Kyoto to try to preserve town houses
Comments: 5
From the Yomiuri, news that the city of Kyoto is to try to do more to preserve its architectural heritage (or more precisely, what remains of its architectural heritage):
Kyoto to raise town house restoration funds
The Kyoto municipal government plans to use 100 million yen in public funds and hopes to raise 400 million yen more through donations to pay for repairs to Kyoto-style town houses, which are dwindling at an alarming rate.
This is bittersweet good news. It’s encouraging to see something — anything! — being done to preserve machiya (additional info on the form here) however it can’t help but remind us of how much has already been lost.
I hope this helps to raise awareness of preservation efforts throughout the country.
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Posted to Architecture • 2005.02.28 (Mon) • 13:15
Comments
Posted by Sean 2005.03.01, 05:13
Being in Southern California, where no land or structure seems to be worth saving, that is a great thing to hear. Preserving a little bit of cultural history is important and I wish it would happen more often. SoCal is going to become nothing but asphalt and concrete pretty soon.
Posted by Matthias Ripp 2005.03.02, 22:03
I just read yesterday an article about the organization and management of preservation projects in Japan. It seems to me that it is quite different than in most european countries. A lot to learn from each other I think… Matthias Ripp http://worldheritage-forum.net
Posted by Ken 2005.03.04, 00:18
its good to hear that the city of kyoto is preserve its heritage. i visited the city twice last year and, while the first time was fantastic, the second time left me to wonder: “why is this such a great ‘traditional’ sightseeing spot?”.
just before i visited kyoto the second time, i went to nara, which is quite closeby. that place blew me away. i found my ‘traditional trip’ explode tenfold over kyoto.
i feel kyoto’s just a little too industrialized now and thank this preservation project.
Posted by donkeymon 2005.03.06, 13:46
Where I used to live, there were a lot of 17th century townhouses that were sinking into deep disrepair, mostly due to imprisoned or otherwise missing landlords, and it was bringing the whole city down as well as eroding it’s cultural heritage and historic tourism value. So the city started seizing those places and giving them to people for a dollar, on the condition that the recipient had to live in the house for at least two years, and had to bring it up to spec on their own. Now those neighborhoods are some of the highest rent districts. I sure wish that Kyoto would give me a machiya to fix up and live in; I kindof doubt they would entrust foreigners with preservation of their cultural heritage and stuff, but sometimes it seems like we have more interest in it than most Japanese people do.
Posted by Adam Butler 2006.02.09, 03:07
Thanks for this great post. You’ve got some really good info in your blog. Adam Butler http://www.townhomesbydesign.com
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