Worklife

Ramblings about workplace culture, life in Japan, and then some.

Kohoku New Town Green Matrix

Apr 12, 2004 00:30 am / 2 comments

 kohoku1.JPG kohoku2.JPG
Urban devel­op­ment in Japan is finally mak­ing the kind of progress that res­i­dents can feel. The clus­ter in eco­nomic devel­op­ment as dis­cussed by Michael Porter exists in Japan as can be read in Strat­egy for Clus­ter Ini­tia­tives in Japan by Yoko Ishikura, et al. But I am directly ben­e­fit­ting from the urban plan­ning done for Kohoku area in Yoko­hama City, called green matrix. I sim­ply love rid­ing on my bicy­cle through this 15 kilo­me­ter route. My kids reached the age that they can join me for the ride as well, and from where I live, hav­ing access to this green matrix park enriches my life in a pro­found way.

Some pho­tos can be seen of what is along this long strip of park, but here is a cafe (Park­side Cafe) located along the way. Unfor­tu­nately, this is the only cafe or retail shop of this design cal­iber located on this strip. I hope in the future more retail pro­duc­ers and archi­tects will spice up this area, as they did along the Meguro River.

 

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2 Comments

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1. Marven Payne said on Oct 29, 2006 09:55 am:

My name is Mar­ven Payne and I’m an Amer­i­can who has lived in Japan for more than 20 years (about half of my life). I con­sider Yoko­hama my home and I love this city and it’s peo­ple. It has been won­der­ful to me. I live in the Kohoku area and like Miss Suda I am drawn to it for it’s beau­ti­ful parks and nature. How­ever, I am sad­dened that the parks aren’t pre­served as well as they could be nor are there any sophis­ti­cated shops and/or cafe’s. I would like to band together with other Kohoku res­i­dents to make this area the beau­ti­ful par­adise it has the poten­tial to be. Any­one inter­ested in com­ing together to help pro­mote Kohoku, please con­tact me at: [email protected]


 
2. Fujiko Suda said on Oct 29, 2006 17:33 pm:

Hi Mar­ven. Thank you for your comment!

I agree with you that the parks aren’t pre­served as well as they could. Japan­ese, espe­cially the kinds of peo­ple who would set­tle in new res­i­den­tial areas such as green matrix, are not used to orga­niz­ing groups for prac­ti­cal cause, but any devel­op­ment needs its res­i­dents to sus­tain it’s orig­i­nal inten­tion and change to fit the era. I’d love to help keep the orig­i­nal inten­tion strong and alive, and make the area more inter­est­ing aas well!


 

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