Checkmate: Games of Chess and Yokohama’s Citizen Forest

 

Take Niiharu Citizen Forest. It‘s the largest Citizen Forest of Yokohama. The landlord who had the biggest acreage was Mr. Okutsu who unfortunately died in 2000 just before the inauguration of the Citizen Forest (; my post June 24, 2016). He did not have a person who could inherit his property or negotiate with the city what to do with the title of the land. Upon his death the land he owned became municipal property. The remaining landlords of large or else are still counted about 90 people for Niiharu. Do you think they easily agreed to aggregate their land for becoming urbanization control area? We Japanese were/are not so good people. Niiharu is not an exception. It’s a typical land-ownership pattern for Yokohama’s Citizen Forests, large and small. Under this constraint at the time of forming citizen forest network, the city’s planners must have worked strategically to make the forest “Citizen Forest” with the designation of Urbanization Control Area. They fully utilized small meshes covering the entire city.

Lots of landlords for Niiharu

Imagine you had a land, maybe 10m*10m?, within a certain mass of greenery of Yokohama. The next to your forest had another landlord. Actually your land was surrounded by several neighbours who owned ecologically similar forest of small patches. Now, one of the neighbours agreed to make his/her land Urbanization Control Area. Another neighbour decided to sell the property to the City, Prefecture, or even to the National Government. Maybe, the person or the heir used their property for tax purposes. (Well, Niiharu Citizen Forest has several small areas of national land. In a sense, Niiharu Forest has National Park within it.) They were tiny, but eventually, say in 10 or 20 years’ time, your land could be encircled by Urbanization Control Area. One day, you noticed you did not have access to your land unless you passed the Urbanization Control Area. You had insisted to keep your land OK for urbanization at least legally. But you did not have legitimate way anymore to bring bulldozers for constructing “urban“ place on your land. Moreover, did you think easy to connect your property with electricity, water and sewage system of the city? You had to run around many offices for permit etc. Finally, even if you planned to sell your 10m*10m land for a housing developer, did you think there was a buyer for such land?

This part of Niiharu is owned by
the mixture of private and municipal landlords.

For officials who plan to preserve green spaces within the city, that‘s the strategy exploiting the small meshes over the area. Lots of landlords with the equal property right means the diverse idea of land management for each mesh. Within about 100 landlords for 70ha, which is Niiharu‘s case, there is no single policy agreed to manage the greenery. That‘s the point of start. For an official who aims to expand the protected area, the first task is to find title holders who sympathize the environmental protection. The reasons why they think so could be different, but they all agree importance of preserving the ecology of the land. That’s more than enough. Such landlord could be persuaded to make the acreage Urbanization Control Area. If one corner of a land obtained the title, and the landlord started enjoying preferential tax treatment and/or almost free help for land management including weekend forestry by Lovers Society, their neighbour may begin to think the option of making their property also under the Control Area. The next job of the city officer is to find or nudge the neighbours into such direction. Little by little, the property of “against Control Area” would be checkmated. It has been a long, patient, and often unsung or even disliked duty for the city officers in order for keeping the city green. But they were/are very clever. They played chess games, or Go games, for a long haul. They have succeeded. Look. Now in 2025, Yokohama has 47 Citizen Forests and numerous smaller green spaces here and there.

Viola keiskei Miq in Niiharu,
preserved thanks to Urbanization Control Area designation.

The strategy game does not end with the demarcation for Urban Control Area. Yes, once awarded the title of “Urban Control Area,” removing the label requires long legal procedure that often does not match with the benefit from urbanization of the land. (In the end, it’s the system defined by national law passed and modified by National Diet.) Still, for landlords to enjoy the advantage offered by the municipal government, it is based on contract with the city. For example, basically every 10 years landlords for properties within a Citizen Forest have chance to revise and renew their contract with the city. Before, maybe, the title holders lived near the forest. During these 50 or so years, many original members passed away and their relatives inherit the property. The passing of legal title has done with preferential tax treatment for Urbanization Control Area … And now, not every heir lives near, or even in, Yokohama. Some of them may have established their own household in, say, the USA. To maintain Citizen Forest, the city officers must negotiate every landlord, for Niiharu’s case 90 of them, wherever they are on the planet to reach an agreement for the next 10 years’ land-usage. The discussion can take for years. Do you think it’s easy? The most difficult task for local civil servants in charge of Yokohama’s greenery is to get hold of the time-limited agreement with these various landlords.

That’s the way how Yokohama secures green spaces within the city, different from Tokyo. But it’s not all. Aside from the periodical revision of land contracts, the city must think about how to keep environmentally secured land free from nuisance or even crime. Under our climate of temperate rain forest whose dominant vegetation is evergreen broad-leaved trees, leaving the greenery without human intervention must make the forest very untidy and dark. The existence of such space in a crowded city of 4 million people invites crime next door. Besides, dark and untidy forest surely has lower biodiversity which is a perverted result for environmental management with Urbanization Control Area. Here comes the system of Lovers Association. I will tell you about it next week. 😉

This part of Niiharu was a veggie field around 1945
when the entire nation was starved due to the War.
80 years later, Lovers engage in regular maintenance
to make the forest floor bright,
which is important for the vegetation to sprout.

If you have any questions about Yokohama’s Green Tax and Green Up Plan, please make a contact with

Strategic Planning Division, Green Environment Bureau, City of Yokohama
横浜市みどり環境局戦略企画課

Phone: 045-671-2712
FAX: 045-550-4093 

Email: mk-kikaku@city.yokohama.lg.jp