Freya - First Draft

To What Extent Can the Problems of Urbanisation be Met by a Policy of Sustainable Development?
——The evaluation of remedies of the issues on water, transport and land (housing) in Tokyo


Introduction:
Nowadays that human being’s infinite wants and needs are being confronted with the threat of limited resources have became the focal point in the world; meanwhile, it has evoked the concerns of “sustainable development” in the future with the attention from all parties. Obviously, the explosion of the world population (Figure 1) is the chief cause that put a strain on the already stretched resource.
Figure 1 World Population Growth[1]

The phrase of “sustainable development” means the strategies are taken to solve the scarcity of resources without harming the benefits of next generations in the long run time (OECD 2010). However, the process of urbanisation is posing a huge challenge for the path of anthropic future, mainly owing to almost 70% of total population living in urban areas (Camagni et al. 2001). The word, urbanisation, is defined that there is a rise of population with economic growth in urban areas (Collins 2001) and is deemed as an irreversible course. It is always connected with “urban sprawl” referring to “unplanned, uncontrolled expansion of urban areas into nearby non urban areas” (Sorensen 2000). Nevertheless, as someone once said,” a city is never a finished product,” it is in a situation of ongoing change. The new thesis of urban sustainability, at present, is on the tip of people’s tongues as a result of various problems caused by urbanisation, such as crowd, pollution and lack of space, especially in mega-cities. According to Grossman and Haughton (Marcotullio 2001), there are four points in urban sustainability: a) free market, b) re-design, c) self-reliant, and e) fair shares.

Taking Tokyo as an example, it is characterised by re-centralization and increased aging population together with the degressive number of children from 1970’s (Soehodho et al. 2005). Both of the advanced technology and spread of economy contributed to the development of the city after the war (Lo and Yeung Undated). During the process of evolution in cites, every city undoubtedly would suffer from multiplied problems, including Tokyo. Yet it has achieved some success in solving the issues of water, transport and land (housing), but there are still apparently unsettled problems. This essay attempts to analyse some of issues, evaluate the solutions of them and give some countermeasures. Firstly, it is to concern with water problems, that is, less fresh water and the leakage of pipes. The local government take the change upon the check way to try to diminish the waste of water. In addition, using reclaimed water and rainwater releases the scarcity of clean water and some examples of successful cities also will be given. In the second place, it is about the present description of transportation, analysing the causes, and checking the degree of solutions for meeting the demand of transport. Likewise, there are advices of the other states’ experience about this matter. The third will be referred to the issue of housing position that the main area of Tokyo is occupied by office buildings and local people have to trudge on the journey every day. From the information offered below, there is a connection between transportation and housing that affect each other.

Main Body:
1. Water

There is no doubt that the resource of water has been regarded as an indispensible element for human survival; in particular, is quite crucial for a country’s development (Uitto and Biswas 2000). “It is said that freshwater will be the first natural resource to run short” (Furumai 2008), which means a great menace for human in the near future. The sustained ability of Tokyo, which is one of the biggest and most developed cities, is dependent on the access of water service, that is, fresh water. From 1900 to 1995, the surge of people was accompanied by the growth of potable water system, whose coverage gradually became broad, including villages and towns around (Figure 2), and capability of water supply also ascended overwhelmingly (Figure 3) (Uitto and Biswas 2000).

Figure 2 The Growth of Tokyo’s water system[2]

Figure 3 Growth of Water Supply[3]

This needed the wide construction of water pipes, whose length is up to 22,000 km that such long pipes led to a huge waste of water with approximately 460,000 m3 each day without question, due to the problem of leakage (Kurosawa et al. 1998). However, the traditional way of finding out leakage is very difficult to carry out because of significant noise (Kurosawa et al. 1998). Depending on different sounds from underground to distinguish whether there is a leakage would be affected severely by the sound of traffic, especially to ascertain an exact position (Kurosawa et al. 1998). To solve this problem, a new type of detection is introduced, say, radiation, which use neutron backscattering to help trace the location of leakage without being affected by noise (Kurosawa et al. 1998). Even the deeper position also could be detected after testing the function of this method, but if the length is more than 1 m the difficulty will still exist (Kurosawa et al. 1998). The other way to settle it is to use stainless steel pipes instead of past lead pipes to be safer for a long time.

Besides, the rise of contaminated water, poor flow of rivers and the cut of groundwater evoke the awareness of recycling of water, which is more effective and economic way to meet the increased demand (Furumai 2008). It is worth mentioning that there were not more concerns about the surface water until the policies on restriction of groundwater were issued by the local government, as a result of fault sag (Figure 4) (Furumai 2008).

Figure 4 Fault Sag in Tokyo[4]

One of the prime resources for replenishment of water is form rainwater that can be used to flush the toilets (Furumai 2008). Some storage systems of water were adopted on a large scale that could conduce to release a part of pressure about lack of water at local (Furumai 2008). As for another countermeasure, retreating water is regarded as an environmental measure not only to bring wastage down, but also to save conveying fee of water cost-effectively, owing to the availability of it in urban area, like Tokyo, by the re-design of sewerage network (Furumai 2008).

However, the most important thing here is to build “Distributed Power and Water Systems” (UN-Habitat 2009, pp. 40-46), like what Malmo in Sweden and Toronto in Canada did, to reduce the effects on environment as well as pave the green pathway (UN-Habitat 2009). This phrase implies the revolution on the way of water supply from conventionally “large centralized power and water systems” to modern “small-scale and neighbourhood-based systems within cities” (UN-Habitat 2009, pp. 40-46). For instance, Chinese Three Gorges Dam built in recent years cost a great deal of money and even sacrificed the ecological equilibrium extremely and drastically. In spite of bringing about convenience and economic benefits to the country, the over-long distance of transportation of water inevitably gives rise to squander.

2. Transportation
In Tokyo, the infrastructure construction of transport system is built quite well, but with the escalated number of private cars, the issue of traffic congestion is more and more obvious (Mackett 1991). Although the building of Metro was on the table and fulfilled, it still could not catch up with the speed of tidal flow caused by the expansion of the urban area in Tokyo (Mackett 1991). Every day multitudinous streams of people from the suburban areas and other cities, like Kawasaki, Yokohama and Chiba, go to Tokyo for work and study (Nakamura 1995). Such a whole range is called the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (TMA) (Figure 5) (Nakamura 1995).

Figure 5 Tokyo Metropolitan Area[5]

Since late 19th century, Tokyo introduced railways from Europe and the U.S.A., but all was destroyed after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, in the meantime, new planned railways that could be touched by suburban districts were constructed (Nakamura 1995) to lessen the burden of roads to some extent.

Even if the expressways of fee charging were constructed to look forward to that people would choose it when long trips, the condition of congestion is worsen as before (Mackett 1991).

Moreover the roads in Tokyo are always busy, which is generated by the over-concentrated working places in main urban zone (Lo and Yeung undated). The commuters have to spend much time on taking long distance to come offices from various areas, which are far away from main Tokyo, completely being differ from the United States (Lo and Yeung undated).

Especially, in rush-hour time, the problems cause by congestion, like pollution, delays, and longer and longer trips attracted the government’s eyes that they cared about the matter of safety and environment, however, want to privatise the transport ((Mackett 1991). This is a conflict between each aspect of interest, citizens, the authorities and companies.

At the moment, some prevailing recipes have been taken by many countries, like car-free day, the encouragement of using public transport and car pool. But, obviously, these are from the perspective of the short run, only meeting the problems temporarily.

To solve the increasingly severe issue of transportation fundamentally, there are four suggestions to be presented: “structural change of cities, supply of transportation facilities, demand control of transportation and technical improvements” (Nakamura 1995, p. 6). From this point of view, the main crux is the re-design of Tokyo’s framework (Nakamura 1995).

On the other hand, a comparatively superior methodology is Intelligent Transport System (ITS), which has been employed by some Asian nations, such as Malaysia and Philippines (Mende 2005). It contains electronic road pricing, traffic management, integrated ticketing systems and traveller information (Mende 2005). It is worth mentioning that the more advanced system adopted by Hong Kong and Singapore is more intelligent, using a smart card, which could serve a integrated system of bus and rail fees operated by different firms (Mende 2005). Based on such a system, the government could collect data to analyze how the remedies of traffic jam can be done well.

3. Land (Housing)
It is known by everyone that the supply of land in Tokyo is hard to seize the speed of the climbing needs (Lo and Yeung undated). Almost every inch of land has been dug out for different purposes, especially for central business district, which is golden area (Lo and Yeung undated). The business buildings take up a dominant part and its ratio of use is an ongoing upwards trend with the development of the city all the time, at the price of giving public housing up (Noguchi and Poterba 1994). Basing on such a situation, high mansion was regarded as a solution taken by the authorities, but the most serious focus is housing, which is cared by everyone living in Tokyo (Lo and Yeung undated). The high price of housing is responsible for that local people have to buy the relatively small houses and apartments that are far away from their working places but still hard to afford (Tiwari and Hasegawa 2004). In allusion to this strait, the lower rate on loans of housing is offered to commons (Lo and Yeung undated).

There is a striking character that the distribution of housing is usually associated with the development of transport system. In general, the further distance to the centre of a city implies the cheaper housing price and a little more cost of commuting（Figure 6）(Noguchi and Poterba 1994). This is an indirect way to disperse population according to the various levels of income. Figure 6 Different Housing Prices in response to Different Cost of Transportation[6]

It is crystal clear that the high price of housing contributes to the mess in transportation. People are enforced to live in suburban area, but also, in the meantime, to spend a lot more time and money on the way to offices. This is definitely ironic and ridiculous thing. [solution?]

Conclusion：
To sum up, in reality, Tokyo has taken some countermeasure to dedicate itself to solve the problems happened in the progress of urbanisation for the purpose of sustaining the development. Whereas the conflict between limited sources and the boundless demand of human has existed for a long time, it is not easy to be eradicated. The less and less water resource astricts the degree of the future development in Tokyo. Above all, the irreconcilable contradiction of housing and unsatisfied transport system leads to too long journeys, time waste and low efficiency for people. These factors are inclined to lead to the decreasing attractiveness for people, particularly technology workers, who may make a choice to inhabit the sites having a good environment. Nonetheless, it does not mean the remedies Tokyo adopted by the government are not active. On the contrary, to some extent, these policies remit and curb the tendency of deterioration, but in a long-run time, the more effective and feasible solutions are required to think about.

[1] Source: Uitto and Biswas 2000

[2] Source: Uitto and Biswas 2000
[3] Source: Uitto and Biswas 2000

[4] Source: Furumai 2008
[5] Source: Mende 2005

[6] Source: Noguchi and Poterba 1994

Bibliography:

Camagni, R., Cappello, R. and Nijkamp, P. (2001) “Managing Sustainable Urban Environments.” In: Paddison, R. (ed.) Handbook Urban Studies, pp. 124-140. London, SAGE Publications Ltd.

Collins, J. (2001) Urbanisation [online] Enviro Facts. Available from: http://www.bcb.uwc.ac.za/envfacts/facts/urbanisation.htm [accessed 10 July 2010]

Furumai, H. (2008) “Rainwater and Reclaimed Wastewater for Sustainable Urban Water Use.” In: Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, Vol. 33 (5), pp. 340-346. Elsevier Ltd.

Kurosawa, T. et al. (1998) “Simulation Study of A Hydrostat Design for Detecting Underground Leakage of Water Supply Using Neutron Backscattering.” In: Applied Radiation and Isotops, Vol. 49 (12), pp. 1729-1735. Elsevier Science Ld.

Lo, F. and Yeung, Y. (undated) Emerging World Cities in Pacific Asia. Tokyo – New York – Paris, United Nations University Press.

Mackett, R. L. (1991) “A Model-Based Analysis of Transport and Land-Use Policies for Tokyo.” In: Transport Reviews, Vol. 11 (1), pp. 1-18. London, Routledge.

Marcotullio, P. J. (2001) “Asian Urban Sustainability in the era of Globalization.” In: Habitat International, Vol. 25 (4), pp. 577-598. Elsevier.

Mende, M. R. (2005) Urban Environmental Management Challenges in Asia. Japan, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES).

Nakamura, H. (1995) “Transportation Problems in Tokyo.” In: Japan Railway & Transport Review, March. Japan, EJRCF.

Noguchi, Y. and Poterba, J. M. (1994) Housing Markets in the United States and Japan. U. S. A., the National Bureau of Economic Research.

OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2010) Sustainable Development. [online] OECD. Available from: http://www.oecd.org/topic/0,3373,en_2649_37425_1_1_1_1_37425,00.html [accessed 10 July 2010]

Sorensen, A. (2000) “Land Readjustment and Metropolitan Growth: An Examination of Suburban Land Development and Urban Sprawl in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.” In: Progress in Planning, Vol. 53 (4), pp. 217-330. Elsevier.

Soehodho, S. et al. (2005) “Transportation Issues and Future Condition in Tokyo, Jakarta, Manila and Hiroshima.” In: Proceedings of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 5, pp. 2391-2404. Bankok, Easts.

Tiwari, P. and Hasegawa, H. (2004) “Demand for Housing in Tokyo: A Discrete Choice Analysis.” In: Regional Studies, Vol. 38 (1), pp. 27-42. Tokyo, Carfax Publishing.

Uitto, J. I. and Biswas, A. K. (2000) Water for Urban Areas: Challenges and Perspectivs, pp. 1-24. Japan, United Nation University Press.

UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme) (2009) Planning Sustainable Cities: Policy Directions: Global Report on Human Settlements 2009. UK, Earthscan.