Martin - How to Redraw a City (2025)
Publication: Works in Progress, Issue 19 (June 2025) Author: Anya Martin URL: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-to-redraw-a-city/
Summary
Martin examines how Japan developed land readjustment (tochi kukaku seiri) as a mechanism for reorganising urban land that avoids both market-led chaos and state expropriation. The mechanism pools neighbouring plots, redraws boundaries to create space for infrastructure, and redistributes smaller but more valuable plots back to each owner. A two-thirds supermajority of affected landowners must approve.
Borrowed from Frankfurt in 1902 and incorporated into Japan’s 1919 City Planning Act, land readjustment now accounts for 30% of Japan’s urban land and 12,500 km of city road. Martin extends the analysis to German agricultural consolidation, Dutch readjustment, English parliamentary enclosure, and Stolypin’s Russian land reforms.
Key Claims
- Land readjustment aligns individual self-interest with collective improvement → land-readjustment-as-third-way
- The mechanism avoids the political toxicity of compulsory purchase
- Cross-national examples show the principle isn’t culturally unique to Japan
- The 1923 Kanto earthquake and WWII reconstruction provided scaling opportunities
Methodology / Approach
Historical-institutional analysis of Japanese urban planning, with comparative cases from Germany, Netherlands, Russia, and England. Primarily qualitative, drawing on planning history and case studies.
Limitations
Understates the coercion documented by Sorensen (1999, 2000): organised opposition since the 1960s, government-initiated projects without consent, property value threats. Works best at the urban fringe, not in dense central areas. The Pareto improvement claim depends on land value being an adequate measure of welfare. Geographic constraints and tax incentives may explain Japan’s success better than institutional design alone.