Thursday 21 February 2008
6:00pm – 8:00pm
A Tale of Two Cities: London and Tokyo in the 21st Century
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
‘A Tale of Two Cities: London and Tokyo in the 21st Century’ was the second in this year’s seminar series, ‘Economic Futures: Wealth and Well-Being in the UK and Japan’.
Summary
Tony Travers, Director of the Greater London Group, at the London School of Economics, opened the proceedings. Travers touched on London’s rising population, still on the up-turn after a prolonged population slump between 1939 and 1985. That the population rate was forecast to rise to 9 Million by 2030 and then perhaps to 10 Million did not overly concern Travers who reflected that, were Greater London to be settled at a Parisian density then the equivalent population would be 30 Million. He pointed out that a higher population need not necessarily result in ugly high rises.
Referring to similarities between the two global cities, Travers cited the concentration of public sector offices and headquarters in both and their roles as major transport hubs. As to differences, he noted that investment in London is far more international than is the case in Tokyo; that Tokyo has had a long-standing Metropolitan Government in comparison with the evolution of the Greater London Assembly; that London’s population is much younger and more international than Tokyo’s; and that London has always protected its Green Belt whereas in Tokyo the concern with environmental sustainability and lifestyle issues are more recent phenomena.
Travers concluded that the often-heralded idea that people eventually desert the city in favour of the countryside had been proved wrong. He said that people venture into city centres for pleasure as well as work and that therefore cities – wherever they may be – need to provide good public and private services.
As summed up by the Chairman, Dr Adam Marshall, Head of Policy at the Centre for Cities, Tony Travers’ presentation had offered an impassioned defence of big cities, on both cultural and economic grounds.
The seminar theme was further pursued by Koji Terada, Senior Manager in the Business Promotion Department at Mitsubishi Estate Co Ltd (MEC). Japan’s second-largest property developer, MEC had been responsible in the late 1990s for the redevelopment of London’s Paternoster Square behind St Paul’s Cathedral and has more recently been engaged in the transformation of Tokyo’s Marunouchi business district. As an architect involved in both projects, Terada offered a personal account which, as Dr Adam Marshall observed, highlighted the need for tenacity, sometimes in the face of Royal opposition. Prince Charles had favoured a more classical design for Paternoster Square but the final solution which MEC realised saw modernisation as a key element in the redevelopment of the area. MEC was successful in sensitively reviving the area’s business and retail core while acknowledging its historical context in the process.
The transformation of Marunouchi provided an interesting point of contrast. According to Terada, business districts were customarily developed in Tokyo with the idea of maximising density and efficiency while in London, projects often looked to the past for inspiration. MEC had certainly absorbed this lesson from Paternoster Square. Interestingly enough, historical elements being incorporated into the Marunouchi Park Tower project include an English-style square and a restoration of Mitsubishi No 1 Building, for which a Briton, Josiah Condor, had been chief architect in 1894.
As London embraces the architectural challenges of the 2012 Olympics, so too must Japan bring a new set of architectural design and environmental values into play as she looks to winning the bid for the 2016 Olympics.
Questions and comments from the audience following the presentations were wide-ranging and included cross-cultural explorations of the definition of ‘world city’ vs ‘world class city’; the impact of architectural styles and urban planning on social behaviour; and the environmental issues which have become central to new building projects.
About the contributors
Tony Travers
Tony Travers is Director of the Greater London Group, a research centre at the London School of Economics. He is currently an advisor to the House of Commons Education and Skills Select Committee, and from 1992 to 1997 was a member of the Audit Commission. Mr Travers was a member of the Urban Task Force Working Group on Finance and has published a number of books on cities and government, including ‘The Politics of London: Governing the Ungovernable City’ (2004).
Koji Terada
Koji Terada is Senior Manager in the Business Promotion Department, Mitsubishi Estate. He graduated from the University of Tokyo (Department of Architecture) in 1989, joining Mitsubishi Estate Co. Ltd in the same year. He was attached to Mitsubishi Estate UK in 1999 and has been involved in the Paternoster Square near St Paul’s Cathedral in London. He has been a Guest Lecturer at the Department of Socio-Cultural Studies at the University of Tokyo until 2006 and is currently a Guest Associate Professor at the University of Tsukuba.
Dr Adam Marshall
Dr Adam Marshall (chair) is Head of Policy at the Centre for Cities. Since joining the Centre in October 2004, he has played a key role in its public launch and the development of its research and policy priorities. He has extensive experience in the fields of governance, public finance, transport and urban infrastructure. He previously worked at the Cambridge-MIT Institute, where he was responsible for the development of business-university relationships, and has also worked in local politics in his native Washington, DC. He holds MPhil and PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge, and a BA from Yale University.