Roppongi Hills

Roppongi Hills (六本木ヒルズ, Roppongi Hiruzu) is a development project in Tokyo and one of Japan's largest integrated property developments, located in the Roppongi district of Minato, Tokyo. The architecture and use of the space is documented in the book Six Strata: Roppongi Hills Redefined.

Constructed by building tycoon Minoru Mori, the mega-complex incorporates office space, apartments, shops, restaurants, cafés, movie theatres, a museum, a hotel, a major TV studio, an outdoor amphitheatre, and a few parks. The centerpiece is the 54-story Mori Tower. Mori's stated vision was to build an integrated development where high-rise inner-urban communities allow people to live, work, play, and shop in proximity to eliminate commuting time. He argued that this would increase leisure time, quality of life, and benefit Japan's national competitiveness. Seventeen years after the design's initial conception, the complex opened to the public on April 25, 2003.

The development

Roppongi Hills cost over $4 billion and is built on a 27-acre (109,000 m²) site. The site amalgamated more than 400 smaller lots Mori acquired over 14 years.

Roppongi

Roppongi (六本木, literally "six trees") is a district of Minato, Tokyo, Japan, famous as home to the rich Roppongi Hills area and an active night club scene. Many foreign embassies are located in Roppongi, and the night life is popular with locals and foreigners alike. It is in the central part of Tokyo, south of Akasaka and north of Azabu.

History

The name "Roppongi", which appears to have been coined around 1660, literally means "six trees". Six very old and large zelkova trees used to mark the area; the first three were cleared, and the last were destroyed during World War II. Another legend has it that the name comes from the fact that six daimyo lived nearby during the Edo period, each with the kanji character for "tree" or a kind of tree in their names. Roppongi was not extensively populated until after the Meiji Restoration, although the area was trafficked for centuries and served as the site of the cremation of Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada's wife in 1626.

In 1890, the Third Imperial Guard of the Imperial Japanese Army was moved to a site near Roppongi (now home to the Pacific bureau of Stars and Stripes). The influx of soldiers led to the area's rise as a nightlife district, briefly interrupted by the Great Kanto earthquake which flattened the area in 1923. Roppongi was administratively part of Azabu Ward from 1878 to 1947.

Hill

A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. It often has a distinct summit, although in areas with scarp/dip topography a hill may refer to a particular section of flat terrain without a massive summit (e.g. Box Hill, Surrey).

Terminology

The distinction between a hill and a mountain is unclear and largely subjective, but a hill is universally considered to be less tall and less steep than a mountain. In the United Kingdom, geographers historically regarded mountains as hills greater than 1,000 feet (300 m) above sea level, which formed the basis of the plot of the 1995 film The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain. In contrast, hillwalkers have tended to regard mountains as peaks 2,000 feet (610 m) above sea level: the Oxford English Dictionary also suggests a limit of 2,000 feet (610 m) and Whittow states "Some authorities regard eminences above 600 m (2,000 ft) as mountains, those below being referred to as hills." The Great Soviet Encyclopedia defines hill as an upland with a relative height up to 200 m (660 ft).

Mori Tower

Mori Tower may refer to:

Tokyo City

Tokyo City (東京市, Tōkyō-shi) was a municipality in Japan and part of Tokyo-fu which existed from 1 May 1889 until its merger with its prefecture on 1 July 1943. The historical boundaries of Tokyo City are now occupied by the 23 Special Wards of Tokyo. The new merged government became what is now Tokyo, also known as the Tokyo Metropolis, or, ambiguously, Tokyo Prefecture.

History

In 1868, the medieval city of Edo, seat of the Tokugawa government, was renamed Tokyo, and the offices of Tokyo Prefecture (-fu) were opened. The extent of Tokyo Prefecture was initially limited to the former Edo city, but rapidly augmented to be comparable with the present Tokyo Metropolis. In 1878, the Meiji government's reorganization of local governments subdivided prefectures into counties or districts (gun, further subdivided into towns and villages, later reorganized similar to Prussian districts) and districts or wards (ku) which were in ordinary prefectures cities as a whole, e.g. today's Hiroshima City (-shi) was then Hiroshima-ku; the three major cities of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto were each subdivided into several such wards. In Tokyo Prefecture, this created 15 wards (listed below) and six counties/districts.