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Three Tokyo regions: The TMR, South Kanto, and the National Capital Region. Source: Rendered by Sarah Searcy and author. The National Capital Region also includes the Greater Tokyo Area.
Source publication
This study investigates whether or not income stratification by place has widened within the Tokyo Metropolitan Region (TMR) over the past 30 years. Its analysis shows that although income stratification among the TMR's 228 municipalities has expanded noticeably since 1980, it has remained far less severe than that in America's three largest metrop...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... these theorists drawing conclusions based upon empirical research on the South Kanto Region? As shown in Figure 2, sometimes called the Greater Tokyo Area, South Kanto has been defined as the four prefectures of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Chiba. According to preliminary counts from the 2010 Population Census of Japan, this region contained Tokyo's 23 Ku and 190 other municipalities, and had a population of 35.6 mil- lion. ...
Context 2
... contained the 23 Ku and 323 other municipalities with a combined population of 43.4 million (Government of Japan, 1991-2011). Or were they studying the census- defined Kanto Major Metropolitan Area, a metropolis that in 2010 included 23 Ku and 195 other municipalities located in parts of nine prefectures, and containing 36.9 million inhabitants? (Figs. ...
Citations
... The objective of this paper is to analyze the spatial distribution of the Super Creative Class by place of work and place of residence for the 138 municipalities (cities and wards) (Jacobs 2012(Jacobs , 2014 of the Greater Tokyo Area (GTA) to better understand the key predictors that drive the spatial distribution of the Super Creative Class in Tokyo. The primary findings of analysis of the spatial distribution of the Super Creative Class will be an important first step to better understanding the creative economy of Tokyo area. ...
... Before discussing the Creative Class, it is necessary to explore the study area of this paper, the Greater Tokyo Area (GTA). The GTA is the largest urban agglomeration in Japan and is one of three major global centers of economy, trade and commerce, along with New York City and London (Csomos 2017;Csomos and Derudder 2014;Cybriwsky 1998Cybriwsky , 2011Fujita 1991Fujita , 2003Jacobs 2005Jacobs , 2011Jacobs , 2012Sassen 1991Sassen , 2011. Unlike London and New York, however, Tokyo offers a more powerful lens for viewing the evolution and prospects of postindustrial cities including those in East Asia and other Asian countries (Yusuf and Nabeshima 2006). ...
... Approximately 19 percent of Tokyo's total workforce is classified as part of the Creative Class (Yoshimoto 2009;Somusho 2015;Asada 2016) (Table 1). Additionally, the GTA is the largest urban agglomeration in Japan and is one of three major global centers of economy, trade and commerce, along with New York City and London (Fujita 1991(Fujita , 2003Sassen 1991;Jacobs 2005Jacobs , 2012Jacobs , 2016Aoyama et al., 2011;Somusho 2015). ...
... As the main form of new urbanization, urban agglomeration is an important platform to support national economic growth, promote coordinated regional development, and participate in international competition and cooperation (Fang and Yu, 2017;Xia and Zhai, 2022;Yang et al., 2022). Metropolitan area is an important spatial form within urbanization agglomeration (He et al., 2023b;Jacobs, 2012). In recent years, with the acceleration of urbanization, metropolitan areas have been formed rapidly and partitioned into different functional areas to give full play to their advantages (Verburg et al., 2009). ...
Exploring the differences of ecosystem service values (ESV) in different functional areas is the basis for implementing differentiated ecological management in metropolitan areas. In this study, a general evaluation framework was first established to explore the differences of ESV in different functional areas of metropolitan areas. Then, taking Nanjing metropolitan area as a typical case, the land use transfer matrix and equivalent factor method were used to evaluate land use changes and ESV in different functional areas (moderate development area, key development area and optimization improvement area). Finally, spatial autocorrelation analysis, hotspot analysis and one-way analysis of variance were adopted to explore the spatial agglomeration characteristics, distribution of hotspots and cold spots and significant differences of ESV in different functional areas. The results showed that the expansion of developed land and degradation of ecological land occurred in different functional areas, especially in the optimization improvement area, which resulted in a significant decrease of ESV in different functional areas. The ESV of the three functional areas showed spatial positive correlation, but the distribution of hotspots and cold spots was different in different functional areas. The one-way analysis of variance found that optimization improvement area displayed significant differences in the values of four ecosystem service types with those of other functional areas, but there were no significant differences between moderate development area and key development area. In addition, the ecological function area with clear boundary was identified, which was mainly composed of the northern water network area (Hongze, Jinhu, Gaoyou) and the southern hilly area (Ningguo, Jixi, Jingde and Guangde). Therefore, differential ecological management measures such as green space construction in the optimization improvement area and ecological compensation mechanism in the moderate development area were formulated to promote the sustainable development of metropolitan ecosystems. This study can also provide reference for exploring the differences of ESV in different functional areas of other metropolitan areas within and beyond China.
... Coming from a low base, the city has become less egalitarian from an income point of view, as described by Jacobs for the period 1980-2007 using a CoV analysis of the Tokyo Metropolitan Region (Jacobs, 2012), a finding also corroborated more recently by Hashimoto (2021). Much of this increase in inequality can be attributed to the central business wards pulling ahead of all other administrative units from the 1980s onward. ...
This paper develops a "Tokyo model" of urban development during the 1955-1975 postwar period. To this end, data on physical attributes and socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods is analyzed for administrative subunits of the Tokyo prefecture. It is found that a set of generic neighborhood features, distributed evenly across the special ward area, help explain why Tokyo's postwar development proceeded in an egalitarian fashion. The insights inform the debate on neighborhoods in today's Tokyo, and whether there were elements worth adapting or replicating elsewhere, particularly in developing megacities.
... Vormann (2018) finally argues that the benefits and costs of neoliberalization have been unevenly distributed because certain disadvantaged social groups have unequally paid the price of its social, environmental, and security costs. Jacobs (2012) supports the viewpoint by unravelling the entrepreneurial waterfront redevelopment projects that have further deteriorated income inequality in the metropolitan Tokyo area. Tokyo's Waterfront City Project was intended to generate a "Japanese Silicon Valley" to be the base of Japanese high-tech enterprises, and this initiative has been supported by the Japanese central government "politically and financially" (Jacobs, 2012). ...
... Jacobs (2012) supports the viewpoint by unravelling the entrepreneurial waterfront redevelopment projects that have further deteriorated income inequality in the metropolitan Tokyo area. Tokyo's Waterfront City Project was intended to generate a "Japanese Silicon Valley" to be the base of Japanese high-tech enterprises, and this initiative has been supported by the Japanese central government "politically and financially" (Jacobs, 2012). However, the previous low-and middle-income public affordable housing had to be demolished to make way for new upper-class residential units to attract white-collar workers (Jacobs, 2012). ...
... Tokyo's Waterfront City Project was intended to generate a "Japanese Silicon Valley" to be the base of Japanese high-tech enterprises, and this initiative has been supported by the Japanese central government "politically and financially" (Jacobs, 2012). However, the previous low-and middle-income public affordable housing had to be demolished to make way for new upper-class residential units to attract white-collar workers (Jacobs, 2012). In addition to that, the income growth rate (represented by household income and per capita income) of the district where the project is located is not synchronized with that of other districts (Jacobs, 2012). ...
Post-industrial waterfront redevelopment refers to the transformation from the Keynesian-Fordist industrial landscape to the post-industrial service-based waterfront (Vormann, 2014). Neoliberal financial devolution has empowered local development coalitions to tap into local financial resources by leveraging private investment. Coalitions made up of city hall and private sector actors may be considered as urban development regimes that can utilize their institutional resources to make potent governing decisions (Stone, 1989). This research focuses on the financing of waterfront redevelopment projects in Chinese port cities under neoliberalism. The study examines Qingdao Olympic Sailing Centre as an example of how such urban development coalitions function to promote waterfront redevelopment projects, and by extension, to understand how post-industrial waterfront redevelopment is pursued in Chinese port cities. In addition to the Sailing Centre, the relocation of Beihai Shipyard exemplifies how post-industrial waterfront redevelopment, in conjunction with the effect of gentrification, shapes the neoliberal urban landscape. The financing story of the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Centre is explored as a case study of entrepreneurial urban redevelopment strategy, and this study uncovers the process to present how an urban development coalition extracts land value from entrepreneurial strategies amid the trend of neoliberalism. How the Chinese urban growth coalitions, made up of the local city halls and private developers, conduct city redevelopment projects in an entrepreneurial way via mobilizing market elements and land resources to avoid the conventional budget public financing has been missing in past literature. Hence, the discussion about the financing of the waterfront redevelopment projects in the second-tier Chinese port cities contributes to filling the literature gap of how the second-tier Chinese cities conduct great-mega projects through off-budget financial instruments.
... These are the white-collar residential districts that are spread out in sectors on the western high ground areas and the blue-collar residential districts that span the eastern low-lying areas to the southwestern outskirts where today there are many manufacturing plants (Kurasawa 1986). Since the 1980s, empirical research on Tokyo has noted that while the socio-economic polarization has progressed, the level of residential segregation is still low compared to Western countries (Jacobs 2005(Jacobs , 2012Fujita and Hill 2012). For example, some scholars (Jacobs 2005(Jacobs , 2012Toyoda 2007Toyoda , 2011Toyoda , 2012Hashimoto 2011;Hashimoto and Asakawa 2020;Fujita and Hill 2012) have found that residential segregation progressed among municipalities or at a distance from the city center; that is, in the form of an increase in the level of income in the city center and Yamanote (high ground areas), and a decrease in peripheral districts and Shitamachi (low-lying areas) from the 1980s until the 2000s, with only a brief interruption immediately after the bubble economy burst. ...
... Since the 1980s, empirical research on Tokyo has noted that while the socio-economic polarization has progressed, the level of residential segregation is still low compared to Western countries (Jacobs 2005(Jacobs , 2012Fujita and Hill 2012). For example, some scholars (Jacobs 2005(Jacobs , 2012Toyoda 2007Toyoda , 2011Toyoda , 2012Hashimoto 2011;Hashimoto and Asakawa 2020;Fujita and Hill 2012) have found that residential segregation progressed among municipalities or at a distance from the city center; that is, in the form of an increase in the level of income in the city center and Yamanote (high ground areas), and a decrease in peripheral districts and Shitamachi (low-lying areas) from the 1980s until the 2000s, with only a brief interruption immediately after the bubble economy burst. These studies also provide evidence on the existence of a concentric ring structure in the city center based on occupational status (Koizumi 2010;Aoi and Nakazawa 2014;Nakazawa 2016). ...
Socio-economic residential segregation is an important issue of social concern and academic interest. Using population census data, we analyze the changes in residential segregation by finer occupational groups at the neighborhood level and their local spatial distribution in Tokyo from 1980 to 2005. This period was characterized by increasing economic disparities in Japan. We find that: 1) Multiple segregation indices provide evidence of some level of residential segregation by occupational groups at the neighborhood level in Tokyo. The level of residential segregation is higher for both ends of the occupational hierarchy than it is for other occupational groups. 2) While the overall level of residential segregation has continually declined, this does not necessarily translate into desegregation between opposite social groups. Furthermore, there are different patterns of changes in residential segregation, even between white- and gray-collar workers. Therefore, using finer or larger occupational groups leads to different insights on the changes in socio-spatial segregation. For the highest occupational group (managerial workers), the level of residential segregation from the lowest group was growing. However, segregation also increased from other occupational groups, except for a short period immediately following the collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s. Managerial workers were even more spatially concentrated in central areas of Tokyo, which were already highly concentrated.
... Most longitudinal research on intra-urban inequalities draws on data from after the 1970s, and therefore operates within a context of increasing inequalities between individuals in industrial nations (Piketty 2014). This is also the case regarding the few studies on intra-urban inequalities that exist for Tokyo (Jacobs 2012;Fujita and Child Hill 2016). These studies show that, coming from a low base, inequalities between different parts of the Tokyo prefecture or metropolitan region have generally been increasing. ...
This paper demonstrates empirically that Tokyo’s rapid post-war growth coincided with decreasing intra-urban inequalities in the special ward area, both in terms of private and public living standards. This phenomenon has not received much attention to date because Japan’s income inequalities were generally very low during this period. However, megacity growth of this kind is normally associated with growing segregation. This paper develops the narrative of ‘spatial egalitarianism’. It attributes low intra-urban inequalities to Tokyo’s homogenous urban form, equal economic structure of its neighbourhoods, and a redistributive intermediate layer of government that took a hands-off approach to urban planning. The implications are of relevance to today’s developing megacities in Asia and beyond.
... Another definition of the Tokyo area is the Tokyo Metropolitan Region (hereinafter, referred to as Region), which includes suburban areas of neighboring municipalities. Studies at the level of municipalities found that the distribution of high-income residents shifted from the suburbs to the city from the 1980s to the 2000s (Jacobs 2012;Toyoda 2007). They also stress that residential segregation has increased with elevated income levels in Yamanote and the city center, and decreased income levels in Shitamachi and the peripheral area. ...
... In addition, Fujita and Hill (2012) argued that several factors, including a centralized tax system and public housing policy, prevent income inequality from leading to class-based segregation in Tokyo. Jacobs (2005Jacobs ( , 2012 confirmed that residential segregation in Tokyo was less than in the larger US metropolitan areas, despite the fact that income disparity between municipalities expanded in the Tokyo metropolitan area after the 1980s. He emphasizes the significance of severe restrictions on immigration (the number of migrant workers is very low in Tokyo) and the government policy to prevent socio-economic fragmentation of municipalities in Japan. ...
Similar to other industrialized countries, Japan has experienced a growth in income inequality since the 1980s. Furthermore, in the past few decades, Tokyo has come to adopt a more liberalist position for not only welfare and housing policy of the state but also to urban policy. This chapter examines the changes in socio-spatial inequality in Tokyo from 2000 to 2015. During this period, segregation indices confirm some level of residential separation between the top and bottom occupational groups, and segregation is fairly stable over time. This suggests that certain factors counteract the increase of residential segregation. A comparison between the Tokyo Metropolitan Region and the core city reveals that the core city amplifies spatial inequality. In contrast to the limited change in the city-wide levels of segregation, the changes in the residential patterns show that people with high occupational status tend to concentrate around the main railway station in suburban areas in the region and inside the core city, especially adjacent to the central neighborhoods.
... This combination of influences fostered a rapid rise in part-time relative to full-time employment in the Japanese labor market. It also provoked a significant rise in interlocal income stratification among the 23 Ku and within the Kanto MMA after 1999 (Jacobs 2005;2012). ...
... The decision of the Central and Tokyo Metropolitan Governments to focus a large portion of their public spending on the waterfront (the Odaiba area) and core area redevelopment in the Ku has further exacerbated this situation. Nonetheless, the municipal merger, public housing, and regional planning initiatives of the Japanese government have allowed the MMA's distribution of income to remain at a much more equitable level than that in the USA's three largest urban regions: New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago (Jacobs 2012). As a result, Tokyo, host to the 2020 Olympics, should remain an interesting case study for scholars and students to compare with Western global city-regions, for some time to come. ...
Located in eastern Japan on the Kanto Plain and off Tokyo Bay, the 23 Tokubetsu‐Ku encompass the territory formerly known as the City of Tokyo. Host to more than 9 million residents and 8 million workers, the Tokyo Ku are situated within a city‐region of nearly 37 million inhabitants, with 19 million in employment. Known for its high cost of living and its relatively lower levels of crime, income inequality, and racial‐ethnic diversity, Tokyo represents an interesting case study for scholars and students to compare with Western global city‐regions.
... This provoked economic growth in the America's Nashville, Columbus, and Lexington 9 For the direct published debates between the two groups, see Hill and Kim (2001);Friedmann (2001); Sassen (2001). 10 Three prime examples include: Hill and Fujita (1995); Hill (1996); Fujita and Hill (1997); 11 Among the numerous examples of Hill's students advancing the Nested City Thesis have been: Indergaard (2003); Wang (2003Wang ( , 2006and Jacobs (2004and Jacobs ( , 2008and Jacobs ( , 2009and Jacobs ( , 2011and Jacobs ( , 2012; Jacobs has been the most vocal of these, dedicating ten articles and one-third of an edited book elaborating upon the perspective (Jacobs, 2013). One recent scalding critique of World/Global City theory was Therborn (2011). ...
... Conversely, situated within a centralized unitary state, Japanese municipal authority has been circumscribed by national laws, and local functions and implementation have frequently been guided by national policy objectives. As Richard Child Hill (1990aHill ( , 1990b and Jacobs (2004Jacobs ( , 2012 demonstrated, these dissimilar State contexts have then uniquely influenced urban development trajectories in these nations. Whereas American parochialism has helped foster extremely uneven intra-metropolitan economic and spatial outcomes, Japanese centralism has produced more relatively balanced development. ...
... This is not to suggest that scale, in combination with other factors, has facilitated convergence among these megalopolises. For example, New York has experienced much greater inter-municipal income inequality, political fragmentation, and geographic dispersion in comparison to Tokyo and Seoul (Hill & Kim, 2000;Jacobs, 2012Jacobs, , 2013. ...
Cities serve as nexus, they connect and are shaped by politico-governmental (State), market-economic (Market), civil-societal (Societal), and geographic-natural (Geo-spatial) activities and/or events occurring at all spatial tiers. As a result, a thorough understanding of urban development outcomes requires a trans-disciplinary, integrated approach that draws upon multiple, even sometimes competing, scholarly paradigms. In the spirit of this, this article introduces The City as the Nexus Model, a new perspective for analyzing urban and regional development tra-jectories, which incorporates the ideas of Agglomeration, Urban Regime, World/Global City, and Nested City Theories, among others. By drawing upon the central themes of these sometimes competing perspectives, this new model shows how a combination of State, Market, Societal, and Geospatial factors uniquely shape economic and spatial outcomes in the world's city-regions. Most importantly, the article/new model provides scholars, practitioners, and students with a new trans-disciplinary framework to utilize in their own empirically-based studies of city-regions.
... For example, these and other works have described how members of the historic caste the Burakumin, the aboriginal Ainu of Hokkaido, native-born ethnic Koreans and Chinese, and/or South American-born Japanese, among others, have been to varying degrees socially separated from the mainstream (Aoki, 2003;Clammer, 2001;Cybriwsky, 1998;Fielding, 2004;Fowler, 1996;Hein & Pelletier, 2009;Hirayama & Ronald, 2012;Sorensen & Funck, 2007;Waley, 1991Waley, , 1997Waley, , 2002Waley, , 2007. In addition, three recent articles, Jacobs (2005Jacobs ( , 2012 and Fujita and Hill (2012) found that, although income inequality in Tokyo may have expanded over the past 15 years, it has remained much less severe than in the United States' largest metropolitan regions. Jacobs' findings also suggest that the 1990s signaled the beginning of a new development chapter in urban Japan, one that further demonstrated the continued relevance of Bluestone and Harrison's (1982) conclusions regarding the consequences of industrial decline. ...
... The majority of the industrial to residential conversion in these two Ku occurred in parcels located along the Sumida River or Tokyo Bay. The most prominent of these redevelopments occurred in the former IHI Corporation and Mitsubishi combines situated in close proximity to one another in Koto's Toyosu and Shinonome districts (Malone, 1996;Saito, 2003;Jacobs, 2005Jacobs, , 2012Sorensen, Okata, & Fujii, 2010;Kubo & Yui, 2011). Overall, manufacturing employment in Chuo and Koto-Ku contracted by 50,411 and 28,563, or by 53.07% ...
Drawing inspiration from Bluestone and Harrison's seminal book The Deindustrialization of America, this article examines the impact of industrial restructuring on Japan's four largest major metropolitan areas (MMAs). Focusing upon (1) the bursting of the Japanese asset bubble in the early 1990's, (2) trade friction with the West, and (3) a significant appreciation of the Japanese Yen relative to the currencies of its major industrial competitors, it reveals how a complex array of factors provoked manufacturing employment decline in these MMAs after 1991. It then describes some of the negative outcomes accompanying industrial restructuring in the four largest MMAs, namely, (1) contracting total employment after 1996, (2) absolute declines in mean household income (HHI) after 2000, and (3) rising inter-municipal income stratification during the 2000s. A final important finding from these case studies suggests that there has been an inverse relationship between the percentage of a region's employment in manufacturing and its inter-place HHI inequality. In summary, although the Japanese case is distinct from the U.S. experience in many ways, these findings nonetheless demonstrate the continued importance of Bluestone and Harrison's conclusions about the connections among manufacturing employment, regional prosperity, and interplace equity.
