Cheap Girl Toys: The New Urbanism: Kichijoji Style

To marketers nothing is more important than where people live. Thus, since 2003 I have been investigating life in American residential neighborhoods. I have visited numerous examples, including, for example, Celebration, the small town developed by Disney next door to Disney World, and the seaside development featured in the movie Truman Show, regarded as a leading example of the new urbanism.

No question about it, the quality of design is better in neighborhoods deliberately created to exemplify the new urban ideals. Places like the Seattle suburban Issaquah Highland neighborhood created by Peter Calthorpe, where Microsoft executives working class people, and individuals recently released from jail live together neighbors, are truly impressive achievements. Returning to Japan, however, it seems to me that Japanese neighborhoods also exemplify this trend.

To understand the implications of the new urbanism, the place to begin is Calthorpe’s Next American Metropolis(1993), in which the now famous architect and urban planner calls for a redefinition of the American Dream. But to understand what he means by “redefinition” we need to ask, first, how the American Dream was originally defined.

The original American Dream was, no doubt about it, the suburbs. In the years following World War II, the dream of an American metropolis emerged, in which, writes Calthorpe, the key elements were the suburbs and the nuclear family.

The suburbs would be filled with one-family houses, each with its own lawn and garden. Those houses would be where housewives and children stayed while men went off to work in the city.

Now, however, families have become more diverse. Some people never marry. Women go on working after marriage. Divorce produces single-parent families. Gay couples form families. Residential areas, however, continue to sprawl into the suburbs. The number of people commuting to work by automobile increases. More and more roads are built. Everyone seems to assume that land and energy are unlimited, that jobs will be in the city, that only men will be working. The results are polluted air, decaying city centers, and suburbs in which private life becomes increasingly isolated.

Since these assumptions about the suburbs and families are no longer tenable, a new American Dream must be imagined, providing a new vision for cities and their suburbs and the metropolitan regions they comprise.

How, then, does Calthorpe “redefine” the American Dream? Diversity, simplicity, and human scale are its three key elements.

Diversity implies that the communities that exemplify the new American Dream will not be bedroom communities in which white-collar workers, their wives and children live in detached houses. Instead they will be places where many different kinds of families, people of different social classes and different work styles live together. It will, thus, have to include many different types of housing. Besides housing it will also have to include workplaces and business establishments.

Community will be important, and the selfishness and isolation of life in existing suburbs will be criticized. Instead, an environment will be created that by its very nature encourages communications among the neighbors who live there.

The old American Dream, in which my car and my home were central, emphasized private life. With growing dependence on the automobile, opportunities to meet people unlike oneself declined. People paid less attention to each other and became more isolated, and the suburbs became hotbeds for crime.

In the increasingly lonely suburbs, the radius of children’s activities shrank. Dependence on television and video games increased. In one study comparing children’s behavior in a small town in Vermont with that in Orange County, California, the children in Vermont were comfortable walking by themselves to places three times more distant. Childen in Orange County watched four times more television.

Simplicity and human scale mean rejecting the sprawl created by dependence on the automobile and creation of walkable neighborhoods connected by public transportation. Homes, schools, parks, stores, and workplaces should all be within walking distance.

This, then, is the new humanism advocated by Calthorpe in his designs for new communities and his visions for new types of metropolitan regions. Which brings me back to Japan, and a neighborhood called Kichijoji. It is time, I believe, that we in Japan should also consider a new urbanism, rooted in Japanese tradition.

This was the idea that led me last year to join forces with Tsukuba University professor Watari Kazuyoshi to research Kichijoji and publish a book together called Kichijoji Styleâ€”50 Secrets of a Fun Neighborhood (Bungeishunju, 2007).

Why did we choose Kichijoji? Kichijoji is part of Musashino City, itself a part of the Tokyo Metropolis, and a place where young people like to live. It is at the same time a No. 1 preference for newly married couples and elderly people as well. Why is it, we wondered, so popular with so many different kinds of people?

Kichijoji is located about 20km from the center of Tokyo, a distance that earns it the label suburb. It is also a bedroom community, many of whose residents commute to work in Tokyo. Inokashira Park and the headwaters of the Tama River provide abundant natural beauty. Still, however, real estate prices are reasonable.

On the other side of the coin, Kichijoji offers many urban amenities. Population growth stopped in 1965. But while its growth as a bedroom community stalled, the late 60s saw a proliferation of department stores, boutiques and fashion buildings, expanding its business potential. Theaters, museums and galleries followed. Both consumption and culture were liberated from dependence on central Tokyo. Kichijoji became a self-sustaining autonomous community.

It isn’t, of course, self-sufficient in food, though 80 farming households remain nearby in other parts of Musashino City. Plans call for promotion of local produce and programs to encourage its use in school lunch programs.

Because, moreover, this is an affluent neighborhood, financial services and real estate companies employ many people here. Universities and technical schools attract many student commuters. In Musashino City, the daytime population is larger than the nighttime population, much larger in the immediate vicinity of Kichijoji station.

Kichijoji thus combines a suburban residential area with rich natural beauty with urban business and cultural facilities, in a way that is rarely found, anywhere in the world. Its marriage of urban convenience and rural flavor is close to the original garden city vision that motivated the creation of the first suburbs early in the 20th century.

Kichijoji is walkable. In this respect it fulfills one of the new urbanism’s most important ideals, being able to get about enjoyably on foot. Cars are largely restricted to two avenues that border the neighborhood and rarely penetrate the residential zones. Few cars are found close to the shopping street and department stores near the North Exit of the station. Even bicycles are regulated, making this a pedestrian paradise.

Isetan, Tokyu, Marui and Kintetsu (now Yodabashi Camera) department stores surround the station, encouraging walkers to circulate around it, providing traffic for the smaller shops around them. This is truly a fun neighborhood for a walk.

A neighborhood in which walking is a pleasure is more than a business or cultural asset, it also deters crime. Opportunities to see people at work increase and contribute to children’s socialization. Such neighborhoods are ideal, moreover, for creative workers in small and home office (SOHO) businesses. All of these factors contribute to Kichijoji Style, a distinctively Japanese example of the new urbanism.

Marketing and the suburbs evolved during the same period, the post-WWII era in which both consumerism and the suburbs experienced rapid growth. How marketing will work in the cityscapes envisioned by exponents of the new urbanism is a fascinating question.