Connecting Space, People, Community, and Culture: Exploring an urban space of a city that will continue to change, looking ahead to the next 100 years

In this series of “note”, which provides an overview of the Shinagawa Development Project being undertaken by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East) in the area surrounding Takanawa Gateway Station, we have been introducing to you the ideas and concepts that will shape a new city, along with the ongoing efforts of the “TokyoYard PROJECT” and the report of “5 Days CITY” event held just prior to the construction. 
>>https://note.com/tokyoyard

In this post, we will focus on the creation of an urban space for the new city, and inform you on what kind of facilities will be implemented on the site in front of Takanawa Gateway Station, which is now about to go into a full-scale construction phase for the opening of the city, as well as the reasoning behind these decisions. Yuji Murakami of the JR East Shinagawa Development Project Team is here to tell you all about it.

Yuji Murakami (JR): East Japan Railway Company, Life-style Business-development Department, Shinagawa Business-development and Marketing Division, Group Leader. Yuji Murakami has been involved in the Shinagawa Development Project since June 2014. He has been responsible for the city planning from the basic plan stage, along with currently being in charge of area management.

A new city, consisting of 4 blocks

With a site area of approximately 9.5 hectares, the new city is scheduled to open in 2024, and will consist of four blocks (Block 1 to Block 4) with the following functions.

Block 1:
Residential facilities for singles and families of international business workers, international schools, and multilingual childcare support facilities
Block 2:
A Cultural creation facilities with functions such as information-gathering, presentation, and communication that serve as activity hubs for people engaged in creating culture, along with public spaces (city park)
Block 3:
Directly connected to Sengakuji Station, office facilities and commercial facilities, along with livelihood support facilities that provide medical and fitness services
Block 4:
Located directly in front of Takanawa Gateway Station, a number of facilities including offices, business support infrastructure, commercial spaces, conference/convention facilities, and international-standard accommodations which will all serve as a hub for international business exchange

City planning guidelines for continuing to change with the times

In developing these facilities, the key concept we have set at the core of JR East's urban spatial creation is “public realm”. Public realm is a spatial realm that is widely used and recognized by the general public, regardless of whether they own or are related to the building. In other words, it represents the creation of a “place” that goes beyond the creation of a “space”.

Behind the decision to place such a key concept at the center of urban space development, was our concern about how large-scale urban development can lead to problems such as buildings cutting off the flow of people, interactions, and cultural connections. These are the results of over-segmenting the users and roles of public spaces and buildings respectively, and developing without fully understanding the contexts embedded in the community.

When creating buildings, large-scale urban development involves numerous regulations and coordination of interests among stakeholders. Due to the complexity of the process, development tends to proceed in an efficient manner by compartmentalizing the space into different parts.

However, city planning such as “creating stand-alone cities” or “creating a space consisted of only buildings and moving on” is not what JR East does. Instead, we must build a station in this city and root ourselves in the community with determination. We believe that the most important aspect in creating a new urban space is to create an open space where people can interact, and as a result, generate new values and actions.

JR East's vision of the new city is “a city where you can take on challenges and continue for 100 years”. In the next 100 years, anything and everything is expected to keep shifting. Despite those shifts, what kind of space should we create for the city to keep changing with the times, slowly nurture its culture over the course of decades, and keep the people’s lives enriched? We needed to think carefully about these questions before constructing these buildings.

We needed to create universal guidelines to meet the challenges that people in this city are going to face in the coming 100 years. These people not only include the developers, but the relevant government officials, neighboring businesses, infrastructure providers, and business partners, along with local residents and visitors. Thus, in 2017, “The Guidelines for the City Planning of Surrounding North Area of Shinagawa Station '' were created. The three points we place emphasis on in the guidelines are “forming an Ekimachi (station and town) integrated infrastructure”, “implementing diverse urban functions”, and “creating a leading disaster preventative and ecological city”.

Next, let us introduce how we will incorporate these three points of guidelines into the specific facilities.

A nexus connecting stations, cities, and surrounding areas of north, south, east, and west

I have already mentioned the issues that tend to occur in the development of Tokyo and other metropolitan cities, but there are also unique challenges that JR East needs to overcome for the Shinagawa area.

In this area where the new city will be built, the “Takanawa Ookido (checking station)*” was established on Tokaido road in the Edo period (1603-1868), and in 1872, Japan's first railroad was opened. Since then, the sea was reclaimed and the area served as a rail yard for a long time, so it has a historical background of being a railroad site. However, while the rail yard supported the historical development of railroads during a period of rapid economic growth, it also made it difficult for the people to travel between the Takanawa district in the west, and the Shibaura-Konan district in the east across from the Takanawa Gateway Station.

(*Takanawa Ookido was a gateway to Edo (now Tokyo). It was also one of the checking stations (usually referred to as “Sekisho”) that were located on major roads, mainly for the purposes of controlling the movement of people and certain goods.)

The key to solving this challenge is “forming an Ekimachi (station and town) integrated infrastructure” that seamlessly connects Takanawa Gateway Station, the city, and the surrounding area to create a space where people can cycle through.

In order to connect the surrounding areas, we are planning to develop infrastructure to connect the fragmented east-west and north-south neighborhoods, so that the new station and new city can play a role as a part of the local community.

Specifically, we will construct pedestrian plazas and block-to-block decks in front of Takanawa Gateway Station that pass through to Takanawa district, create a pedestrian road that goes across and over the remaining rail yard, and reconstruct the existing pedestrian tunnel to connect the Takanawa district and Shibaura-Konan district, allowing pedestrians and bicycles to pass from east to west. In addition, we are also planning to place a traffic plaza in front of Takanawa Gateway Station, which will serve as a local transportation hub.

We are also considering the introduction of mobility options down the road, and have previously conducted a demonstration experiment utilizing a boat transportation network in cooperation with the pier of WATERS Takeshiba complex facility. And by providing these options, we believe that we can avoid road congestion in the urban central area and make the flow of people smoother over a wider area.

One of the major features of this project is that the road construction starts through land readjustment projects, which is rarely seen in modern urban development, and furthermore, the development creates the station and the city as a whole. Having a large area of land makes it possible to carry out city planning from scratch in a longer-term perspective, which can be an advantage for rooting ourselves in the community.

Image of the completed pedestrian road (Takanawa district end)

In addition to the surrounding areas, it is also very important to loosely connect various points within the city. We are planning to develop a plaza in front of Takanawa Gateway Station to make the transfer between the station and the city seamless, as well as a deck-level pedestrian network around the said plaza to make traffic between buildings and public spaces smoother.

Furthermore, another major feature in the city is the underground parking network. Due to the long and narrow shape of the site, the road infrastructure is difficult to navigate, and there is a concern that some people may wander around the area before reaching their destination. In order to solve this problem, the respective parking garages and roadways of the new city will be connected to the basement of each building to unify the parking lots, making access to each facility smoother and reducing the amount of traffic above ground. In particular, for logistics, which is essential to the city, we will develop a network that allows trucks to use the underground for smooth deliveries.

In addition, as a result of a long study of local parking rules, mainly in Minato Ward, we’ve designed a system that allows parking lots to hold less than half the number of cars compared to a typical large-scale commercial facility. The starting point of this concept was our desire to create a low-carbon city that is easy for pedestrians to get around, with public transportation like the station, rather than a city that attracts many cars.

A continuity of liveliness that fosters culture and history

One of the guiding principles in our city planning guidelines is to introduce a variety of urban functions beyond office and commercial facilities, such as cultural creation facilities, business supports, and business exchange functions. Today, we’re going to introduce some of them with a focus on cultural creation facilities.

We do not want this city to specialize in any particular type of business, but rather to be a place where people can continue to create new ideas and technologies, and nurture the culture of the local community. To this end, we have placed “cultural creation” at the core of our city planning, and have set the cultural creation facilities in Block 2 as facilities that symbolize the activities of this city.

Specifically, the block will consist of facilities with the function of cultural cultivation, exchange, and communication functions. These facilities will allow people and specialists involved in cultural creation to create and experiment, all visitors to get in touch with creativity, and a variety of creative productions along with visionary and experimental projects to be carried out. They will also be linked to the public spaces throughout the entire city to create a system that can be used as a place for various demonstration experiments.

Unlike other blocks, the cultural creation facilities are characterized by their low-rise buildings. We believe that open spaces where people can come and go seamlessly, such as the aforementioned pedestrian decks, plazas, and city parks, are the kind of environment that will continuously create liveliness, and the accumulation of that will lead to the nurturing of culture. We have realized low-rise buildings in the belief that the cultural creation facilities should be located closer to these spaces and in midst of those succession of liveliness.

And what’s more, new cultures are based on the culture and history of the local community. We have a responsibility to inherit those community’s accumulated history and cultural values to the city, and to pass it onto the next generation.

As a timely and symbolic example of this topic, we have recently announced that a part of the “Takanawa embankment”, which stretches intermittently for about 1.3 kilometers, was unearthed at the development site. This structure was built on the sea in the early Meiji period for railroading. It was a symbol of the Bunmei Kaika (civilization and enlightenment)** after the Meiji Restoration, and was ranked as one of notable site in Tokyo where “trains run on the sea”, as well as being a popular subject of Nishiki-e (woodcut prints)***. Later, it disappeared due to land reclamation. And since new tracks were built on top of it, it was impossible to confirm whether it had actually existed or not. We believe that the Takanawa embankment is an important part of local history for the new city. We are still currently working with Minato Ward and other organizations to investigate this embankment, but we are also considering utilizing it for the new city.

(** Bunmei Kaika, which literally translates as “civilization and enlightenment”, is a Japanese movement of westernization during the Meiji period.)

(*** Nishiki-e is a type of colored woodblock printing that was invented in the Edo period and had been popular through the end of Meiji period.)

Disaster prevention and environmental initiatives using self-generated electricity and unutilized energy

Having experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake, disaster prevention is a responsibility that must be fulfilled when building a city in Japan, where disasters are an inevitable problem. The same is true for the global issue like the environmental load reduction for climate change and other global environmental problems. For this reason, we have set “creating a leading disaster preventative and ecological city” as one of the pillars of the city planning guidelines.

One of the characteristics of a new energy-related city is an independent and decentralized energy network. The energy supply for each district is designed to be provided by self-generated electricity from a power plant directly operated by JR East, along with district heating and cooling facilities and unutilized energy.

The district heating and cooling facilities in Block 3 are designed to optimize heat supply according to the different uses and peak times of offices, residences, hotels, etc., in order to improve energy efficiency. The thermal energy generated here will be supplied to the redevelopment project of Sengakuji Station area, and we are also considering supplying it to other development districts in the future.

In addition, we will make use of unutilized energy with facilities such as biogas power generation facility installed in Block 4, which reduces the volume of food waste by fermenting, and utilize the resulting gas for hot water boilers, along with geothermal, solar, and wind power generation facilities.

District heating and cooling is often a basic function of urban development in Tokyo, but we believe that the use of self-generated electricity for the facilities and an urban biogas facility that utilizes food scraps and other waste are some of the features that are rarely seen in other developments.

And in the event of a disaster, these energy facilities, including emergency generators, will secure power and heat. And at the same time, we’re planning to construct facilities for the temporary accommodation of about 10,000 people, secure the plazas in each city block to provide temporary sojourn space, utilize stockpile warehouses, and communicate disaster and traffic information via signage.

We believe that by implementing independent disaster prevention measures in the city as much as possible, rather than relying solely on that of the state or the government, the government will be able to care for other areas, which will lead to wider disaster prevention measures for the surrounding areas.

We are also taking measures for a low-carbon society across the entire city, such as the railroad network, which is a transportation system with higher environmental performance than other mobility systems, on-site electric generation leveraging unutilized energy and electricity supplied from a power plant directly operated by JR East, on-site energy management system, and the reduction of traffic volume through the aforementioned parking network.

We have introduced the specific facilities that will be implemented based on the three pillars of our guidelines – “forming an Ekimachi (station and town) integrated infrastructure”, “implementing diverse urban functions”, and “creating a leading disaster preventative and ecological city” – for the realization of a “city that will continue for 100 years” that JR East advocates.

Urban development needs to be carried out from all perspectives. In particular, “post-pandemic prosperity”, which is a universal social turning point, is an inevitable point of discussion in creating a new city.

This is a topic that is currently being debated in every sector of the world, from experts in various fields and private sector businesses to the states and administrative agencies, and JR East hasn’t drawn any definitive conclusions yet either.

However, people always have a desire for new things. When people visit this city, we need to provide them with a continuous connection between the city, the train station, the community, and the outside world that makes traveling open and airy. We believe that this openness will be important for the world in the future.

In this sense, the Takanawa Gateway Station will serve as a local community by seamlessly connecting the fragmented east-west and north-south neighborhoods, as well as the station with the inside and outside of the new city. At the same time, it will also serve as a hub for international exchange between Tokyo and the rest of the country, connecting Japan and the world, nurturing local culture, and translating into a place where new businesses can continue to be born. We believe that the vision of the city that Shinagawa Development Project aspires will gain even more significance in the world of the future.

Cooperation with Yuji Murakami from JR East
Interview and Edit by Takuya Wada
Photograph by Yutaro Yamaguchi
Translation by Keitaro Takama
Content Direction by blkswn publishers Inc.

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