Bonding People Together Through Illuminations

Urban Development to Meet Diversifying Lifestyles

Naka-dori is the main street of Marunouchi, one of Japan's premier business districts. It was here that real estate developer Mitsubishi Estate, the OMY Area Management Association (Ligare), the Council for Area Development and Management of Otemachi, Marunouchi, and Yurakucho conducted the Marunouchi Street Park 2021 Winter social experiment from December 1 to 25, 2021.

Their objective was to create a "people-centered space" by turning a road seemingly meant for cars into a park area and provide a more open and enriched urban life. While the project was part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's Park Street Tokyo initiative, it also aimed to help develop the Marunouchi district as a tourist destination and promote it as a place for business creation.

Marunouchi Street Park, which started in 2019, is positioned as "a social experiment to explore the role of streets, their seasonal versatility, and how they can adapt to diversifying lifestyles." Looking ahead to the post-COVID age, the project incorporated not only basic infectious disease control measures into the verification experiment, but also measured the flow of human traffic and shared information on congestion levels.

Projects were conducted a total of three times in 2021 across spring, summer, and winter in order to verify seasonal changes as well. During the spring and summer operations, workplaces were set up in outdoor spaces to test the comfort, productivity, and health benefits of working in a lush urban park.

"Now that people are free to choose where they work thanks to the push for telecommuting, we thought that the outdoors could be an option too," says Nakajima Mineko of both Mitsubishi Estate and Ligare.

Illuminations that People with an Impairment Can Also Enjoy

Marunouchi Street Park 2021 Winter sought ways to make a more comfortable space for viewing the illuminations along Marunouchi Naka-dori Street, a wintertime tradition.

A 4-meter-high Christmas tree, photo spots taking full advantage of the lights, lounge spaces for warming up around a fire, food trucks offering dishes from nearby hotels, and "glass houses" providing a warm space to enjoy these dishes were all created for the project.

In aiming to create "a space open to all," the illumination project this winter also ran trial tours for people with visual impairments.

"We thought about the ways we could make illuminations, which appeal to our sense of vision, more accessible for those with an impairment. Alongside asking for expert opinions, we also interviewed people born with visual impairments and had them actually take a walk down Marunouchi Naka-dori Street," says Nakajima.

The interviews reaffirmed that people with a visual impairment have always had an excellent ability to expand their imaginations using non-visual cues and enjoy themselves abundantly through their other senses. As such, a tour was set up in which volunteer guides had participants touch the lights and trees directly and provided them with detailed information, like the fact that 1.2 million lights were used to decorate the trees along the street. "It was very well received by the trial participants, and it's something we hope to bring with us into future projects," says Nakajima.

Since the late 1990s, the Otemachi, Marunouchi, and Yurakucho districts have been working with the local community to create more comfortable spaces by reviewing details like the width of the sidewalks and types of trees planted along the streets. Marunouchi Street Park 2021 Winter's glittering illuminations also evoked the sense of care people have for one another and the desire to cherish connections.

There is no doubt that the community that has emerged out of Naka-dori Street has become a driving force behind the Marunouchi district's development. Expectations are also high for Marunouchi Street Park's continued efforts in order to ensure Marunouchi's lasting presence as a symbolic district in the post-COVID age.