The 40 years of China’s reform and opening up can be described as four decades of “tearing down and building up” on a grand scale. Around 1991, Japan’s real estate bubble burst. It is also worth noting that Japan’s peak population of 18-year-olds occurred around 1992, meaning that the rigid demand for housing among young people had already peaked in the 1990s. However, if readers simply assume that Japan’s real estate sector became stagnant after the 1990s, they would be gravely mistaken. It would also be inaccurate to say that Japan has been engaged in “tearing down and building up” nationwide over the past 30 years, from 1995 to the present. But if I limit the geographical scope of “tearing down and building up,” then the statement holds entirely true. The geographical limitation is this: the core business districts of Japan’s major cities (the so-called CBDs and main commercial areas) and the areas surrounding major train stations. In these places, large-scale redevelopment has been ongoing for the past 30 years.
Of course, there is no direct equivalent to the phrase “tearing down and building up” in Japanese. Instead, terms such as “urban regeneration,” “redevelopment,” “enhancing urban disaster prevention and resilience,” “urban revitalization,” and “improving Tokyo’s international competitiveness” are used. If we focus on Tokyo, the past 30 years have indeed seen continuous large-scale redevelopment, which Japanese media have called a “once-in-a-century redevelopment.” These projects have been concentrated in Tokyo’s core business districts and the areas around its major train stations. Specifically, projects are often clustered in Tokyo’s “five central wards”—Chiyoda, Chuo, Minato, Shibuya, and Shinjuku—as well as Shinagawa and others. In addition, most of the areas around the main stations of JR East and the various private railway lines within Tokyo have undergone large-scale redevelopment. Many may not realize that in the past 30 years, there has not been a single day without construction in the Marunouchi, Otemachi, and Yurakucho districts—collectively known as the “Marunouchi area,” Japan’s most famous CBD. Chinese readers might find this surprising, but it is an ironclad fact. Redevelopment in the Marunouchi area is still ongoing. Of course, in modern society, the “tearing down and building up” I refer to is carried out in a very clean and orderly manner, without disrupting the area’s productive activities. Both demolition and construction are tightly enclosed by barriers, and there is no construction debris scattered on the roads. Many readers may not realize that over 60% of the current office buildings and commercial facilities in the Marunouchi area have been built in the past 30 years. In the equally renowned traditional commercial district of Nihonbashi, most high-rise buildings have been constructed in the past 20 years.
This raises a fundamental question: why did Japan experience a once-in-a-century wave of urban redevelopment after the real estate bubble burst? I should emphasize that the large-scale urban redevelopment that began in the mid-1990s has continued for 30 years and is still ongoing. This wave of development is expected to last until around 2030 before it comes to an end.