Uniqueness and Creative Capability of Kanazawa in Urban Development

Abstract

Kanazawa is an old and historical city that faces the Sea of Japan. Since Kanazawa has been immune from the horrors of wars and conflicts for 430 years, its historic and cultural resources are still preserved very well. People in Kanazawa believe their responsibilities to maintain and cultivate the characteristics in the history, tradition, and culture of Kanazawa. In addition to such circumstances, Kanazawa has been developed more attractively as a “creative city” over the last two decades. This paper illustrates “Kanazawa World City Concept”: a key strategy for creating a new identity such as “glocalization” and “creativity” of Kanazawa. The vision of this concept has made Kanazawa more attractive and dignified, which is evidenced by the fact that Kanazawa is cited in the League of Historical Cities and the Creative Cities Network. For achieving such a national and international evaluation, however, we had to challenge the formidable tasks of overcoming such harsh issues as “financial bottleneck”, “legal limitation”, and “multi-stakeholders’ consensus building”. So in this paper, we also describe this challenge, while introducing the three facts of embodiment of “Kanazawa World City Concept”.