yokohama, 横浜

its been also more than 4months since my visit, yet this time the target site is yokohama, japan. as ive done before, it starts with brief description, and analysis follows. furthermore, this time i could come up with a slogan for city branding of yokohayam. 

yokohama is the biggest municipality in japan with regards to the population (about 3.7 million in the city alone), since tokyo is consisted of 24 wards and osaka city is not as big as yokohama. yet since its still in the great tokyo area, its not regarded as one of three megacities (tokyo, osaka, nagoya). it has a long history of city planning thanks to Tamura Akira, it has very unique built environment, and often the citizens of yokohama are very proud of living there.

my destination this time was super rich area of yamanote and the biggest china town in japan. 

firstly, the strength of yamanote is very beautiful "foreigners' houses." they were built in the beginning of the 20th century or so, for diplomats. this is because of the origine of yokohama as one of the 5 ports in japan which was open for the world in the middle of the 19th century. many houses were destroyed during the war unfortunately, but many were still preserved very nicely. the nearby houses are for very rich people and they look sometimes equally fancy as them. the foreigners houses are now open for public for free. because of yamanote's location, it is possible to overview the whole area of yokohama. waht is more, the area covered by nature is relatively big. this enables us to enjoy natural amenities as well.

on the contrary, although the buildings are great and visitors can enjoy the fancy atmosphere which yamanote creates, the infrastructure is not well organized enough at all. the elec cables are running everywhere, and the road fabric is just plain concreates. they do not really fit to the characteristics of yamanote. furthermore, although it maybe inevitable because of its location, but this area is extremely segregated from ordinary people in terms of residence. only rich people can live here. there are some schools in this area, but they are for rich families only. no way i could afford to go... this social segregation might in the future cause some issues of its sustainability.

it is well connected to tokyo by various train lines, making easier for people to visit here and residents to go to work (although i doubt if they use public transport). at least it is useful for rich kids coming to fancy schools. furthermore, because the planning culture is well grown in yokohama as mentioned earlier, i dont think any crazy development plans would be realized here.

between yamanote and china town, there is a shopping street wellknown for its street landscape. it is motomachi shopping street. it has some good plans to enable pedestrians to enjoy the atmosphere, such as relaxing equipments, restriction in heights of buildings, restriction in car traffic, stand back shops, and so on. it might be nothing special in european context, but this is the charismatic street in japan.

china town is also contributing the unique character of yokohama (or ishikawachou area). its built environment is totally different. the huge number of chinese restaurants and shops even contributes to the identity of yokohama.

yet there is a huge threat. the news about unsafe chinese food has caused the decline in visitors.

i dont think there are many things yokohama has to do in order to improve these areas, except basic infrastructure. but in order to improve the image of these areas and yokohama as a whole, a place branding campaign should be carried out. the slogan comes up to my mind just now is "Yokohama connects to you." this refers not only to yokohama's history as the first gate from the world to japan (and from japan to the world), but to its character of global atmosphere, such as foreigners houses and china town. furthremore, the "you" refers to the all the people around the world, because yokohama is most probablly somehow connected from anywhere around the world. and it can involve all the global citizens like New York's "I ♡ NY" and Amsterdam's "I amsterdam." i dont think this is the best slogan for yokohama since this is just appeared on my mind a couple minutes ago yet it may be a good first step to market and brand yokohama for the further development.