2017 Volume 63 Issue 4 Pages 304-319
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the structural changes in manufacturing industries in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area from the viewpoint of industrial location, and also to focus on the relationship between industrial locational changes and urban redevelopment.
The following points were made clear by this study. First, the Tokyo metropolitan area is one of the most economically developed world cities, and manufacturing industries play a central part in Tokyo's industrial structure. However, an inter-regional income transfer analysis among the Tokyo metropolitan area and other regions reveals that the centrality of Tokyo in manufacturing industries has weakened since the late 1990s.
Second, during the last two decades, the hollowing out of Japanese processing and assembly-type manufacturing industries has brought about structural transformations in the corporate inter-regional divisions of labor and its locational hierarchy in Japan. Related to this transformation, locational adjustment in these industries has accelerated in the Tokyo metropolitan area in conjunction with urban redevelopment. Land use conversion due to plant closures has allowed the implementation of large-scale and high-rise urban areal renewal.
