A Study on the Relationship between “Culture” and “Urban Design” in the Development of Minato Mirai District in Yokohama

Abstract

    Based on administrative documents and testimonies of (former) local government officials, this paper examines the relationship between redevelopment and cultural policy in the urban center of Yokohama City. At the center of the discussion in this paper was the idea that the direction of urban space indicated in past urban policies determines the way urban space is organized today. In the Minato Mirai district, high-rise buildings and housing complexes are still being built one after another as of 2021. This scene symbolizes the urban redevelopment based on global competition among cities since the Fordism crisis. This district was created by waterfront development in the 1980s, and was once called a “creative experimental city,” a term that now seems to have been largely forgotten. However, this term reminds us of the creative city policies that have been seen in municipalities around Japan since the 2000s, which link culture and urban policies. The concept of the “creative experimental city” that arose in the 1990s is one of the variations that has been repeatedly created as an image of the city, although it has something in common with contemporary creative city policies. It has been reduced to a discussion of urban design that interprets “culture” as the preservation of historical landscapes. However, this is hardly an attempt to implement the idea of the creative city, which is to revitalize the creative industries of the city. In this way, the Minato Mirai district, which had proclaimed itself a “creative experimental city,” turned into a space where skyscrapers were “concentrated” for the purpose of inducing capital through “selection,” which is different from a creative city.