This research aims to clarify the history of the Amahou Line and the reality of land readjustment along the line. The Amahou Line was originally planned as a line of the Takarazuka Amagasaki Electric Railway Co., Ltd., but the idea to make it an elevated railway was abandoned because of a city planning problem. Accordingly, it was reconstructed as a limited highway, and it became the first limited highway in the Kansai region.
Land readjustments along limited highways were planned and decided during wartime. The linear land readjustment along a limited highway in Kyoto is well known as a precedent among those carried out by the six major cities in Japan, and it is positioned as a rare case of land readjustment that covers a wide area of a region. Because the Amahou Line covered the three municipalities of Amagasaki, Itami, and Kohama, it was planned for land readjustment by a public organization under the initiative of the Hyogo Prefecture. Judging from the arrangement of pedestrian paths, the Amahou land readjustment project is supposed to have close relations with the city planning of green spaces in Nishimuko; the readjustment project was supposedly planned as part of air defense city planning during the wartime. Specifically, the project was planned and formulated to begin with the south side of the Amahou Line close to the restricted industrial district, but only part of the facilities was constructed before the end of the war.
Discussions were held on how to deal with the project, and decreasing the size of the project was discussed in accordance with the guidelines drawn for the postwar policy of boom cities, as observed in Hirohata and Takasago where an industrial city plan was formulated during wartime. Eventually, however, the project did not materialize, and the Amahou Line was extended as part of another road project after the war.
As stated above, the Amahou Line was the first limited highway in the Kansai region that was converted as part of the project to construct a railway line. An extensive land readjustment by a public organization was planned along the Amahou Line positioned as a special case during wartime. The plan had contents that were affected by air defense city planning during wartime, and it was formulated in combination with city-planned green spaces. It was also positioned as a typical land readjustment by a public organization from the wartime period to the postwar period because the same measure implemented for new industrial city planning was taken to conclude the project after the war.
