Japanese| Japanese |
back index 
next
District Planning was institutionalized by amendment of City Planning law and Building Standard Law in 1980. Its aim is to improve and conserve the living environment by making specific plans suited to actual condition of land use, public facilities and buildings of each district. For example, in districts with new public facilities such as roads and parks created by land readjustment, or with large scale development, a district plan can assure that building use and configuration will complement that new conditions. For example, it can regulate construction of super markets and warehouses next door to residences, set minimum lot size for future subdivisions, regulate building wall position, and encourage use of hedges rather than lot line fences in order to form a comfortable row of stores and houses on a street. In districts where sprawl proceeds, District Planning can be used to prevent environmental destruction caused by incomplete public facilities and densely built-up buildings. This enables to proceed wellplanned machizukuri by guiding development and construction. In this way District Planning reflects different goals in various districts, and can serve new communities, can promote positive planning positively, or can help conserve the present environment.
5. District Planning
Composition of District Planning:
District Planning consists of "Policy of District Planning" and "District Improvement Planning". "Policy of District Planning" defines the goals of the Plan and the policy of improvement, development, or conservation. "District Improvement Planning" defines detailed plan that can implement the policies of the District Plan. "District Improvement Planning" decides necessary issues mainly among the following three categories.
1. Location and scale of facilities of the district, such as roads, parks, greenbelts, and public squires used by district residents.
2. Regulation of private development, including:
a. restriction of building usage
3. Issues of restriction of land use: There can be restrictions to conserve open space, woodland and fields in order to conserve a comfortable living environment.
b. minimum and maximum floorarea ratio
c. maximum site coverage ratio
d. minimum site or building area for buildings
e. designating the position of wall
f. minimum and maximum height of buildings
g. restriction of figure or design of buildings and limitation on lot-line fences and railing.
Rehabilitation and District Planning:
After the earthquake, District Planning is designated mainly in areas with intense planning such as land readjustment project districts. The first designated area was the downtown area of Sannomiya, designated on April 28, 1995.
District Planning lays down various rules according to its goal and measures as described later. These rules enable the guidance of better living environment as well as rebuilding in difficult situations, such as very small building lots using "Townscape promoting district planning." The northern district of Noda, for example, used district planning to ease the regulation of floorarea ratio and setbacks. It also used the "inner row houses system" to easing the maximum lot coverage from 0.6 to 0.7. This adjusted regulations that would have prevented rebuilding in this dense inner city district.
Streetscape Promoting District Planning:
This system was developed in 1996, as part of the effort to ease regulations that made rebuilding difficult. Its features are:
1. Substituting rules laid down by the District Planning for the shape restriction. (Shape of what? Lots, buildings?)
2. Arranging the height and line of buildings to creating streetscape according to the character of the district with participation of residents.
3. Making residents more interested in machizukuri by trying to form townscape with relatively easy rules such as setback and building height.
Kobe City Inner RowHousing Urban Area Improvement Guidance System:
This system eases several restrictions under the Building Standards Act for purposes of rebuilding when the permitted lot coverage, required set-backs, height limit and the like under the Act would result in less building space than had existed in the lowrise dwelling areas. It determines height of a building, wall surface line (is this setback?), site access, etc. by building agreement in areas of about 500m2 or over (does this mean agreements between building owners?) or by area plans in areas of over 2000m2. Though the minimum size for application varies, application of this system makes it possible to remove the following restrictions.
1) Abolition of a private road: Road area can be included in site area. Setback regulations from the abolished road become void.
2) Horizontal distance designation: The road can be determined from 2.74m in width and setback distance becomes shorter or zero.
3) Corner site designation: If the site is a corner site, the lot coverage can increase by 10%.
4) Urban area designation: The road abutted on the urban area can be treated as frontal road which is applied to the setback regulations in that urban area.
5) One housing complex recognition: The road in this district can be abolished and included in the site area. The setback regulations and building coverage and the like in this district can be relaxed.
6) One housing complex recognition by construction stage: Reconstruction can be set forward by stages. The road in this district can be abolished and included in the site area. The setback regulations and building coverage and the like in this district can be relaxed.
| Japanese |
back index next