Center	933	1991	100.0
15	Kisarazu	Kisarazu City		—	473	1992	83.3

Source: Developed from Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (http://www.mlit.go.jp/crd/daisei/gyoumukaku/).

Calculated by authors with reference to the basic plans for the Ome BCC and Kawagoe-Tsurugashima-Hidaka BCCs.

Kashiwa BCC’s basic plan is under consideration.

Prefectural and municipal governments can proactively use BCC policy interventions to accelerate development of business facilities as “Core Facilities” within these specific districts.⁸ Development of these facilities is expected to accumulate high-order business functions in these special districts, contributing to further accumulation of associated functions in their surrounding areas. There are three main tools that authorities can use to promote the development of these economic functions, namely (1) tax relaxation for privately built and privately operated business facilities, (2) support for capital investment with low-interest-rate loans from the central-government-related banks, and (3) preferential measures for municipal bonds for development of publicly built and privately operated business facilities.

According to this basic plan of 2002, a number of facilities have been designated as “Core Facilities” in Hachioji City, Tachikawa City, and Tama City—for example, for Hachioji City, “Hachioji Tokyu Square” (category: intelligent building) and “Southern Sky Tower Hachioji” (category: intelligent building); and for Tachikawa City, “Fare Tachikawa Center Square” (category: intelligent building) and “Tama Monorail” (category: transport). Established measures for BCC development have indeed been partly utilized to develop these facilities (Tokyo Metropolitan Government 2002).

However, beyond this, BCC policy measures have been of little use in Tachikawa City even if the title does have an effect. For example, the designation as a BCC has a positive side effect in that it carries some appeal when the city applies for grants and subsidies from upper-level governmental entities and appeals to private-sector entities (Interview 3). Rather than the BCC policy, land availability—namely, a former U.S. military base transferred to the central government—has been the key factor in the relative prosperity of Tachikawa City in recent times, followed by transport accessibility. As one interviewee explained,

For Tachikawa City, the large-scale developable site of the former U.S. army base close to the center of this city became available at the best timing (before the strong back-to-the-city movement).… Consequently, Tachikawa City could become a target area for the consolidation of public facilities belonging to the central government.… Simultaneously, Tachikawa City had continued to make actions for the improvement of transport accessibility for a long time prior to the handover of the U.S. military base. (Interview 3)

At the same time, there were the complexities of dealing with the central government with an interest in selling or leasing land quickly to realize revenue in the case of Tachikawa City. Tachikawa City Government wished to use the vacant land in the center based on its longer-term vision, but the Ministry of Finance, as the landowner, wished to sell the land to a private entity in order to maximize revenues (Interview 3). “Fare Tachikawa” forms a business district with office functions developed in 1994 by the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (now the Urban Renaissance Agency) as the public sector developer under the central government. However, the agglomeration of high-order employment is far less in “Fare Tachikawa” when compared with Minato Mirai 21, Makuhari New Urban Center, and Saitama New Urban Center (Ikeda 1999), which have been developed by strong involvement of prefectural governments for a long time before their designation as BCCs.

Likewise, the BCC policy has not been very useful in largely built-out Hachioji City (Interview 9: Staff, Urban Development Department, Hachioji City Government, November 11, 2015). They utilized the BCC policy partially to develop “Hachioji Tokyu Square” (Figure 4) and “Southern Sky Tower Hachioji” near JR Hachioji Station through redevelopment projects. However, these buildings—primarily developed by the private sector—are utilized for commercial, public, and/or residential uses and, by and large, do not accommodate high-order employment despite being categorized as intelligent buildings in the basic plan of the Hachioji-Tachikawa-Tama BCCs. Otherwise, interviewees at Hachioji City Government point to the value of the local ordinance for industrial attraction in retaining existing businesses: “our local ordinance has been successful in retaining the existing enterprises within our city (or preventing their out-migration). It has provided incentives, such as tax relaxation, with private enterprises which seek larger developable lands for renovation of their factories, in order to facilitate their intra-city removes within our administrative boundary” (Interview 10: Section Head, Industrial Promotion Department, Hachioji City Government, November 12, 2015).

Thus, the agglomeration of office functions with high-order employment has been achieved by public intervention of upper-level governmental entities, especially the central government, rather than BCC policies. One of the most notable differences between Hachioji City and Tachikawa City was availability of vacant land owned by upper-level government bodies, which in turn has enabled suburban cities to receive public interventions from these same governmental entities that may also decide to relocate high-order employment there. As evidenced by the public officials’ comments of Hachioji City Government and Tachikawa City Government, the BCC policy measures are not considered especially important. Our comparison of Tachikawa City and Hachioji City suggests that land availability and public interventions centered on upper-level governmental entities are the main drivers of development. As observed in Hachioji City, presumably BCC policy measures do not provide sufficient incentives for office developments by private sector developers who instead favor commercial and/or residential development in the suburban space of Tokyo Metropolis. The comments of local government officials indicate that BCC policy measures do not satisfy their desires to develop their respective suburban centers and are inadequate in the face of the back-to-the-city movement by population and business and the strong development dynamics in the metropolitan city center.

Conclusion

Much has changed since Sorensen’s (2001) study and the update we provide here indicates how the “outer suburban moment” in the Tokyo case has been a brief one. This moment may have been an exceptional one when seen in the longer term, in which, in periods both of national and metropolitan growth and decline, the economy and population of outer suburbs has diverged from that of the twenty-three special wards. How have BCC policies contributed to this performance? While delays in implementing the policies may not have helped, the contribution of BCC policies (in comparison to considerations of accessibility to central Tokyo and land availability) has been one of only moderating outer suburban economic and demographic decline at the margin.

These findings highlight the limits to naturalizing edge-city-like developments as an inevitable product of multi-nucleated urban expansion and economic development in an international context. Despite the active planning for a polycentric metropolitan structure for Tokyo, the accumulation and spatial concentration of significant new economic activities at the edge of the Tokyo metropolitan area has been denied in a context of stagnation and declines in population as well as the changing priorities of metropolitan and central governments. Indeed, active policies such as the BCC policies considered here—which might help leverage real estate development and employment growth in outer suburban localities—have been largely powerless in the face of these longer-term national demographic and shifts in national and regional planning and policy dynamics. In a historic city like Hachioji City, BCC policies have been of limited value in promoting the redevelopment of centrally located sites. Even in youthful Tachikawa City, where large centrally located windfall sites present a major opportunity for new commercial development and private sector office jobs, BCC policies have not proved easy to mobilize.

The dynamics of city regions are ones that can usefully be examined in terms of the complex and as yet poorly understood economic, demographic, and political trajectories of settlements (Phelps and Wood 2011). We are, for example, becoming increasingly familiar with inner suburban shrinkage apparent in the United States—a topic that has garnered academic and policy attention (Hanlon, Vicino, and Short 2006; Sweeney and Hanlon 2017). Yet the subject of outer suburban decline and the potential scale and distinctive nature of a future suburban regeneration challenge have barely begun to be broached in many national contexts. Outer suburban decline may even become a topic of concern in urbanizing China sooner than imagined given demographic trends (Keith et al. 2014). Our research has gone further to identify a number of distinctly different outer suburban trajectories around which similarly tailored policies may need to focus in metropolitan Tokyo (Ohashi 2018) and presumably other major urban agglomerations.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the comments of the journal editor and referees.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of GB Sasakawa Foundation (grant number 4865).

Notes

Author Biographies

Nicholas A. Phelps is a professor of urban and regional development at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. His research interests span the politics and planning of suburbanization, comparative planning systems, the economic geography of urban agglomeration, and the economic geography of multinational enterprises.

Hiroaki Ohashi is a doctoral candidate at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. His doctoral research focuses on the suburban fortunes of outer Tokyo. His research interests include spatial policies and planning, comparative planning studies, urban regeneration, and spatial economic development.

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