The Effect of Energy Costs on Land-use Patterns in the Nagoya Metropolitan Region

Abstract

The effect of the higher energy costs of the 1970s on trends in urbanization and suburbanization is studied for the Nagoya metropolitan region. Comparisons are made with trends in the Chicago metropolitan area. By the end of the decade, energy costs had assumed a much larger share of the Japanese personal budget than at the beginning of the decade. Somewhat smaller cars were used, and the frequency of trips for non-essential travel was reduced. In the United States, down-sizing was the chief method of coping with higher energy costs. In Nagoya, the growth of industrial production slowed, but the rate of movement of industry to the suburbs was lower than in Chicago, where there was a mass movement of industry out of the central city, part of a trend that began long before the energy crisis of the 1970s. Unlike the U. S., Japan experienced increasing real incomes in the 1970s, making it possible for individuals to overcome the detrimental effect of higher energy costs. The main factors that appear to be responsible for continuing suburbanization in the Nagoya region, in spite of the higher energy costs, are the rapidly rising land values in Nagoya City and the willingness of large employers to subsidize employee commuting costs. If there is an increase in energy costs in the future in Japan, the size of the increase will have to be much greater than that in the 1970s to effect any clearly discernible change in land use patterns in the Nagoya metropolitan region.