Tsukuba in Ibaraki prefecture, it is also known as the Tsukuba Science City, A planned city with 13,000 scientist (5600 Ph.D. holders), and close to 300 science related companies, it is the world’s leading Science City.
Conceived in an initiative to move part of government from Tokyo to reduce the city overcrowding. In 1967, 6 ministries and 36 institutions agreed to move to the new city, with only the Science and technology center for disaster prevention starting actual construction on the new city. In 1985, the Tsukuba International Science and Technology exposition was held there to attract private enterprises to the city.
The city become attractive to companies after the opening of the Tsukuba express rail service, halving by half the time required to travel from the city to Akihabara to 45 mins.
The city garden city design is another of the attractions for companies to relocate, the green areas are significant in proportion to the industrial, and residential ones.
The city has an underground join trench to accommodates all the power telephonic llines, etc... Giving an uncluttered image to the city, something I wish we had more in Tokyo.
The city university is well connected to the downtown by a system of bicycle pathway and bridges. The one pictured above counts also with a line dedicated for robot testing.
In the city park there is a full-scale working rocket to commemorate the city expo.
View Tsukuba city in a larger map
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4 comments:
Wow - a whole city of scientists... speaking as someone that comes from a science background, that sounds absolutely, positively... scary! However, it might collectively be good for the rest of Japan (concentrating the nerd-power in one area).
I know, I shouldn't be degrade my brother/sister scientists... after all, I'm a bit of a nerd too. The idea of the city does look good. How big is it actually? It's nice to see one of the better crazy Japanese ideas actually being developed.
The city covers a significant area of 28,000 ha, but as per design, a large part are green areas, so it isn't very populated, on weekdays the city feels like a big campus due to Tsukuba University students are all over the place. An interesting fact about the city is that more than 50% of Japan public research and development budget was spent there. Also that companies like Intel have their head offices there.
The park looks like a nice place to relax.
What is really nice is that the university students practice music there and they are really good.
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