Urban Planning Law (Japan)
| Basic data | |
|---|---|
| Title: |
都市 計画 法 toshi-keikaku-hō "city planning law" |
| Type: | hōritsu |
| Number: |
大 正 8 年 4 月 5 日 法律 第 36 号 Law No. 36 of April 5th Taishō 8 (1919) |
| Expiry: | with the exception of individual provisions: 1968 with the new urban planning law of the same name |
| Please note the note on the applicable legal version . Only the Japanese legal texts have legal effect, not translations into English or other languages. | |
| Basic data | |
|---|---|
| Title: |
都市 計画 法 toshi-keikaku-hō " City Planning Act " English City Planning Act |
| Short title: |
都 計 法 tokeihō |
| Type: | hōritsu |
| Number: |
昭和 43 年 6 月 15 日 法律 第 100 号 Law No. 100 of June 15 Shōwa 43 (1968) |
| Last change by: | Law No. 124 of December 14th Heisei 23 (2011) [Tsunami disaster protection, regional planning] |
| Legal text on the Internet: | law.e-gov.go.jp |
| Please note the note on the applicable legal version . Only the Japanese legal texts have legal effect, not translations into English or other languages. | |
The Japanese city planning law ( Japanese 都市 計画 法 , toshi-keikaku-hō , abbreviated 都 計 法 tokeihō ) is a framework law that regulates the establishment of laws and ordinances for urban development in Japan .
According to Article 1, the law regulates the content and decision- making process in urban planning , the limits of planning sovereignty , urban development projects and related matters, development and maintenance of infrastructure , harmonious land use and the promotion of public welfare .
history
The advancing urbanization and industrialization in the Meiji period made a legal regulation of building measures and urban planning necessary, therefore in 1919 the urban planning law ( 市街 地 建築物 法 , shigaichi kenchikubutsuhō ), the predecessor of today's building standards law ( 建築 基準 法 , kenchiku kijunhō ) and enact the town planning law. They came into force a year later. The main feature was the introduction of three zoning zones ( residential , commercial , industrial ) and a concentration of decision-making power in the building ministry . The model was European jurisprudence, which in the field of urban planning was also still in the experimental phase. The main weakness of this first Japanese city planning law was that it did not provide penalties for planning violations, so regulations were often ignored.
The law had to prove itself four years later in the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, which made the complete reconstruction of Tokyo and Yokohama necessary. In fact, the rules proved to be inadequate and a number of supplementary laws have been passed since then. As a first extension, a fourth zone was added in 1924, the green zone. In the years that followed, however, real urban planning mainly took place in the Japanese colonies , where new cities and districts were built for the Japanese colonial rulers.
During the reconstruction after the Second World War , the law again showed weaknesses, as it was only possible to control an orderly reconstruction in a few areas. Environmental pollution and the disruption of grown neighborhoods by high-rise projects led to local protest movements that made a revision of the law necessary.
In 1968 the old law was repealed and a new one with the same name was passed. The new regulations were a reaction to the rapid urban growth of the high growth phase in the 1960s. As a new instrument, urbanization development and control areas were created to manage urbanization. The number of land use zones was expanded to eight, in particular the residential areas were broken down further. Decision-making powers were shifted from the central government to the prefectural governors.
In 1980 a reform of the district plan was introduced, which is based on the German development plan . The district plans are issued by the municipality, relate only to smaller areas of a few hectares and, with a scale of 1: 1000 to 1: 2500, are much finer than the zoning plans. They offer a number of possibilities to tighten existing urban planning regulations for an area and, for example, to stipulate a uniform facade color or to ban overhead power lines. The main aim was to improve the local infrastructure and to give individual areas an individual face against the trend towards uniformity. Local initiatives to improve the living environment ( Machizukuri ) should now also be more closely integrated on a legal basis.
In 1992 the law was reformed again, mainly in response to speculation in real estate in the metropolitan areas and the resulting extreme land prices during the bubble economy . Inner-city living should also be possible under these conditions. In addition, instruments were created to forcibly develop fallow land that was only used for speculation. However, the measures followed at a time when the bubble had already burst.
The last reform step followed in 2000, with the aim of giving municipalities more powers and better involving citizens. The instruments introduced in 1980 at the municipal level have been further strengthened.
Characteristics
In Japan, urban development and building legislation is the most complicated area of law alongside tax law. At the core is the town planning law. Japanese urban planning legislation has the following peculiarities:
- Land ownership primacy
- The separation of the individual urban functions of housing, trade and industry is less pronounced in Japan than in European cities, and it is also less pursued by urban planning. Rather, the goal is a harmonious mix between living and working. One reason is the traditional Japanese cityscape, in which the artisan quarters were also residential quarters. The other reason is that in Japan the rights of landowners to freely dispose of their land are more important.
- Great importance of zoning (urban planning "according to lines, colors and numerical values")
- Over the years, numerous special zones and special development areas have been created to solve a number of urban development problems, from aircraft noise to a lack of space in downtown Tokyo to the threatened development of historical landscapes in Kyoto .
- Zones often overlap, for example agricultural development areas and urbanization control areas, while on the other hand large areas remain unallocated and are referred to as “white areas”. This affects 75% of the country's area, but these are mostly mountain regions or remote islands.
- Menu addition style
- For property owners, the key figure that determines the value of a property is the possible construction height, and numerous restrictions and exemptions turn this adjustment screw. These numerous investor-friendly special laws and exceptions are also referred to as the “menu additional style”, as there is now an unmanageable variety of special laws.
- Central government management by the Ministry of Construction and Prefectural Governors
- Much of the Japanese laws on urban development began as a solution to specific problems in the Tokyo area , be it the urban sprawl in the surrounding area planned as a green belt in the 1930s or the extreme speculation of land prices and the associated displacement of the resident population. After a few years, these laws will be extended to the vast country, where the conditions are usually completely different from those in the “global city” of Tokyo.
literature
- Uta Hohn: Urban planning in Japan . Dortmund sales for building and planning literature, Dortmund 2000, ISBN 3-929797-67-4