Tokyo Makes Multiple Downtown Districts

Tokyo is in the spotlight for redefining the downtown district to include multiple distinct, mixed-use business areas that cater to the full spectrum of people who work there — making it feel more like a college campus than a typical downtown.

The Big Picture: COVID majorly derailed downtown development, as remote work took hold and storefronts shuttered. To bring downtowns back, rethinking how they’re organized could help revitalize them for the modern needs and habits of society at large… no matter where in the world they’re located.

Between the Downtowns: Tokyo, the world’s largest metro area is cementing the idea of the “urban knowledge campus,” per Fast Company.

• Instead of a centralized downtown, Tokyo has built unique districts that specialize in a specific category — such as Marunouchi-Nihonbashi (the financial and professional services hub) and Shibuya (the creative and tech hub).
• The districts have a dense mix of office space, restaurants, parks, homes, childcare, nightlife, public transportation, etc. — ensuring that the districts are 24/7 areas, as opposed to places where the lights go off at 5pm when everyone goes home.
• In fact, there’s such a diverse mix of spaces that offices only account for 40% of land use in four out of the city’s five major districts. In comparison, London’s Canary Wharf has 80% offices and Lower Manhattan has 60% offices.
• That mix creates what BCG Henderson Institute calls “interaction density” — “the constant, unplanned collisions that spark new ideas and connections.”

Closing Thoughts: The organization of Tokyo has helped lead the city to rebound, with “high rates of office return, higher commercial rents, and lower vacancy rates than nearly any other global city.” That’s impressive when Tokyo’s downtown districts have some of the highest population density in the world — 70,000 people per square kilometer, which is double that of Manhattan. Expect urban planners and even companies themselves to take some pages out of Tokyo’s book.