Marunouchi Nakadori Street Street has become the city's living room

Currently, Nakadori is 21m wide, and the buildings on both sides are 31m high with aligned eaves, and the ground is covered in rhythmic patterns of muted-colored porphyry on both the sidewalk and roadway. Deciduous trees such as Zelkova, Katsura, American Gum, and China trees are planted along the street, and planters, hanging flowers, and benches placed between the road and the sidewalk create a relaxed atmosphere. These green spaces, along with the gorgeous show windows of the brand shops both inside and outside the building that line the first floors of the buildings, create a seasonal atmosphere that is a delight to passersby. Especially in early spring, when the gentle sunlight shines on the street surrounded by fresh greenery, the sunlight filtering through the trees is very soft, and together with the show windows filled with brightly colored products and the refreshing breeze, you can feel the arrival of spring.

In his books "Exterior Space Design" and "Aesthetics of Streetscapes," Yoshinobu Ashihara states that the distance at which a human face can be recognized is 70 to 80 feet, and that the optimal relationship between street width and building height can be expressed as H/D ≒ 1.5. Bernard Rudofsky, who provided a thought-provoking essay on the relationship between street space and people, argues in his classic work, "Street for People," that streets are not simply roads but exist for the pedestrians. Streets are not areas but volumes; they are companions to the buildings that line them. Streets are the matrix. They are the rooms, fertile soil, and nurturing grounds of the city. Based on these indicators, Marunouchi Nakadori Street is exactly 70 feet wide (approximately 21 meters), allowing the faces of people walking on the opposite sidewalk and the appearance of stores to be roughly recognized. Furthermore, the eaves height of the buildings facing Nakadori Street is 31 meters, which also fits the H/D ≒ 1.5 ratio. Furthermore, Nakadori Street truly serves as a "people-centered street," and for the people who base their activities here, it has become a "living room-like space" in Marunouchi that, together with the buildings along the street, gives a "comfortable" and "secure" feeling. This is not simply the result of urban planning and architecture, but also the power of planning and city management.

Looking back at the history of Marunouchi Nakadori Street, when the name first came into use around 1918, it was seven ken (approximately 12 meters) wide, and facing Nakadori, it was lined with three-story brick office buildings with names beginning with "Naka," such as "Naka No. 9 Building." At the time, Marunouchi was already booming as a business center with 30 buildings, partly due to the opening of Tokyo Station in 1914. After the war, in response to the rapid increase in office demand due to Japan's rapid economic growth from 1955 to 1965, and motorization, Marunouchi was rebuilt with a group of reinforced concrete office buildings with 31-meter eaves heights, widening the street's width to 21 meters.

Looking back on it like this, it's easy to imagine that over the next few decades, new functions and uses will be added to this street. I look forward to seeing the town mature even further and to seeing changes in Marunouchi Nakadori Street.