Tokyo Station City: The railway station as urban place

Railway stations in Japan and elsewhere are undergoing redevelopment to accommodate new spaces of consumption and leisure. Tokyo Station redevelopment is a representative case illustrating the experiment of integrating new facilities into an existing spatial system. The station's image is being recast as an important urban centre in Tokyo with a particular mix of prestige business, shopping and unique entertainment venues. The walking network is being reconfigured in a larger space with a complex set of new land uses, leading to new spatial configurations and patterns of behaviour. These transformations support a new role for the station. The station redevelopment, along with related investments in the surrounding space represent a distinctly Japanese approach to transit-oriented development. This article examines the urban design strategy underlying these transformations.