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came Sir Patrick Abercrombie (1879–1957), an English urban planner in charge of
the Greater London Plan in 1944. In the plan Sir Abercrombie installed a greenbelt,
surrounding London to curb urban expansion and clearly differentiate the urban
fabric from the surrounding rural areas (Fig. 4.3). Dichotomous land use patterns
came to be the international standard for modern urban and regional planning in the
West. Today, many regions in the world and their cities are following the same planning system based on this dichotomous land use concept.
What can commonly be found on the fringe of Japanese cities, on the contrary, is
a small-scale mixture of urban and rural land uses, which we define as “grey” landscape (Fig. 4.4). From the perspective that prefers dichotomous solutions, “grey” is
often regarded as ambiguity and/or disorder. “Grey” indeed has been synonymous
with uncontrolled, uncivilized, and thus undesirable solutions.
However, although a dichotomous approach provides a simple and clear but
rather static and even persistent solution, “grey” allows for various shades of
lightness between the extremes of black and white. If a planning concept is based on
a “grey” approach, the result becomes flexible to a given condition, which leads to
adaptable solutions that successfully provide “resilience” to cities and regions. The
growing concern regarding natural disasters as a result of global climate change has
forced cities and regions around the world to seek a new planning concept that proFig. 4.2 Garden City proposed by E. Howard
M. Yokohari et al.
came Sir Patrick Abercrombie (1879–1957), an English urban planner in charge of
the Greater London Plan in 1944. In the plan Sir Abercrombie installed a greenbelt,
surrounding London to curb urban expansion and clearly differentiate the urban
fabric from the surrounding rural areas (Fig. 4.3). Dichotomous land use patterns
came to be the international standard for modern urban and regional planning in the
West. Today, many regions in the world and their cities are following the same planning system based on this dichotomous land use concept.
What can commonly be found on the fringe of Japanese cities, on the contrary, is
a small-scale mixture of urban and rural land uses, which we define as “grey” landscape (Fig. 4.4). From the perspective that prefers dichotomous solutions, “grey” is
often regarded as ambiguity and/or disorder. “Grey” indeed has been synonymous
with uncontrolled, uncivilized, and thus undesirable solutions.
However, although a dichotomous approach provides a simple and clear but
rather static and even persistent solution, “grey” allows for various shades of
lightness between the extremes of black and white. If a planning concept is based on
a “grey” approach, the result becomes flexible to a given condition, which leads to
adaptable solutions that successfully provide “resilience” to cities and regions. The
growing concern regarding natural disasters as a result of global climate change has
forced cities and regions around the world to seek a new planning concept that proFig. 4.2 Garden City proposed by E. Howard
M. Yokohari et al.