The Significance of Modern Japanese City Planning: a morphological examination of the land readjustment projects in Korea, Taiwan and Japan

In city formation, not only functional requirements but also the planner’s ideology plays important roles. Land readjustment can be interpreted as an indicative methodology in “modern” Japanese city planning. The method provided a homogeneous and “economical” layout for unstructured lands and transformed them into the typical modern standard. This resulted in an increase in land prices and in improved public hygiene; however, cities were monotonously and repetitively produced in the manner of cars on assembly lines. Our first question is whether the “deliberate” modern cities were able to execute the function they were designed to perform. In addition, we examine whether such artificial planning was successful in eliminating conventional environments, such as places where the indigenous inhabitants were able to spend their lives. With this aim, we analyzed three typical districts that underwent transformation during the modern era—Nishiohji Street (Kyoto, Japan), Ximending (Taipei, Taiwan), and Shinchon Street (Seoul, Korea)—and investigated the impacts of modern Japanese city planning.