A Tale of Two Sectors: (Un)Just Geographies of Transit-Oriented New Towns in Postwar Tokyo

Keywords: Transit-Oriented Development, New Town, Historical Institutionalism, Historical Geography, Transportation Geography, Tokyo
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Advocates of Transit-Oriented Development have long been regarding Tokyo as a practical exemplar known as an entrepreneurial transit metropolis that relied on private railway conglomerates. They engage in not only transit operation, but also real estate development, retail, entertainment, and many more industries. Recent studies argued that their practice is also institutionalized to tackle public goals as framed by institutions in pre-WWII Japan. However, the four decades after the war were marked by advancing public interventions in land development. The two sectors developed their own new towns and assisted those on the other side in the new town movement of Tokyo. To better understand (un)just geographies related to transportation, land use, housing and employment in these new towns under public or private ownership, this study relies on a historical institutionalist approach to interpret archival documents, numeric statistics and spatial cartographies in the two largest new towns: the publicly planned Tama New Town and the privately visioned Tokyu Tama Garden City. The result demonstrates, in Tokyo, private railway conglomerates played an influential role in achieving transit capacity and many public goals, as shown in Tama New Town, but their interests were not free from causing injustice geographies, as revealed in Tokyu Tama Garden City's upscale housing and violation to the historical greenbelt. These two cases implicate, in growing regions around the world, especially in the global south, the introduction and balance of private conglomerates in TOD practice and beyond are critical in sustaining or undermining just geographies at the regional scale.