Q: Is there a way to accumulate the specific functions of the city center during the development process?
A: Useful to swap the function with other areas if the timing meets with the development.
Fukuoka City's center, Tenjin Area, has been dramatically developed along with the increasing importance of this city as the central core city of the Kyushu Region since the late 1940s. Then, there was a triangle land swap according to the function of the area's future in the late 1950s.
Urban Functions Accumulation: Tenjin Area
Fukuoka City’s center, Tenjin Area, has been dramatically developed along with the increasing importance of this city as the central core city of the Kyushu Region since the late 1940s. It was the period that Tenjin Area started featuring the character as the commercial center on top of the administrative center. That led the area to the construction boom in the 1950s.
In the 1950s, Fukuoka Central Post Office was located at the corner of the two busiest streets of the city, and it was searching for a bigger premise to move due to the increasing number of handling mails and packages. And the Bank of Fukuoka owned the land next to the Bank of Japan Fukuoka Branch. Then Tenjin Market was burned and was to reconstruct. These stakeholders started to negotiate the land swap. The negotiation had twists and turns, but in the end, they concluded the land swap with the recommendations of the local business organization and the Fukuoka City Mayor. They chose the swap according to the function for the future of the area. Fukuoka Central Post Office moved next to the Bank of Japan. The Bank of Fukuoka moved close to the Fukuoka Stock Exchange on the main street, where many banks and security companies have branches. And Tenjin Market moved to the corner of the junction of two busiest streets of the city and remodeled as Fukuoka Building, an office and shopping complex invested by leading local companies.
Then Tenjin started to grow as the commercial center of Fukuoka City, surpassing the Hakata Area. Sixty years later, Tenjin now prospers as the commercial center as well as the administrative center of Fukuoka City. Now the construction boom again due to the Tenjin Big Bang project of Fukuoka City, where Tenjin will be transformed into a high-quality town with new well-equipped higher buildings, safe and secure, disaster-resistant and disease-free, to be Asia’s hub city. Tenjin Building is being rebuilt as a huge office and shopping complex in the busiest place in the city.
Ideas of local collaborations are encoded in Tenjin’s DNA, and local business organizations and communities, such as We Love Tenjin Council, are active not only in collaborating on the events but also in asserting the opinions for the future of the area. Tenjin area is expected to grow further as Asia’s hub and the western gateway to Japan, as well as the commercial center of Fukuoka City or Kyushu Region.
[Case ID: Urban Renewal UR-01]