Tsukuba City and the Tsukuba Express corridor (under construction)

Up to the eve of the 2000 general census

Kawanaka and Kaneko (2015) divide the urban planning history of Tsukuba into three periods. The period from 1963 to March 1980 is the central government period in which planning and development were dominated by the central government's plan. The dominant tasks were layout and construction of roads and institutes. The period from April 1980 through July 2005 is the government-private period during which the main tasks were construction of municipal, residential, commercial, transportation, and cultural facilities. Tsukuba City itself did not come into existence until 1987. The opening of the Tsukuba Express commuter line in August 2005 starts the third period in which Tsukuba planning is mainly local with the central government's role gradually receding.

The scatter of institutes, residential and commercial areas, industrial parks, and older agricultural villages is a legacy of the first proposal. This initial plan proposed a "Nouvelle Ville de Tsukuba", an essentially contiguous block covering most of Yatabe-machi and Kukizaki-mura. Because Nouvelle Ville de Tsukuba would have displaced large numbers of farmers and villagers, it met with fierce local opposition and was buried along with its name. Subsequent plans were restricted to forested areas and minimized dislocation of existing residents (Kawanaka and Kaneko, 2015). The racetrack in the upper left quandrant of this diagram is the Japan Automotive Research Institute's Tsukuba test track, which became operational in 1964.³ This plot of land will play a large role in Tsukuba's post TX development.

The culmination of a national planning process that began in 1956 (Tanno et al., 2009), Tsukuba Science City was originally a greenfields development plan to relocate a national university and about 43 government research facilities to a location about 60 kilometers north of Tokyo. The site was noteworthy for its lack of convenient transportation (Bloom and Asano, 1981). Covering 2,968 ha, it was the largest of the large-scale suburban residential development projects started in the 1960s (Inui, 2017).

The original plan envisioned dividing the pine forests of the Tsukuba plateau into three basic land uses (Tanno et al., 2009): the science city, peripheral development districts, and industrial parks. Laid out along a north-south axis with universities to the north and research institutes to the south, the plan called for a residential and retail district between them. New boulevards would connect this new city to commuter train stations in nearby Tsuchiura and Ushiku. An expressway completed this early sketch.

The University of Tsukuba (formerly the Tokyo University of Education) and national research institutes were transfered to this science city between 1972 and 1980. A central shopping mall, apartment complexes for researchers and a bus terminal were completed between 1983 and 1985.