Urban living Archives - Contour Town Planning

First time Japan: A planner’s reflections

Angus Dodds / January 18, 2024

With 2023 already receding into view, the New Year seems like a good time for Angus Dodds to dust down his holiday snaps from a recent trip to Japan, and offer his thoughts on those glimpses of life from the land of the rising sun that have changed his views of life in more familiar surroundings…

As a first-time traveller around Japan last Autumn, it has taken the writing of this blog to get me to try to articulate what really marks Japan out as the most extraordinary place I’ve ever been. And trust me it was. Among many contenders however, I think the biggest revelation was simply experiencing urban Japan for myself. On a human level this meant discovering how the huge population of urban Japan rolls in practice. Quite unexpectedly, my experience was that I never felt rushed, crowded, or stressed by the humanity around me, nor did I feel that I was the irksome spoke in this most gigantic of human wheels. A remarkable discovery indeed.

So what relevance, you may ask, do my positive holiday tales of riding the Tokyo subway and traversing the Shibuyu crossing have on the noble art of planning? Well, if the Scottish Parliament has decided through the Planning Act that the purpose of planning is to “manage the development and use of land in the long-term public interest”, anyone involved in the built environment might be interested in how all sorts of things work, at all sorts of scales, in all sorts of different ways, in a country that has taken urbanisation into completely new territory. When considering what might be the ‘long-term public interest’, especially when it comes to urban planning, there is definite value in reflecting on the Japanese experience.

While absent from the western-centric histories of planning, Japan too has an urban legacy that is both rich and long. Indeed, in the 1740’s when Edinburgh’s New Town visionary James Craig was still a small child, and Edinburgh’s 50,000 or so residents were closing the city’s gates to the Jacobites, the population of Tokyo (then known as Edo) had just crossed the 1 million mark. By the time the 19^th Century rolled around, the population of the USA was only half the 10 million or so in the UK, while Japan already had a population topping 30 million.

As well as maintaining such a huge population for so many generations, the physical geography of Honshu (Japan’s main island), means that only the relatively small coastal plains can be developed today – just as was the case in the past. As a result, greater Tokyo is now home to an eye-popping 35 million residents, on an island with an overall population of 105 million.

In both legacy and scale therefore, Japanese urban development is quite a different beast from its Occidental cousins. While it would be ridiculous on the back of a 2-week holiday to declare which is ‘better’, here are just a few of the clearly different approaches taken there that caused me some food for thought.

1. Mixed Uses/Amenity

It’s currently a very hot topic in Edinburgh where the Council has decided that it will have very little tolerance for any non-residential uses in areas of the city where people live. By contrast in Japan, where space constraints limit how many commercial enterprises can enjoy a ground floor presence, and where the food and drink culture means that there is a restaurant for every c.250 people, food and drink establishments are accommodated at every level of mixed use blocks that also include residential properties. In this example from Hiroshima, you will note the surprising presence of an Orcadian themed whisky bar on floor 2!

2. Eating out

Competition is inevitably high with such an elevated concentration of restaurants, and with the continued post-pandemic presence of the ‘salaryman’ commuter (Japanese work life remains stubbornly a male-domain), there are amazing lunchtime deals to be had.

I was feeling painfully jet-lagged at this restaurant beneath Tokyo’s Maranouchi station on our first day! Nevertheless, I was revived by a classic set lunch of miso soup, kimchi salad, beansprouts, chicken and omelette, steamed rice, tofu and green tea. All for the princely sum of 950JPY (£5.12). Incidentally I could have had a beer for an extra £2.50.

By contrast, such princely fare makes this sign I saw on my return to Edinburgh, a rather depressing sight. Given the average monthly net salary after tax in Edinburgh and Tokyo are so similar (Edinburgh £2387; Tokyo £2473), comparators like this really hammer home why discussions around the cost of living in the UK are so current.

3. Trains

Visit Detroit today and you’ll see that its passenger railway station is about the same size as Stonehaven’s; the colossal Michigan Central station having been closed in 1988 due to plummeting passenger numbers. It’s ironic then, that in Japan, the country largely responsible for the decline of ‘Motown’ through the success of its own automotive industry, trains and train stations act as the oil and the machinery that keeps its major centres moving today.

In contrast to Detroit, Japan’s urban stations are gargantuan. And in ways now being copied in the UK, they play host to shopping, leisure and entertainment, food and drink, hotels, as well as accommodating the lightning-fast bullet trains that Japan is so famous for.

What I hadn’t realised about bullet trains however, is just how long they have been a feature of Japan’s transport mix. As the UK still prevaricates over the provision of high-speed rail, its astonishing to note that the ‘shinkansen’ (Japanese for ‘new trunk line’) was first introduced in 1964 to accommodate 130mph trains which immediately shaved 2 hours 40 minutes off the 247-mile journey from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka. Even faster trains today mean this journey has been cut by a further 40% to only 2 hours 25 minutes.

I also hadn’t reckoned on the frequency of shinkansen services. These aren’t just show-ponies, rolled out a few times a day for visitors and tourists. If travelling during office hours, you can expect 7 bullet trains an hour travelling the original Tokyo to Shin-Osaka route. Mind you, given the route also stops at Yokohama, Nagoya and Kyoto (aggregate metropolitan population of all stops c.65 million), it’s maybe no wonder that the shinkansen lies at the heart of the country’s public transport system.

4. Luggage

High speeds aside, where train travel in Japan is also in marked contrast to the UK, is through the absence of large suitcases cluttering up carriage aisles and acting as trip hazards in the streets surrounding train stations. The reason for this, is that the enterprising Japanese long-ago realised that there was little joy to be had humffing heavy suitcases through crowds and onto public transport. As a result, a highly sophisticated and entirely reliable national luggage-transfer service came into being.

The concept is very simple, with almost all major hotels linked into a system that incorporates Japan Rail’s smaller local lines and an armada of Postman Pat style delivery vehicles (see photograph). Together, these transport your luggage in 24 hours from the reception desk of your hotel on departure to the bedroom of your hotel the following night. While this means that you do need to pack a small bag with whatever you need in your accommodation that night and the following morning, overall, it makes longer trips with multiple longer stays an absolute breeze.

Our longest luggage transfer covered a distance longer than that from Edinburgh to London, for around £12 per c.20kg suitcase. Just as expected, our bags were there on time, on the floor of our bedroom in Matsumoto in the Japanese Alps, a day after leaving them in sub-tropical Hiroshima (an understandably fascinating but surprisingly fun city).

5. Litter

Quite incredibly, there is next to no litter in Japan. None. This absence is not just in the manicured gardens of Kyoto, but also on the streets of any of its great cities. Even more surprisingly, there is also an almost complete absence of public bins on Japanese streets. Given its bulging population in almost every direction, not to mention the preponderance of convenience stores and vending machines on the streets of every settlement, the lack of litter puts our own approach to discarding waste in disgraceful relief.

Truth be told, more than any other single thing I saw or encountered in Japan, the lack of litter seemed both the most unbelievable thing, yet perhaps also the easiest thing to aspire to copy. It wouldn’t require the billions involved in providing a new high-speed rail system, nor would it involve inverting our cultural mores when it comes to accommodating activity in residential areas. In fact, the Venn diagram of ‘litter’ and ‘planning’ has only the slightest of intersections. Nevertheless, none but the archest contrarian could argue that taking more of a Japanese approach to litter would be undeniably in the long-term public interest.

My Local elected representatives should expect correspondence on some or all of the above, later in 2024!…

If you want to speak to Angus about anything at all concerned with planning, feel free to Get in touch on 07729 873829, or by email at angus@contourtownplanning.com

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Storks, ceramics and squares: a new year well-spent

Angus Dodds / March 7, 2023

After two months in Southern Europe soaking up as much vitamin-D as possible, Angus Dodds provides some observations on urban living on the continent – some of which we might do worse than try to emulate in Scotland…

Whether I’m in Aberdeen, Addis Ababa or Aosta, as long as I have wifi I can submit planning applications. Accordingly, back in November I thought I would make the most of being a footloose planning consultant and head for warmer climes this new year. Having spent the last 2 months travelling and working around a fair chunk of latin Europe, here are a few of the things that have stopped me in my tracks.

Storks

Olhao, Portugal

I now realise that they are ten-a-penny in the Algarve, but I couldn’t quite believe just how many white storks there are in Southern Portugal. They might never be described as graceful, but there is something endlessly fascinating about watching a stork doing its thing – and seeing how these prehistoric looking creatures have colonised so many parts of the urban landscape was quite a revelation for me.

Thinking of my Aberdeen analogy, it seems to me that storks have two major advantages in this regard over seagulls: firstly they don’t swoop down to steal your chips/pastel de natas; secondly, by an evolutionary quirk the white stork doesn’t have a voicebox, but communicates instead by clattering its beak (which is only mildly annoying). In the circumstances, as urban bedfellows they’re an unexpected delight.

Having read up a little more about them I was also surprised to learn that historically they used to live on the British Isles in pretty large numbers – the last recorded pair of breeding white storks were evicted from the roof of St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh in 1416.

That of course was before the start of the ‘little ice age’. With that period now well and truly over however, the UK might well be a stork friendly environment once again. Three years ago in fact the first pair to successfully breed in the UK since the 15th Century were announced as having set up home in Sussex.

All I’m saying is that if (urban) rewilding becomes a thing, let’s get some storks in Scotland!

Tiles

Tiled residential buildings, Portugal — Olhao, Portugal

Olhao, Portugal

I also hadn’t realised quite how ubiquitous ‘azulejo’ tiling decoration was across Portugal. I had assumed that it was something you only found in the gentrified barrios of Lisbon or Porto. How wrong I was.

Olhao, a fairly animated town of about 40,000 people in the eastern Algarve was where I spent most of February. It’s a great place. Neither twee nor down-at-heel, it just felt like a normal, medium-sized town. There were a few supermarkets, a lively High Street, a harbour that landed fish, a few schools, a public swimming-pool, a local football team etc etc. It seemed like a place where Portuguese people actually lived and did stuff.

It was also clearly a place where people did stuff to their houses with whatever was to hand rather than by trying to win any design awards. When it came to the exterior tiles on display therefore, there was a lot less shabby-chic on show, and a lot more of the garish tile designs your grandparents might have had on display in their bathrooms in the 1980s. It turns out however, that when they’re not vying for prominence with a crinoline-skirted loo-roll holder, these striking tiles actually look great as the external finish of choice for ensembles of informal buildings.

Reflecting on these houses with an Irish friend that came to visit, she remarked that when she’d first come to Scotland 23 years ago, she found the drab colours of our housing seriously depressing and a sad contrast to what was on offer in Ireland. When I pointed out that climatic factors and the dread of never-ending maintenance may explain our hesitancy with colour, she reminded me that twice the amount of rain falls across the Irish Sea, but unlike us, they still routinely try and keep things looking cheery with a spot of paint.

As Olhao demonstrates very effectively, if the basic urban design of a place isn’t overly formal, we certainly shouldn’t be afraid of colour, or of necessarily using the ‘right type’ of external materials to enliven our urban landscapes.

Open Spaces

No revelations here, but confirmation of my long-held belief that Spanish people use public open spaces more effectively and thoughtfully than anyone else. Ghandi said you could tell the greatness of a nation from the way they treat their animals; I’d say you can tell how civilized an urban population is from the way they use public open spaces together.

One in particular that sticks in my mind was a square in Valladolid – roughly halfway between Porto and Bilbao. I had a beer there in mid-February around teatime. Here in a fairly central residential suburb, I must have seen perhaps 50 -100 people using this public space, ranging in age from 5 year-olds to those in their 80’s and 90’s.

It was remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, the square was absolutely nothing to look at. I had stopped there for a drink because I’d just been swimming and it was a handy place to grab a beer and check some emails. Generally however, the buildings surrounding the square were grotty 1980’s flatted residential blocks, with a swimming pool along one side and a café at one of the opposing corners. This wasn’t a showpiece activity space.

Secondly, with to the best my knowledge no supervisors on hand, throughout the whole 40 minutes or so I sat there, no single group seemed to take over the square to the detriment of other users. I don’t doubt there is occasional user conflict in spaces like this, but from my own experience of sipping various beers on various squares around Spain, I just didn’t see much evidence of the dog-walkers impacting the footballers impacting the toddlers impacting the skateboarders etc etc.

In Spain public open spaces that work don’t need to be fancy. Yet somehow, from the downright dog-ugly to the grand and statue-crammed, squares all over the country in villages, towns and big cities, all seem capable of being enjoyed by a full range of different users. I don’t know what the secret is (and it’s not weather by the way, it was about 6 degrees celsius in Valladolid), but it’s something we could learn a lot from.

Signage in Aberdeen

I love Nice (France) - Sign — **Nice, France**

And on the subject of learning from other places, while trying to keep abreast of what was going on back home, I learnt of the furious debate that seems to have been generated by proposals from Aberdeen Inspired to create a ‘Holywood-style sign’ for instagrammers to pout in front of when visiting my hometown.

I’m all for anything that helps instill residents and visitors with a sense of place in the Granite City – which to my mind is the most distinctive looking city in Scotland. However, from my travels, I did see quite a number of these very similar signs in various places across Iberia and France, as well as here in the UK.

As a subtle alternative therefore, I would love to see some clever signage being used to bring attention to the place; but which also shows that Aberdeen isn’t just somewhere that follows the herd.

It needn’t look too far for an interesting way to address this either, as it actually already has its own striking signage that helps to amplify its visual independence. Couldn’t something instantly instagrammable and straight out of the ‘azulejo’ book be created by using the Council’s own proprietary street tiles in an inventive way? The City is home to many talented public artists like Craig Barrowman who could doubtless come up with something playful and visually arresting that could draw on good ideas from elsewhere – without losing the distinctiveness which really marks out the city in the first place.
Craig Barrowman

If you want to speak to Angus about anything at all concerned with planning (and not just big birds, shiny tiles or public squares) feel free to Get in touch on 07729 873829, or by email at angus@contourtownplanning.com

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