The Problem of Revitalizing a Small City Downtown Core

Look, Obachan!, a photo by dtk_guy on Flickr.

First, the Mister Donut shop in the photo has closed now. So Heiwa Dori has become a little bit more forlorn. Supposedly it was a bustling retail strip in its heyday. The building which the Mister Donut shop was in housed a Popolo department/clothing store, Jusco, a bowling alley and a shopping mall. Today, demolition of the building is being held up by the last remaining occupant, an Outami izakaya restaurant. One local has said that if they don't move out soon, the city will build a new library on the Machi no Hiroba park across the street and wait for the restaurant to move out. Then that building will be torn down and a new Machi no Hiroba park will be made on its location.

The culprit for the abandonment of the old downtown core was a form of urban sprawl and lack of public transit. When the Sati(sic) department store (now Aeon) opened up in the Chuo area it drew customers away from the core by offering free parking. After that, other major retailers moved operations onto the road running across the northern part of the city. Essentially the area evolved into a Japanese version of a strip mall road. The only business left in the old downtown core are the Onuma department store, a few aging retail stores, a few public service offices, a handful of hotels, some restaurants and izakaya (most which do the bulk of their business at night) and lots of bars. I've been told the area has gone downhill a long ways from its former glory.

In most places I've visited in Japan the train station is an integral cornerstone of the centre of a community. In Yamagata it seems that isn't the case all the time. In some places such as Yonezawa it didn't happen from the beginning as the line couldn't be punched through to the old city centre without tearing up the fabric of the community. In other places, rail lines ceased operations and a dependency on vehicle traffic grew. There are exceptions such as Takahata where the rail line was straightened to accommodate faster trains such as the Yamagata Shinkansen and the town centre found itself a mile away from the new station.

It's interesting to see how these communities have evolved. In the future I'd like to find out more about the history of the area in the past one hundred years or so. But it might be a tricky task. For example, I haven't found a photo online of the old Yonezawa city hall which stood on the site of the Machi no Hiroba. Nor have I found a photo of the old Yonezawa castle. There must be at least one of each out there somewhere...