Every year the Tokyo "free day" we have scheduled into the seminar program gives me the opportunity to zip around from place to place in this most fascinating of cities. And every year I am astounded at how things have changed over the last twelve months.

The current recession accounts for much of this change; the government has been spending billions of yen annually for almost a decade now attempting to get the economy moving again by supporting endless expenditures on a huge variety of public works projects. As a result the city has never looked better: the roads are in great repair; the sidewalks, elegantly inlaid with stone and brick in intricate patterns; the parks, richly landscaped.

But much more is at work than that. This year I encountered an entirely new skyscraper in the heart of the Times Square Takashimaya area of Shinjuku; the scaffolding hadn't even been in place a year ago! The Japanese seemed to have mastered the art of building even large buildings quickly and efficiently, helping to transform the built environment about as quickly as it might be possible.

Then there is the allied art of large-scale project planning, the cooperative provenance of city bureaucrat and private capitalist builder / contractor, which has transformed large areas of Tokyo with a distinct eye towards the coming millennium. Unlike in the United States where this cooperation largely results in, say, tax subsidies for those willing to build in the central city plus, perhaps, some zoning changes to accommodate their building design, in Japan cooperation seems more like a true and sustained joint undertaking.

The Odaiba area in Tokyo Bay at the foot of the Rainbow Bridge is a good example of this long-range planning and implementation process at work. First, decades ago, someone had to decide that future needs necessitated the creation of a large landfill area on the side of the Sumida River across from the center city, land that could be developed as future needs demanded.

Then, somewhere along the way, a series of decisions was made to correlate the development process so that the site could accommodate an international exhibition center (three very large halls plus adjoining conference facilities located in a set of four upside-down pyramids floating several stories off the ground). The construction of two luxury hotels followed, along with that of several multiple story shopping malls and entertainment centers, a beach resort ("Decks" -- where one can look out over a curved beach from one of four different balcony boardwalks), a Toyota design center and the skyscraper headquarters for NTT's DoCoMo communication network, other large corporate structures and four or five apartment complexes, each more luxurious than the last! The entire area is connected by a monorail system tied into the existing commuter rail and subway network and making access to the larger city a piece of cake.

If you are interested in seeing what the future might look like, the place to go in the year 2000 is Tokyo -- no doubt about that!

NOVEMBER 6, 2000

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