Marunouchi Nakadori Street has become the city's living room

Currently, Nakadori is 21m wide, and the buildings on both sides are 31m high with aligned eaves, and the ground is covered in rhythmic patterns of muted-colored porphyry on both the sidewalk and roadway. Deciduous trees such as Zelkova, Katsura, American Gum, and China trees are planted along the street, and planters, hanging flowers, and benches placed between the road and the sidewalk create a relaxed atmosphere. These green spaces, along with the gorgeous show windows of the brand shops both inside and outside the building that line the first floors of the buildings, create a seasonal atmosphere that is a delight to passersby. Especially in early spring, when the gentle sunlight shines on the street surrounded by fresh greenery, the sunlight filtering through the trees is very soft, and together with the show windows filled with brightly colored products and the refreshing breeze, you can feel the arrival of spring.

Yoshinobu Ashihara, in his books "Design of Exterior Spaces" and "Aesthetics of Streets," states that the distance at which a human face can be recognized is 70 to 80 feet, and that a good relationship between the width of a street and the height of a building can be expressed as H/D ≒ 1.5. Bernard Rudofsky, who has written a thought-provoking treatise on the relationship between street space and people, writes in his famous book "Street for People" that a street is not just a road, but exists for the people who walk there. A street is not an area but a volume, and it is a companion to the buildings that stand there. A street is a mother. It is a room for the city, a fertile soil, and a place of upbringing. In light of these indicators, Marunouchi Nakadori Street is exactly 70 feet, or about 21 meters wide, and is at a distance where the faces of people walking on the sidewalk on the other side and the appearance of the stores can be roughly recognized. Furthermore, the eaves height of the buildings facing Nakadori is 31 meters, so H/D ≒ 1.5 also applies. Furthermore, Nakadori Street truly plays the role of a "people-centered street," and for the people who base their activities here, it has become a "living room-like space" in Marunouchi that, together with the buildings along the street, gives a "comfortable" and "sense of security." This is, needless to say, not simply the result of urban planning and architecture, but also the power of planning and city management.

Looking back at the history of Marunouchi Nakadori Street, when the name first came into use around 1918, the street was seven ken (approximately 12 m) wide, and three-story brick office buildings with the character "Naka" at the beginning of their names, such as "Naka 9-gokan," were lined up along the street. At that time, Marunouchi was already thriving as a business center with 30 buildings, partly due to the opening of Tokyo Station in 1914. After the war, in order to respond to the sudden increase in office demand due to Japan's high economic growth from 1955 to 1965 and motorization, Marunouchi was rebuilt into a group of reinforced concrete office buildings with eaves heights of 31 m, and the street was widened to 21 m.

Looking back on it like this, it's easy to imagine that over the next few decades, this street will take on new functions and uses. I look forward to seeing the area continue to mature and change in Marunouchi Nakadori Street.