There is a noticeable difference between the modern city and the castle town of the Edo period with regard to their internal structure. The former, as a whole, has grown in a piecemeal and uncontrolled manner under a variety of influences. On the other hand, the latter was constructed under a planning for the display of feudal power and spatial relations among residents were arranged to maintain an appropriate hierarchical social structure. With this contrast in mind, the processes of urban growth of eleven cities originated from castle towns in Tôhoku District are presented as a comparative case study for the way in which the urban areas of original castle towns have been transformed into the modern counterparts. The following cities, which are put in order according to their population size in 1940 (in parentheses), have been selected; Sendai (220, 000), Morioka (79, 000), Hachinohe (73, 000), Yamagata (69, 000), Akita (60, 000), Hirosaki (51, 000), Yonezawa (48, 000), Fukushima (48, 000), Aizu-Wakamatsu (48, 000), Tsuruoka (35, 000), and Yokote (26, 000). The changes of land use pattern of each city from the Edo period until World War II have been reconstructed based on various historical maps and writings, most of which have already been published by the author.
Accompained with the collapse of the feudal system in 1868, castles were demolished without exception and the central quarter of traditional commercial districts became a new center of eleven cities. After the intermediate stage of Meiji, the areal structure of each city changed with significant differences among the cities, which were put into five groups.
I. The cities in which the traditional structure of the castle town as a whole remains almost intact. They comprise Yonezawa, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Tsuruoka and Yokote.
II. The cities in which the traditional structure has been modified a little according to the radial growth of shopping streets running outwards from the city center. The group contains Morioka, Hachinohe, Akita and Hirosaki.
III. The city in which the growth of the modern structure is in competition with the legacy of the traditional one. Sendai serves as the only illustrative case among the eleven cities. In this city, the continuous ring like zone characterized by different uses of houses, shops and workshops has expanded into the residential area of the former warrior class around the city center.
IV. The city in which the new zonal land use pattern has developed outside the traditional structure. Fukushima is the case in point. This development arose under the definite physical condition that the castle town of Fukushima was confined within a limited area.
V. The city in which city-planning had a particular impact upon the emergence of the modern structure. This is the case in Yamagata.
When we arrange Groups I, II and III of cities in order, the series seems to show the process through which the urban structure has been transformed in accordance with the expansion of the population size of cities.
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