The Role of Participation in Urban Landscape Planning in Yokohama: The Success of the Takashima Central Park Project

In Japan, citizens’ participation in urban planning is called machizukuri. This kind of cooperation between citizens and city administration in urban planning appeared in the 1970s, as a countermovement to the traditional top-down urban planning called toshikeikaku of the 1960s. Municipal city planning increasingly encouraged machizukuri projects, allowing citizens to participate in planning activities. The City of Yokohama in Kanagawa Prefecture promoted innovative methods of participation. From the ‘Letters to the Mayor’ in the late 1960s to current programmes, the City of Yokohama established many support measures for machizukuri activities and in the 1990s the administration approved the engagement of citizens as an important management tool, as seen in the City Construction Project for the Citizens of Yokohama. One contribution to this project is the Takashima Central Park Project, which started in 2008 and which is considered by many critics as a very successful participation project.

This paper focuses on the questions of how far the Takashima Central Park Project was successful and what the reasons for success or unspoken failure were by referring to the theories of the German political scientist Angelika Vetter and the German political sociologist Brigitte Geißel. The research is based on qualitative interviews with some of the people involved, such as citizens, planners and administrative personnel. The article will identify the various aspects of the complex variable ‘success’ and their interdependence.