Tokyo, a city that has consistently reinvented itself, stands as a testament to the resilience of urban planning. The current global metropolis, home to over 37 million people, is a far cry from its former self a century ago. Tokyo’s first significant transformations during this time frame were born out of the ashes of the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake and the 1940s WWII fire bombings. The city's population explosion and housing crisis in the 1950s paved the way for the Metabolism movement in the following decade. In recent times, Tokyo has embraced change not out of necessity, but out of ambition. From expanding land reclamation in Tokyo Bay to preparing for the 2020 Summer Olympics, the city has become a fertile ground for innovative approaches to creating vibrant and livable urban spaces.
These experiments are most successful when they adhere to Japanese urban planning principles. In ”The Hidden Order” (Kodansha International: 1989), architect Yoshinobu Ashihara describes Tokyo's native urban design strategies as adaptable, incremental, climate-sensitive, and ambiguous. These approaches contrast modern Western city planning’s tendencies toward holistic, coherent, climate-agnostic, and expository qualities. Tokyo’s inherent hyper-connectivity, characterized by human-scaled spaces and services linked by highly accessible mobility networks, is one of its essential features. A linear form of urbanism, which developed during premodern times, is rooted in the principles of pedestrian movement and sequential human experience. These mobility-centered public spaces cannot be conceived apart from the movement they facilitate: they are simultaneously passages and destinations.
In contrast, the Western city planning strategies adopted in late 20th-century developments like Tsukuba Science City or Tama New Town are scaled to the automobile and do not prioritize pedestrian mobility. These resulting neighborhoods, formed by homogeneous object buildings separated by vast roadways and parking lots, have led to reduced urban vitality. Based on these findings, architects and planners working in Tokyo today are reconsidering this distinctively Japanese form of urbanism to avoid the alienating and culturally insensitive qualities of such approaches.
Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s latest urban experiment, is a case in point. Developed by the Mori Building Company with three towers designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, the new twenty-acre (8.1-hectare) complex features a low-rise urban landscape designed by Heatherwick Studio. Occupying a Y-shaped parcel between the international neighborhoods of Roppongi and Toranomon, Azabudai Hills represents some of Tokyo's most desirable real estate. This “modern urban village” is an expansive version of a mixed-use complex composed of office, residential, retail, medical, and cultural facilities. Mori Building Company adopted the two themes of green and wellness for the development, intending to establish an optimal form of interconnected urbanism characterized by an “overwhelmingly verdant environment in harmony with nature.”
With its abundant green, Azabudai Hills combines a commercial district and a linear park. A sequence of verdant, interconnected pathways and green spaces forms the connective tissue of the complex’s public space. Afforested slopes and planted terraces form the roofscape of the ground-level commercial and cultural buildings, expanding the terrain of pedestrian mobility above the street. An additional linear space called Garden Plaza C subdivides the shallow block paralleling Sakura-asa Street to emphasize the design team's commitment to pedestrian-friendly networks. Although this connector results in narrow retail spaces on either side, it forms a critical link between the Garden Plaza D along Sakurada Avenue to the east and the oval-shaped Central Green to the west.
The strategy to unify a thin, awkwardly shaped site with a pedestrian-accessible green armature reinforces the concept of the Tokyo 2050 Fiber City plan. Developed by urban designer Hidetoshi Ohno and published in 2006, Fiber City imagined a post-growth Tokyo in which new systems of mobility and greenscape would resurrect Japanese urban fundamental strategies in new ways, enhancing the overall quality of life while increasing disaster resilience. Fiber City’s concept of the Urban Wrinkle creates “distinctive linear spots of interest,” or meisho, by shaping public spaces into “wrinkles” or “folds” that enhance the visitor’s experience. Meisho is a Japanese term for famous sites, many of which were popularized in the Edo period depictions of pilgrimages and processions that reinforced the linear spatial character of these places.
Contemporary examples of Tokyo meisho may be found in the destination retail district of Omotesando or the heavily vegetated Todoroki Ravine. However, such current instances of linear urbanism have become increasingly rare in the city. “To create ‘Urban Wrinkles,’ the potential of natural topographic features such as cliffs and rivers, or artificially made forms such as retaining walls, stairs, and elevated structures must be optimized; or rather; these places of allure need to be made more accessible to draw them out to center stage,” Ohno argued in the Tokyo 2050 Fiber City issue of Japan Architect. “There are also a variety of means to manipulate the borders between urban and natural domains… to create an active exchange between the two places.”
Azabudai Hills is exemplary in this regard. The presence of nature here is not merely indicated by strips of green. Instead, narrow streams with gravel beds and diversely planted borders traverse the site, emphasizing the active presence of a complex urban ecology. This hydrological network, which wraps building edges and forms freestanding, serpentine-shaped water features, reinforces the concept of movement-centered urbanism. This water-centric wrinkle also alludes to another unfortunate occurrence in Tokyo’s past: the city’s erasure of its natural waterways. In “Tokyo Metabolizing” (Toto Publishing: 2010), architect Yoshiharu Tsukamoto recounts how the Shibuya River was covered in preparation for the 1964 Olympic Games. Today, the pedestrian-scaled corridor, colloquially known as “Cat Street,” preserves some of the desirable spatial qualities of a meandering stream—although the water is no longer visually present. Azabudai Hills’ prominent use of water and vegetation throughout its pedestrian zones may be construed as an intentional gesture to remedy some of the prior damage created in well-known places like Cat Street.
In “The Hidden Order”, Ashihara honors the historical manifestations of Japan’s linear urbanism. “There was a time when roads and streets were colored and shaped by the local culture through which they passed,” he writes. It is possible for today’s planning to adopt contemporary forms while respecting this fundamental aspect of Japanese tradition. An urban network should not merely be designed to connect multiple points; “it must incorporate an appreciation for the locales through which the streets will pass,” argues Ashihara. With its diverse mix of programs, pedestrian-oriented networks, and sophisticated incorporation of natural systems, Azabudai Hills offers a compelling model of how to revive the Japanese tradition of linear urbanism in a progressive architectural form.
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