by Martina Rotolo | Nov 7, 2019 | The Urban Media Lab
There is no exact translation for the Japanese approach to urban planning, called Machizukuri. Literally, it means town planning but it is generally associated with a soft way of planning which contrasts with the traditional highly centralized model, conventionally defined as Toshi-keikaku. According to the Professor Masato Kamawamukai, the term Machizukuri combines the building activity with the community-based process aimed at improving the local environment (Ono 2017).[1] In particular, it refers to a variety of actions which involves local residents and local governments working together to make the place where they live and work more livable (Evans 2002: 447).[2]
Historically, the Japanese method of urban planning has relied on a highly centralized top-down process. In 1919, the City Planning Act and the Building Act respectively established a legal basis for land readjustment and controlled the construction of new buildings. The final result of this legislation was that planning became a completely centralized activity, led by the Home Ministry. It was only after the Second World War, between 1950s and 1960s, that Japan experienced a new wave of urbanization and those pieces of legislation resulted outdated. Therefore, the responsibility for planning was transferred to the new Ministry of Construction and waves of unplanned urbanization replaced the highly centralized approach of the previous decade. However, during the 20th century, Japan’s main planning technique relied on land readjustment, through which the Government assembled the various privately-owned land parcels in a given area to provide new land use plans.
In this same period, environmental and political oppositions to neoliberal policies endorsed by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) at the Government, determined the replacement of the then outdated legislation on planning with the 1968 New City Planning Act. The main innovation was the devolution of powers from central authority to prefectural and municipal levels, through the establishment of City Planning Areas divided in Urbanization Promotion Areas. Moreover, for the very first-time public participation procedures were introduced, such as public hearings and plan inspections. However, they remained a mere exercise of public relations without leaving decision- making powers to local residents. In 1992, the City Planning Act was amended and introduced the municipal master plan system where all cities within designated City Planning Areas were required to create their own plans in accordance with citizens’ opinions (Evans 2002: 446). From this point onward, urban planning cannot be considered a mere administrative task in Japan anymore. Decentralisation towards local authorities increasingly deepened.
Only in 1960s, the term Machizukuri started to be employed in the field of urban planning. It gained its momentum in the last twenty years, given the increase of territorially defined protest movements in defence of the environment, the rising decentralisation of planning powers, the strengthening of progressive local governments and the slowdown of urbanisation after the 1973 Oil Crisis (Evans 2002: 448), welcoming a new planning era for Japan.
It was in the southern-eastern corner of Kobe, in the Mano district, where local residents constituted an anti-pollution campaign in 1960s, given the dreadful levels of pollution in the area. In 1982, the campaign, following the constitution of a strong residents’ movement including academics and planners, led to the agreement between the City and Mano community over the plan for making the district more livable and sustainable, in accordance with Kobe’s Machizukuri ordinances. The plan, depicted as the residents’ plan, followed a Machizukuri way of proceeding, employing a gradual and joint approach to include residents, local businesses, the City and establish the Mano Machizukuri Promotion Association (Evans 2002: 451).
However, it is worth noting that no comprehensive model of Machizukuri exists and the enormous diversity in its application in Japan is evident. Its empirical heterogeneity highly depends on the role of local governments and residents, the openness of local and regional governance regimes and developers’ capability to bargain for their economic interests at the local and national level. Machizukuri community engagement is not ubiquitous, often residents have no power to influence planning outcomes and, to a greater extent, the old top-down city planning system remains intact in those contexts (Sorensen and Funck 2007: 273).[3]Nonetheless, Machizukuri contributed to the growth and maturation of Japanese civil society. In the last years in Japan a huge number of Neighborhood Associations and organizations has been constituted. Moreover, the active participation of citizens in community engagement processes and their willingness to spend enormous amounts of time in organizing local collective institutions have tremendously increased.
Japanese urban planners and planning scholars consider, without any doubt, the Machizukuri method a paradigm shift from the top-down urban planning model to a more shared management of urban spaces (Sorensen and Funck 2007: 277).
For example, in Ishinomaki, a costal Japanese city beaten by the terrible tsunami of March 2011, the Machizukuri planning tradition strongly influenced the project of alternative reconstruction under the sign of solidarity design and local participation. In December 2011, a community-based redevelopment program, called Ishinomaki 2.0 started. Ishinomaki 2.0 created a community organization by cooperating with local residents and local government to collectively rebuild the city. Then, architects and urban planners created the Ishonomaki Lab to provide a place for locals to join the city’s rebuilding process. Finally, Ishonomaki Lab inaugurated an activity and animation center called Irori, which means interaction room of revitalization and innovation, where everyone can work and meet to discuss the re-development of the city.[4]
FOOTNOTES
1 Ono Takashi (2017), The Method and Practices of ‘Machizukuri’ movement in Japan based on the idea ‘Linkages’ theorized by Fumihiko Maki, International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET), Vol. 04, Issue 11, pp. 392-399.
2 Neil Evans (2002), Machi-zukuri as a new paradigm in Japanese urban planning: reality or myth?, Japan Forum, 14:3, 443-464.
3 Sorensen, A. and Funck C. (2007), Conclusions: a diversity of machizukuri processes and outcomes. In Sorensen, A. and Funck C., eds. Living Cities in Japan 2007, New York, Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series, pp. 269- 279.
4 Mesmer, P. (2019), A Ishinomaki au Japon, le design panse les plaies du tsunami (In Ishinomaki, Japan, the design groom the wounds of the tsunami), Le Monde. Available from: https://bit.ly/2JRuwdl
by Martina Rotolo | Sep 23, 2019 | The Urban Media Lab
In the last thirty years the
European Union understood that Member States cannot be left alone in planning
urbanization and implement policies addressing urban areas. Over the years, the
European Union managed to enact policies concerning cities, even in absence of
an explicit legal basis, since the launch of Urban Pilot Projects and the URBAN
initiative in the 1990s.
Both the European Commission,
through the DG REGIO and the DG ENV, and the Council of EU implemented policies
and issued declarations to enforce the European Urban Dimension. Cohesion
policy, the main European policy aimed at reducing disparities among European
regions, represented the main driver for policies related to urban areas. In
2007, the Treaty of Lisbon introduced the objective of territorial cohesion
which formalized an implicit EU involvement in urban matters. The Urban Agenda
for the EU represented the last step in this long process.
On 30 May 2016 an informal
meeting of EU Ministers with responsibility for urban affairs took place in
Amsterdam, at the initiative of the Dutch Presidency. During this meeting, the “Urban
Agenda for the EU”, also called “Pact of Amsterdam”, was adopted.
The Urban Agenda is an
integrated and coordinated approach to deal with the urban dimension of the EU.
By focusing on concrete priority themes through dedicated Partnerships, the
Urban Agenda seeks to improve the quality of life in urban areas. Based on the
principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, it focuses on the three key
pillars of EU policy-making: better regulation, better funding and better
knowledge.
However, the Agenda has not
established an explicit European urban competence. Conversely, it managed to
promote a European model of urban development, to create a supranational
coordination mechanism for urban policies, to empower cities at the EU level
and strengthen Member States commitment towards urban policy-making at the
national level.
The Pact of Amsterdam provided
valuable support and impetus to urban policy-thinking and dialogue in Europe. Moreover,
since European legislation is widely implemented in urban areas, the Urban
Agenda for the EU resulted necessary to replace fragmented experiences with an
integrated approach to cross-sectorial policies. The integrated approach is
linked with the consideration that policies affecting urban areas must be
complementary across different government tiers. Thus, all levels of government
must be involved in this process of policy-making by ensuring coordination between
policy-sectors, in full respect of the subsidiarity principle. As the Report
from the Commission to the Council on the Urban Agenda for the EU pointed
out in 2017, the democratic deficit that the European Union is facing nowadays,
may be addressed by reframing the governance model and offering a seat to
cities at the table of policy-making. As cities represent the closest governance
level to citizens, working with them can bring the EU closer to people’s needs,
by delivering visible improvements to their daily lives.[1]
In June 2019 the European Commission
published the report “Urban Agenda for the EU, multilevel governance in
action”[2] to
assess the impact of the Agenda on cities and, most notably, on European policy
attitudes towards urban development. The partnership mechanism resulted the
most innovative tool provided by the Agenda. Though the Pact of Amsterdam has not
ultimately introduced an explicit European urban competence, it managed to
build a connection for cities to the European policy framework through partnerships.
Therefore, the European Commission is carrying out impact assessments including
a territorial assessment to better understand how future EU legislation will impact
territorial units such as cities. It also set a platform called REFIT to
improve existing EU legislation involving national authorities and other
stakeholders, considering the need to increase involvement from local and
regional authorities.
Three years after the Pact was
adopted, Member States, cities, the European Commission and other relevant
stakeholders decided to create two new partnerships: Security in public spaces
and Cultural heritage, given their well-known relevance in the urban
development context. At the moment, the European Commission reported that a
total of 114 actions included in the partnerships’ action plans have been
proposed with 11 finalized, 21 planned and 82 under implementation.
Moreover, during Romanian
Presidency of the Council, the Urban Agenda for the EU has been reinforced by
the Bucharest Declaration, which will serve as a bridge between the Urban
Agenda, the EU Territorial Agenda and the renewed Leipzig Charter 2020. In fact,
the incoming German Presidency announced that it will revise the 2007 Leipzig
Charter on Sustainable European Cities to redefine the principles of
sustainable urban development. Indeed, the experience of the partnerships based
on multi-level urban governance, co-creation of policies and citizen
participation influenced the decision to renew the Leipzig Charter by the
second half of 2020.
More interestingly, some Member
States have been inspired by the Urban Agenda for the EU and applied similar
approaches at the national or regional level. Italy, which traditionally has
never implemented a National urban policy, shows the highest number of cities
involved in the Urban Agenda for the EU. Additionally, the Italian Agency for
Territorial Cohesion works with large and small cities to jointly implementing
this initiative.
The European Commission’s
legislative proposal for the future Cohesion Policy also provides support to
the Urban Agenda, within the framework of the European Urban Initiative which encourages
cities to innovate, access knowledge, understand policy, support networking and
capacity building. In fact, Cohesion Policy beyond 2020 will continue to sustain
integrated territorial and local development strategies through various tools
and will empower urban authorities and territorial bodies in the management of
the funds, while requiring strong local partnerships with relevant
stakeholders. The urban dimension of Cohesion Policy will be strengthened, with
6% of the European Regional Development Fund dedicated to sustainable urban
development strategies.
It would also be interesting
to observe how the new EU Commission executive, which is due to take office on 1st
November 2019, will contribute to the European urban dimension. In fact, the current
European Commissioner for Regional policy, Corina Creţu, has decided to resign
in order to take up a seat in the European Parliament. The new European
Commissioner leading the Cohesion and Reforms portfolio will be the Portuguese Elisa
Ferreira, currently Vice-Governor of Banco de Portugal. She has been a Member
of the European Parliament for many years and she was Minister for Planning and
Environment in Portugal.[3]
So far, the Urban Agenda for
the EU represented the last step in the process aimed at the construction of a
European urban policy field. In this scenario, despite its policy light nature and
no legally binding agreement, the Urban Agenda for the EU represents an
innovative framework that is successfully integrating cities in EU policymaking,
overcoming the inflexibility of treaties’ provisions. Thus, the Urban Agenda
for the EU ultimately offers to European cities the opportunity to obtain the
place they deserve in the present governance revolution which needs them at its
core.
[1]EUROPEAN COMMISSION (2017), Report from the
Commission to the Council on the Urban Agenda for the EU, available online
at: http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/policy/themes/urban/report_urban_agenda2
017_en.pdf , p.3.
[2]EUROPEAN COMMISSION (2019), Urban Agenda for the EU, multilevel
governance in action, available online at: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/
brochure/urban_agenda_eu_en.pdf
[3]EUROPEAN COMMISSION (2019), The
von der Leyen Commission: for a Union that strives for more, available online at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_19_5542
