This paper aims to identify the changes of land-use in the districts with a significant structure called “shell-substance”.“Shell-substance” is a structure commonly found in densely inhabited Japanese cities with the rows of high buildings along main streets that surround the block (=shell) and a clump of small housings surrounded by the rows (=substance). A block in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, facing to Shinjuku Street, is chosen as a case study area. All sites and units of housings and buildings in the years of '81, '86, '91, and '96 are surveyed and are arranged as a database.
By analysing changing patterns in sites and units, it is identified that office buildings along trunk roads that may become parts of the “shell” are getting higher and larger in contrast with the small buildings of the “substance”. Secondly, there are a large number of site-unifications at the “shell”. Condominiums developments are mostly found inside the “substance” and their impacts on neighboring buildings is not negligible.
