urban renewal, aomori-style.

Apropos another yomiuri shinbun editorial...

Aomori city is on the cutting edge of city development. In one limited sense.

In case you hadn't heard, the population is decreasing. If you read my blog, you've heard it and heard it and heard it. Aomori city is not immune, of course. So Aomori has been working on a plan for the last several years that really is having a nice effect.

The plan is the "compact city" (コンパクトシティー）. Owing especially to the local climate, a sprawling city is difficult and expensive to maintain. Public transportation and snow removal need to cover a larger and larger area as time goes on. So Aomori, knowing that the future holds fewer taxpayers to support vast public projects, has been actively pursuing a plan to keep the city nucleus alive.
Like the rest of the world, japanese downtowns are suffering as huge discount stores with enormous parking lots are driving the business out of the city core. In an already poor, and expensive to maintain city like this one, it's an absolute necessity to prevent that.
That's why there's a (semi-)beautiful library right in front of the train station, and continuing development like the (luxurious?) new mid-life tower apartment building directly in front of the station. The city has been working through tax incentives and other means to bring businesses to the eki.
Attracting the youth and the economic activity they bring to the area has been the priority, but I wish they'd find a way to attract more youth-friendly cafes. Or me-friendly cafes at least. There's still no starbucks, even though they would likely make a killing.

There are a couple of thorns in the side of this plan though. The interminably long kankou doori and chuuo doori keep stretching further and further to the south, in spite of the decreasing population. As of November, all three of the major electronics stores in town are out in the far reaches of these two streets. They're all actually quite close together. The new denkodo/xebio/tsutaya complex out in that region also seems to have potential to drive customers away from the city center. Though it's not so far away from the city as to pose additional maintenance burden. The region was already somewhat well serviced.

The biggie isn't coming for a few more years though. In 2010 when the new link in the shinkansen reaches aomori, it'll stop way way out of the city core, in a region that is not currently well serviced. But I'm sure they've got a plan.

Anyway, Aomori + compact city plan = good shopping all in one place. Thanks, city planners.