What can New Zealand learn from Tokyo’s urban planning?

Tokyo’s Setagaya City boasts many of the compact and mixed-use suburban neighbourhoods have inspired many planners and policymakers around the world

In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in compact and mixed-use development among New Zealand planners and policymakers. It is easy to see why(1). Shifting our urban development towards denser and more functionally diverse forms, combining residential, commercial, recreational, and even industrial uses, presents an opportunity to make New Zealand’s cities and towns more liveable, walkable, and vibrant. Intensification may also have some economic benefits in spurring development activity, reviving deserted high streets, putting downward pressure on house prices, and creating more efficient public transport nodes.

So, what is stopping New Zealand from embarking on an urban transformation? Well... the answer is complicated. Fundamentally, development and land markets are tricky and creating the right conditions to incentivise compact residential and commercial development does not happen overnight. Ensuring a balanced mix of the two to create liveable places is another problem all together. One can wish upon an affordable supermarket in their neighbourhood all they want, but sometimes the best the free market can do is a petrol station and a vape shop(2).

There is also the challenge of restrictive land-use regulations like zoning rules, which prescribe what can be built and where. In New Zealand, compact and mixed-use development is often prohibited by local councils or otherwise stymied by an occasionally painful planning and legal bureaucracy. Sometimes these barriers are for good reason. Nobody wants their neighbour opening a 24-hour smoky barbeque joint next door. At other times, it is simply because residents and their local representatives are a bit too nervous about what urban change means for the community.

But this is all about to change. The New Zealand Government has recently announced a major planning system reform, which includes requiring councils to permit denser housing development and zone more mixed-use neighbourhoods(3). The centrepiece of this announcement is a proposal to standardise a slimmed-down set of land-use zones for use across the country. This would replace the current system where bespoke zones are designed and implemented by individual councils in consultation with the community.

Chris Bishop, the minister responsible for reforming New Zealand’s planning system, has made no secret of drawing this “common sense” idea from Japan, where standardised zoning has been used for decades (4). Bishop is hardly New Zealand’s first self-proclaimed urbanist to take inspiration from the world’s fifth largest economy. Japan is frequently admired for its bustling urbanism, economic development, and infrastructural efficiency. So, let’s take a closer look at the urban planning system that underpins its capital city, Tokyo, to see what other lessons New Zealand might take on board.

A brief history of Tokyo’s urban form

Bishop’s interest in Japan’s urbanism is not without justification. Any New Zealander who has visited will come back reeling with stories about having their mind blown by the train system’s alien efficiency and their late-night hauls from the 7-Eleven beneath their hotel. No doubt forever disenfranchised from the average night-out in Wellington, where one might consider themselves lucky if a single stale mince-and-cheese is left in the Night ‘n Day pie warmer and the bus back home turns up at all.

And while those yet to visit might be sick of hearing these stories, those telling them are far from wrong. By the numbers, Tokyo lays claim to one of the world’s most well-connected street networks, efficient public transport system, and ranks among the highest in retail and restaurant density(5). It is also incredibly easy to get lost in the urban design of the city’s iconic suburban neighbourhoods – Kōenji, Shimokitazawa, and Kagurazaka, to name a few – with their pedestrianised shopping promenades (shōtengai) and intimate residential side streets.

Planners sometimes refer to these neighbourhoods as ‘fine-grained’. This is another way of saying that a place is dense, interwoven with paths and alleys, and comprised of low-rise, mixed-use buildings where people live, work, and play. Fine-grained neighbourhoods have traditionally been considered the gold-standard of mixed-use development because they make the city feel energetic and diverse(6). Well-connected and compact streets also make neighbourhoods more walkable and promote small-scale development creating affordable homes for young people and families and shops for independent entrepreneurs to lease.

Omoide Yokocho in Shinjuku is famous for close-quartered bars and restaurants that promote a vibrant and exciting street life

Western observers often make the mistake of assuming that Tokyo’s fine-grained neighbourhoods, with their narrow streets and buildings, date back to antiquity. The reality is that many of these features are products of relatively recent urban planning and development. Much of suburban Tokyo was developed or redeveloped in the aftermath of the Second World War, when mass urbanisation met scarce planning, building, and environmental controls(7). Often, the only major planning rule developers had to contend with was a minimum road width of three meters.

Mixed land-uses were a central feature of development around this time. The immense urban density that emerged due to Tokyo’s post-war urbanisation made local, small-scale businesses viable, and many operated unrestricted out of the first or second floors of people’s homes. Many informal and often ramshackle commercial spaces (sometimes referred to as yokochō) were also built, particularly around or underneath train stations, serving as local entertainment hubs(8). Some of these spaces still exist today, most famously Golden Gai in Shinjuku.

But not all mixed-use development that occurred in the absence of planning and environmental controls was the kind admired today. Limited development restrictions in industrial zones meant that it was common for residential properties to be build next to factories, which often operated unfettered by pollution controls(9). While this might have allowed for short commutes, it also led to severe health and environmental consequences, which partly contributed to the emergence of Japan’s early environmental movement that successfully advocated for a more structured planning system in the 1960s.

Japan’s flexible planning rules have allowed individuals to creatively adapt unexpected spaces for residential, commercial, recreational, and even industrial uses

The art of Japan’s urban planning

The urban planning system that emerged during that period remains largely intact today. And while routine development is still a relatively relaxed undertaking under that system, it would be a mistake to assume that urban planning in Japan is laissez-faire or even any less bureaucratic than New Zealand’s. Japan’s central planning legislation, the City Planning Act 1961 (CPA), is much older and no less complicated than New Zealand’s Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA). Though, there are a few conceptual differences worth noting.

In New Zealand, urban planning is an ‘effects based’ system in which sustainable development sits at the centre. This means that all development is assessed against the degree it is likely to cause adverse effects on the natural and built environment, and the extent to which those effects can be mitigated or justified. Councils manage this process by divvying up types of development and their potential effects into different ‘activity classes’. Only development considered to have a less than minor effect can be classed as ‘permitted’ activity, which can go ahead without too much scrutiny.

By contrast, urban planning in Japan is centred around the promotion of urban development. Under the CPA, urban development is assumed to be a desirable outcome and frames the purpose of the planning system as helping ensure that happens in an orderly way. This is underpinned not by activity classes, but by a growth boundary system called senbiki (literally ‘line drawing’). Senbiki divides each region into urbanisation promotion areas and urbanisation control areas. In urbanisation promotion areas, which can be the size of entire cities, planning starts on the basis that nearly all development is permitted in principle.

From a sustainable development perspective, this often means that Japan’s urban areas tend to have less green space, reserves, and vegetation than New Zealand cities and towns as well as fewer amenity controls over things like shading and glare. But conversely, the widespread use of growth boundaries has helped promote intensification and, to an extent, helped manage urban encroachment into productive agricultural land and reserves(10). Wider environmental protections and limits also exist to place restrictions on urban development, but unlike in New Zealand, tend to sit outside the planning system.

Senbiki also underpins Japan’s development permission system (which is equivalent to New Zealand’s resource consent process). Rather than determining the need for permission through activity classes, it is instead determined mostly by project size and the urbanisation area in which the development will occur. In general, developments in urbanisation promotion areas under 1,000m² do not require development permission so long as they meet basic planning rules, which tend to be far more liberal than in New Zealand.

Kabukicho in Shinjuku is a bustling urban centre that is less restricted by height, setback, density, and signage rules that constrain New Zealand cities

Bishop has expressed clear interest in Japan’s central government standardisation of land-use zones across the country. To help keep planning rules simple and consistent, there are only 12 standard zones (increased from just three when the system was first introduced in 1919) plus a handful of special-use districts and overlays for things such as heritage protection and managing fire risk(11). Local governments also apply these zones with a much broader brush than New Zealanders might be used to. District plans in Japan, which similarly take a detailed account of local amenity and aesthetic concerns, are typically reserved for small, targeted community interventions, rather than used as a baseline.

Japan’s standardised zones are highly permissive, only specifying maximum nuisance levels and all enabling of mixed-use development. The two lowest density residential zones still permit buildings up to 10-12 meters high, have no minimum floor area or lot size, and allow home businesses up to 150m² to operate on the first and second floors. This is more generous than most medium density residential zones in New Zealand, which also tend to restrict design choices around things like signage and cladding.

Low-density zoning is also simply uncommon in Japan’s largest cities, where a mix of mid high-rise and mixed commercial zoning tends to be more prolific. From Tokyo, it might be an hour on the train out towards Nerima or Hachioji before finding a neighbourhood that could loosely be described as suburban by New Zealand standards. Tokyo’s suburbs are often still medium density and mixed-use, with operating farms interspersed with small townhouse developments and danchi (public housing apartments). Even in suburban areas, high densities also tend to be permitted around train stations and town centres.

The duality of standardised zoning and lessons for New Zealand

Permissive zoning rules are one tool in Japan’s kete that have helped consolidate the compact and mixed-use form of Tokyo’s fine-grained neighbourhood and the city’s exciting and spontaneous urbanism. Simply allowing people to adapt their properties for a variety of uses and enabling small building typologies unencumbered by restrictive planning regulations has historically led to bottom-up urban development patterns that look and feel warm and serendipitous(12).

Though, that relationship has become a little murky over recent decades. Large-scale capital investors are increasingly leveraging permissive zoning rules to usher in new, more profitable modes of mixed-use development in Tokyo that are much different to the fine-grained neighbourhoods we often admire(13). Roppongi Hills and the Izumi Garden Tower in Roppongi and Tokyo Midtown in Akasaka are emblematic of this new face of mixed-use development, defined by luxurious high-rise condominiums, corporate skyscrapers, and multinational chain stores, and which tend to feel more institutional than local.

As tourists or passers-by, it’s easy to get sucked in to the glamour and architectural spectacle of these developments. But peel back the surface and you will often discover the longstanding communities and distinct local cultures that were displaced. Sometimes through gangster tactics by developers or rent hikes, but other times through the slow alienation that can come with severe urban disruption and change(14). Of course, these urban changes are not unique to Tokyo and many global cities, like New York and London, have also experienced similar gentrification patterns over the same period.

This shifting mode of urban change in Tokyo raises a simple but often neglected point about mixed-use development. Compact and functionally diverse urban forms come served in many ways – from strip malls and university campuses to favelas and amusement parks – and there is a value judgement to be made about what New Zealand’s urban future should look like and the right tool to bring that vision to life(15). The central lesson from Tokyo is that a liberal planning system is an effective tool both enabling fine-grained neighbourhoods and dynamically taking them apart.

Roppongi Hills is a quintessential example of Tokyo’s new ‘mode’ of mixed-use development that is transforming the city’s traditionally fine-grained neighbourhoods

Few moments in Japan’s modern history illustrate this better than the urban change that coincided with the country’s economic bubble in the late 1980s. At that time, an inrush of domestic and international investment firms into Tokyo severely inflated commercial property demand and land prices well above the value of residential property. In Tokyo’s Chūō ward, this led to a wave of residential property acquisitions and commercial redevelopment that radically depopulated the ward and wiped out the area’s traditionally mixed-use character(16).

In more recent years, a similar dynamic has also been playing out within central Tokyo. In 2002, a law was passed by Japan’s central government that dropped almost all planning regulations in Shinagawa, Tamachi, Shibuya, and Hibya in an effort to promote economic growth. Large-scale developers were invited to negotiate directly with the prime minister’s office for development permission and various public subsidies. Many developments granted permission have since dramatically transformed their neighbourhoods, and the people who live in them, replacing many low-rise, mixed-use, and working class neighbourhoods with new luxurious condominiums and skyscrapers(17).
These examples also highlight an issue that speaks to the ongoing debate in New Zealand between centralised and localised decision making. No doubt, the devolution of planning decisions to local communities in New Zealand has rightfully been criticised for the perverse incentive it often creates for local representatives to protect property values to the sole benefit of existing homeowners (voters). Yet, the centralisation of planning decisions in Japan also demonstrates that such a model also comes with a perverse incentive to cede well-functioning urban communities in the pursuit of economic growth(18).

The Tokyo Midtown development in Akasaka is emblematic of more institutional form of mixed-use development common is many global cities

Tokyo’s urban planning and development poses some insightful lessons for New Zealand. As communities wrestle with the future of cities and towns across the country, Tokyo helps validate the promise of feeling a little less nervous about what compact and mixed-use neighbourhoods could look like. The city also demonstrates the potential of the pragmatic changes being considered through New Zealand’s planning reform, like making it easier for small businesses to operate in the suburbs and permitting the densities to make those shops viable.

Recent urban changes in Tokyo also highlight a need to reflect on the elements of New Zealand’s urban communities that are worth protecting, particularly as planners and policymakers eye up the built environment to help realise economic growth. As Tokyo demonstrates, encouraging development through a loosening of planning rules cedes control of urban change, for better or worse, to the dynamism of land value incentives, which may not always realise the change we hope for.

About the author

Kayden Briskie is a housing and urban policy analyst based in Wellington, New Zealand. In 2025, he was a recipient of the John McArthur Geography Research Scholarship and the Asia New Zealand Foundation’s Postgraduate Research Grant which supported his research on mixed-use urban development in Tokyo, Japan. 

The Foundation's Asia in Focus initiative publishes expert insights and analysis on issues across Asia, as well as New Zealand’s evolving relationship with the region.