A few hundred people have turned out to protect historic century-old ginkgo trees that are likely to be chopped down under a controversial redevelopment for a beloved Tokyo park district.
A few hundred people have turned out to protect historic century-old ginkgo trees that are likely to be chopped down under a controversial redevelopment for a beloved Tokyo park district.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Her message was clear, and she repeated it standing at the heart of the Jingu Gaien park area, its sanctity threatened by a disputed real-estate development plan.
Yuriko Koike would let developers, led by Mitsui Fudosan, build a pair of 200-meter (650-feet) skyscrapers in Jingu Gaien, mow down trees in one of Tokyo’s few green areas and raze and rebuild a historic rugby venue and an adjoining baseball stadium.
The planned redevelopment would take more than a decade to finish, and has attracted lawsuits with mounting opposition from conservationists, civic groups, local residents and sports fans.
Critics say the plan has been rammed through despite a botched environmental assessment as real-estate developers take what was intended as public land and turn it into a private commercial venture.
The project highlights the ties among the main actors: the governor, Mitsui Fudosan, and Meiji Jingu, a religious organization that owns much of the land to be redeveloped.
However, Koshien Stadium near Kobe, built in 1924, has been renovated over the last 15 years, much in the same way that Fenway Park (1912) in Boston and Wrigley Field (1914) in Chicago are still viable for two of MLB’s most famous teams.
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