Opinion What is a city? By Scott T. Hards	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
地方自治体の合併に思う ｢地方の時代」が叫ばれて久しいが、 権限の委譲や財政面の強化のみに目を奪われると、 大切な「地域の誇り」を失うことにもなってしまう。

Over the past few months, I've caught myself thinking about cities. What defines a city? Back in elementary school, I remember learning that cities were concentrations of people that had a downtown, or central urban area, that was connected to outlying suburbs by some kind of transportation system. That's a pretty basic definition, but these days, that pattern is being broken more and more frequently.

One change involves that downtown area. As lifestyles and economies have evolved, the centers of many cities around the globe have begun to decay. In the downtowns of some medium- and large-sized cities in Japan, you can find stretches of shops that have their shutters down even in the middle of a weekday. In some parts of the United States, city centers have degenerated badly into nests of crime and poverty. Businesses - and people - have all moved out to the suburbs, and some cities have essentially become donut-shaped with few venturing into the middle.

Another change we're seeing is municipal mergers - the combining of two or more cities into one. Sometimes, two cities grow to the point that they begin to blend into each other, and the distinction between them becomes blurred. A classic example of this would be Budapest, the capital of Hungary. It started as three cities - Buda, Obuda and Pest - and they joined way back in 1873. In Japan, we recently saw the merging of Urawa, Omiya and Yono to form Saitama City. In this case, too, the three cities were all part of the same urban concentration, and it was becoming hard to distinguish between them. So it seems like a natural merger.

But recently, there have been a number of city mergers, or proposed mergers, that don't seem to make any sense. I live in Kuroiso, Tochigi Prefecture. There is a proposal to merge the city with Nishinasuno and Kurobane. What bothers me about this plan is that all three towns are physically separate and distinct from one another. There are many kilometers of nothing but farmland between them! So even if the merger takes place, there would not be any clear city center.

So why would people consider such an unnatural combination? There are two big reasons. The first is that Tokyo is actively encouraging cities to merge to beef up their resources in preparation for the decentralization of many administrative functions (so-called chiho bunken). In fact, a whopping 38 percent of Japan's municipalities are currently considering a merger with neighboring towns.

Secondly, this decentralization usually involves the transfer of more money and power from Tokyo to regional politicians. And what politician would ignore the opportunity to get more power and spend more money?

Of course, I understand the need to move power into Japan's regional governments and to make sure that those governments are ready to take the responsibility. But there must be a more elegant solution than clumsy, forced mergers between unrelated cities. For every city name that vanishes, a little history and a little local pride vanishes with it.

Shukan ST: March 21, 2003

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