Table Of ContentFragile and Resilient
Cities on Water
Fragile and Resilient
Cities on Water
:
Perspectives from Venice
and Tokyo
Edited by
Rosa Caroli and Stefano Soriani
Fragile and Resilient Cities on Water:
Perspectives from Venice and Tokyo
Edited by Rosa Caroli and Stefano Soriani
This book first published 2017
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2017 by Rosa Caroli, Stefano Soriani and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-7338-1
ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7338-3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword ................................................................................................... vii
Rosa Caroli and Stefano Soriani
Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1
Introduction: Proposing Suitogaku—Towards a Comparative Study
of Cities on Water
Hidenobu Jinnai
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 15
Sustainable Tourism in Venice: What Lessons for other Fragile Cities
on Water?
Jan van der Borg
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 33
Resilience amidst Fragility along Tokyo’s Waterways
Paul Waley
Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 51
The Sumida River Renaissance: A New Policy for the Development
of the River
Yusaku Imamura
Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 73
Conflict and Synergy in the Port-City Relationship: Critical Issues
and Perspectives in the case of Venice
Stefano Soriani
Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 99
Considering the Redevelopment of the Tokyo Bay Area from the Basics
Hidenobu Jinnai
Chapter Seven .......................................................................................... 121
Loss and Recovery of Lowland Rivers in Tokyo
Nobuyuki Tsuchiya
vi Table of Contents
Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 155
Tsukudajima: A Man-made Island in Edo (Tokyo) Bay
Rosa Caroli
Chapter Nine ............................................................................................ 213
The Development of Tokyo Bay and Waterborne Traffic
Iwao Takamatsu
Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 225
Venice: Living with Water, Learning with Nature –
A Regenerating Arena for Global Cities
Giovanni Cecconi
Contributors ............................................................................................. 251
Index of Names........................................................................................ 253
FOREWORD
ROSA CAROLI AND STEFANO SORIANI
The onset of modernization, especially during the twentieth century, has
brought about dramatic changes that have first and foremost impacted
coastal cities and cities on water. The push for efficiency and functionality
has profoundly affected coastal and urban landscapes, and gigantism in the
port industries have contributed to the degradation and depletion of
environmental resources and habitats; modernization processes have
marginalized local cultures and historical community-based values, thus
causing original features and local specificity to disappear from the
majority of historical waterfronts. In the last few decades, however, a
reverse trend has also gradually emerged with the restructuring of port and
industrial activities, along with the growth in the leisure and tourism
sectors and an increasing attention towards environmental conditions. This
convergence of factors has led to the “rediscovery of water” and to the
design and implementation of new urban policies aimed at redeveloping
urban waterfronts. In this perspective, cultural characteristics along with
local history and identity are being re-discovered and valued as
fundamental assets for future development. New approaches, based on the
concept of working with—and not against—ecosystems, are currently re-
orienting environmental management approaches in coastal areas and
cities, in the attempt to increase social and environmental resilience.
Against this background, however, the intrinsic fragility that
characterizes cities that live on water becomes most apparent, due to the
technological, economic, social and environmental dynamics affecting the
urban structure and landscape. A crucial challenge that urban policies have
to deal with is how to transform fragility into resilience—the capability to
proactively adapt to changes and challenges. Resilience requires new
forms of planning, novel approaches to environmental governance, as well
as new initiatives in urban policy through effective involvement of both
economic and social actors, in order to harmonize top-down and bottom-
up approaches and projects. Whereas traditional top-down, centralized and
state-directed approaches have historically driven the economic growth of
many cities on water, these dynamics are no longer appropriate. New
bottom-up, more inclusive and place-based initiatives are needed to
viii Foreword
improve livability and resilience of communities and cities on water.
Water is the central player in this landscape, but its role is
intrinsically ambivalent, as it is both a vital resource and a potential threat.
For cities on water this element is profoundly dualistic in nature, as it
functions simultaneously as an isolating and a connecting element between
places both in a physical and in a symbolical sense. Water sustains urban
life but it is also a potential threat to it, especially in an age of climate
change.1 Issues surrounding water are becoming high stakes in the
relationship between urban policy and local communities, particularly
those living in fragile and liminal spaces between land and water. Indeed,
the necessity to reconsider the link between water and the city has become
even more urgent in the face of the challenges brought about by climate
change and the resulting increase in vulnerability and risks. As a
consequence, cities on water have to identify and implement effective
actions aiming at strengthening the risk governance capacities at the local,
regional and national levels. This requires not only an improvement in
technological expertize and capital investments, but also new attitudes
towards the economy of the cities, their culture of the environment and the
very way in which the political process is designed—its capacity to
involve the social, economic and cultural actors in search of a shared
vision of the future. At the same time, it is worth pointing out that the re-
discovery of a more balanced and sustainable use of water can represent a
driving force for the economy of cities on water allowing them to both
attract new investments and promote new jobs. The safeguard of water and
land are closely linked, as both define character, identity and memory, thus
contributing to resilience itself. Overcoming the traditional barriers
between water management and land governance, and finding added value
in the multi-dimensional character and complexity of the relationships
between the city and water lead to a paradigm shift with respect to the
traditional relationship conceived during the modernization phase of cities
on water, when a land-centered perspective rapidly took over, and coastal
areas were converted into industrial and residential lands, thus serving new
uses and users. This also implies a re-evaluation of waterfront spaces both
from an historical and environmental viewpoint, thus giving back to water
its central role and opening up new ways of governing, living, and
imagining it.
Representing paradigmatic cases of the reciprocal link existing
between water management and urban planning, namely between water
1 Cf. Terje Tvedt and Terje Oestigaard, eds., A History of Water: Water and
Urbanization 1, series 3 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014).
Fragile and Resilient Cities on Water ix
and land governance, of the peculiar and deep relationship linking water
and society, as well as of the challenges that urban governance in cities on
water has to deal with, Venice and Tokyo well exemplify the complex
relationship that exists between fragility and resilience and, at the same
time, offer interesting insights on feasible options and actions to address
such a complex relationship. Despite the differences in size, population,
age and origins, the history of Venice and Tokyo is that of two capital-
cities, which developed in an intimate relationship with water, where the
latter molded the urban fabric and vice-versa, thus creating articulated and
complex functional and landscape structures, and typifying their world
wide image.
In both Venice and Tokyo, flood control and water management
played a formative role in their development and their resemblance as
water capitals was perceived by foreign travelers who visited Tokyo in the
second half of the XIX century.2 The cities share common features and
problems and face similar challenges and opportunities. The presence of
water made—and still makes—space a rare commodity in both the cities,
and analogous techniques were employed to claim water for land use by
using timber floating in rafts down the rivers to be pilled into the mud and
sand as the initial foundation for solid spaces in the two cities. Similar
flood management strategies were adopted to divert major rivers flowing
into the Venetian lagoon and the Tokyo bay and for the construction of
embarkments of different heights, while a water administration system was
established to prevent flooding, which was—and still is—a requirement
for safety, economic activities and quality of life, and thus a main concern
for governors and citizens of both the cities. The prosperity of Venice and
Tokyo (called Edo until 1868) widely relied on water as an important
element for strategic defense, a means to transport goods and pursue trade,
and an engine for their commercial dynamism. Both the cities developed
fishing industries and hosted prominent fish markets around which
entertainment, recreation and pleasure activities developed. They issued
precise rules to regulate the times and places where fishing could take
place, as well as regulating the size of nets and the equipment to be used.
They invented techniques to cook and preserve fish the legacy of which
still characterizes their respective local food cultures. City dwellers’
2 For example, Douglas Sladen (1856-1947), who was in Japan between the late
1889 and July 1890, noted that “busy quarters of the town which centres around
the Nihon-bashi […] which is considered the hearth of the capital and the hearth of
the country […] has the same hog’s-back bridges, the same busy water life” of
Venice, and came to realize “how Venetian Tokyo is.” Douglas Sladen, Queer
Things About Japan (London: A. Treherne, 1904), 338.
x Foreword
movement and leisure activities along aquatic routes, as well as seasonal
events, festivals and processions on water, gave rhythm to local life and
specific features to the townscape, thus testifying to the deep relationship
between water and society. The central role played by water in the lives of
both Venice and Tokyo is apparent in the ways it has shaped political,
social and cultural institutions, forged religious practices, written and
visual production, collective images and imaginations, all attesting to how
water is reciprocally interwoven with human activities and attitudes.
Massive landfill projects and the development of a network of rail
and road in modern and postwar Tokyo have often removed a
discontinuity between water and land that still typifies Venice’s landscape.
Nevertheless, despite the varying role that water has played in the history
and evolution of Venice and Tokyo, the various forms of technological
interventions in water management and usage, and the changing means of
participation and perception of water, the latter still remains a constant
presence in their townscape, as well as a threat which continues to
challenge these cities and their governance. Not differently from other
cities on water, crucial issues for Tokyo and Venice thus include how to
define a broad strategy to integrate risk reduction and resilient approaches
and initiatives into sustainable urban planning schemes; to raise awareness
about the relevant role of cultural heritage in the building of resilient
communities; to harmonize efficiency and functionality with livability and
sustainability in urban transport and port-maritime activities; to implement
robust but flexible adaptation strategies to climate changes; to better
integrate water, in all its historical, social, political, economic,
environmental and cultural dimensions, into the contemporary urban
fabric; to preserve and manage ecosystem services; to recover the complex
nature of the relationship between the city and its surrounding aquatic
spaces which has been strongly ‘simplified’ during the XX century’s
modernization; to revitalize and re-qualify tourism and leisure industry in
a sustainable way; to bring water and water-related recreational activities
back to the local citizens. These observations demonstrate the legitimacy
of a comparative approach to the study of the two cities on water, however
such studies are more widespread and popular in Japan rather that in
Italy—probably in part because of Venice’s worldwide claim to fame as
the water capital.3
3 Cf. for example Hidenobu Jinnai, Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995); original edition in Japanese (T(cid:448)ky(cid:448):
Chikuma shob(cid:448), 1985). Yutaka Takahashi, Toshi to mizu [City and water], (T(cid:448)ky(cid:448):
Iwanami, 1988); Hosei Daigaku-Eko chiiki dezain kenky(cid:460)jo, ed., Future Vision no
keifu. Mizu no toshi no miraiz(cid:448) [Genealogy of future vision. Future images of a
