The changing language of and persisting patterns in the urban design of Edo/Tokyo

Abstract

The city is an environment formed by the interaction and integration of different practices. The practices of the city involved a great number of individuals and social groups whose cosmologies are different and whose interests are in conflict.

In this paper, the author attempts to analyse the changing signification and persisting vernacular elements of the urban design of Tokyo (called Edo up till 1868) since its beginnings in the seventeenth century.

Topography was the most important factor in the urban design of this period: alluvial plains and reclaimed land were designated for the commercial and residential use of the commoners (these districts being referred to as the shitamachi) and the diluvial, hilly parts (referred to as the yamanote) were assigned to the feudal lords and their samurai subjects as residential quarters.

Destruction caused by the Kanto earthquake in 1923 and ensuing reconstruction plans were epochal inducements towards the transforming of Tokyo from a canal city into a land-traffic city. Nonetheless, most of the popular commercial centres continued to be found at the junctions of canal traffic systems and at sacred places, where moats and panoramas dominated by distantly seen symbolic mountains (Fuji and Tsukuba) were important elements.