Thoughts on urban development

As a member of the development project for this town, I was involved in the survey planning, design, and Construction Supervision of the entire town development for 10 years from the 1980s. Most of the facilities necessary for daily life such as schools, hospitals, and commercial facilities were already in place, but only about 10 years had passed since residents first moved in, and the so-called new town atmosphere still remained.

At that time, experts from a wide range of fields were working as a project team to consider how to develop the town, with the aim of creating a "comfortable living environment where people and nature are in harmony." Looking back, this team had a certain characteristic. All members of the team lived in the town. Many members from architecture, Landscape Design, business planning, sales, and management seriously exchanged opinions to improve their town. Of course, it was natural for each member to maximize their performance in their respective fields of expertise, but they also went beyond their own scope of work and considered the feelings of the residents, discussing the future shape of the town. My job as a professional engineer was to create design documents, but a major theme was how to materialize things that could not be expressed by drawings and numbers alone. To achieve this, I aimed to create a living environment that considered the formation of a community of residents, while viewing roads, buildings, and parks as a whole. After that, the development area gradually expanded, and various facilities such as golf courses, large commercial facilities, business facilities, universities, public libraries, and hotels were developed. Now, it seems that the environment that was originally intended is being shared by the residents and is steadily carving out the history of the town.

Even after leaving this project, he was in charge of development plans all over the country, and was involved in town development, making use of his experience in Sendai. Times have changed, and large-scale developments like this are now almost nonexistent in Japan. With the country now in an era of population decline and fewer suitable development sites, it has become more difficult to carry out such development projects. On the other hand, the housing environment in China and other Southeast Asian countries is not necessarily good, and with economic development, it is expected that development projects will increase in the future. Our company is also receiving more requests for consulting on town development in these countries. The plan is to carry out developments on a scale of several thousand hectares in areas that have previously been used as farmland or areas that have been completely unused.

Many of these projects are based on the premise of a "business" that aims to recover investments in the short term, and the ideas behind urban development in Japan do not apply as is. Different countries have different climates and geographical features, such as soil, water, the way the sun moves, and the way the rain falls. Cultures and lifestyles also differ greatly. However, even in such cases, knowledge and wisdom gained from hands-on experience in the field, such as city development that is in harmony with nature and that takes into consideration the feelings of the residents, is often useful.

Our mission is to present the best plan to business operators, but at the same time, we also have a mission to provide a town that is easy to live in and that people can be proud of. A town that is built will eventually leave its creators and be developed by the residents themselves. We want to create a town that can build up a history for 50 or 100 years, while considering the perspective of the users who live there and use the facilities, and looking at the overall picture of the town.