As part of the sustained interaction UNFPA has had with Japan, Dr. Hirofumi Ando visited Kobe in the early 1980s. He was taken by the remarkable strategy that was then coming to fruition in "Port Island," the man-made island that was to be a remarkable solution to Kobe's major problem, the limits of space.*1 Ando's visit brought a convergence of a number of lines of thinking. First, UNFPA was as usual looking beyond the narrow confines of family planning to consider the population problem in its broader dimensions, one of the more pressing of which was urbanization. Another line came from Ando's long association with, and studies of, Southeast Asia. He wondered if Kobe might provide something of a model, not to be adopted, but to be adapted, to address port city problems in Southeast Asia. The first step in considering such a strategy would be to learn more about Kobe's development, and other port city developments, through a systematic comparative study. What in Southeast Asia might be an appropriate city for such a comparison?

After some discussion, it was decided to undertake a comparative study of Singapore and Kobe, with observations as well from another new and developing port city, Tomakomai, in Hokkaido. Working with a long term associate in the Nihon University Population Research Institute and its director, Professor Toshio Kuroda, UNFPA put together a collaborative team of social scientists from Singapore, Kobe, Hokkaido, Tokyo, and the University of Michigan in the USA. The idea was to undertake a brief survey of population and development in the three port cities, drawing on local scholars and urban administrators to tell the stories of these three ports: What were the major constraints of the port city? What vision arose to address those problems? What were the major population issues in these cities? What development efforts were devised to deal with the combined population and development problems? How were the development efforts planned and organized, and how were they financed? Were there common processes or lessons that could be learned from these three cities, which might be useful for other Asian urban administrators?

Teams from each of the three cities gathered data and wrote their analyses over about six months from June to December, 1985. In planning the study, it was decided to draw on secondary materials and some interviews, focusing on the history of population and development over roughly the period 1960 to the present. The starting year was selected because it was then that both cities began to embark on their concerted population-development efforts. By the end of 1985 draft papers had been prepared, a draft comparative overview was written, and the teams met in Singapore to review the work. Papers were then revised and edited, and published by the Nihon University Population Research Institute.

Dramatic differences in Singapore and Kobe made the similarities of the development process important. Singapore has been a major entrepot for all of Southeast Asia for well over a century. Most of its current character can be traced, however, to the period since 1961-5.*2 Kobe has been one of Japan's leading ports since shortly after the Meiji restoration. As a leading sea port, it had considerable influence in the national government, but it was still that government that controlled much of the country's general and very aggressive development strategy of the 1960s.

Both cities faced major problems of urban crowding, unsatisfactory housing, shortage of land for new (or even in some cases existing) industry, and severe strains on their inadequate port facilities in this period of rapid expansion of world trade. But Kobe's constraints came more from geography, while those of Singapore came from geography and past planning strategies. Kobe is bordered on the north by a range of the Rokko mountains, and on the south by the deep waters of Osaka Bay. The city is pressed into a narrow band running over 20 kilometers from east to west, and only about 4 kilometers wide between the sea and the mountains. There was literally no place to go. Singapore's geographic problems lay in its long shelving beach front, which deprived it of the natural deep waters that Kobe enjoyed. Thus ships stood out in the roads and were loaded and unloaded by barges or lighters from the city. Administratively Singapore had been broken into two units by the British colonial government: the island, and the city. If the city were increasingly crowded by the rapidly growing population, the city government had few resources, and little administrative capacity, to provide housing outside of the central city.

Their demographic histories also placed the two cities in quite different positions at the beginning of their major development spurts. In 1950 Japan was well on its way through the demographic transition, while Singapore was just beginning. Like many other industrial countries, Japan had experienced a long and gradual decline of mortality at least for most of this century. Fertility had also begun to decline gradually since about 1920. The return of many servicemen from overseas after 1945 temporarily reversed the decline of fertility as the country experienced something of a baby-boom. Given the severe destruction suffered in the war, and the great economic hardships in the immediate post-war period, however, many women opted for abortion, and the government saw a rising health problem from inadequate medical facilities. The government acted swiftly to make safe abortion possible, fertility declined rapidly in the 1950s, and before 1960 Japan had completed the demographic transition from high to low death and birth rates.

Singapore's recent demographic history more resembles that of the less developed regions of the world. Mortality and fertility were both relatively high as late as 1950. New medical and public health facilities brought a rapid decline in mortality, while leaving fertility high, causing an explosion in the natural rate of growth. This led Singapore to move toward a modern fertility limitation policy in the early 1950s, which gained considerable strength and government support after 1961. With rapid economic development, extensive primary health care, and an efficient family planning program, Singapore's fertility fell rapidly to come into line with reduced mortality, and by the early 1970s the demographic transition had been completed.

For both cities, mortality and fertility reductions were only a first step. Population momentum and the weakness of the social infrastructure continued to pose major problems. To address these problems both cities embarked on ambitious population and development plans. Each strove to improve port facilities, to encourage new forms of economic activities, and to provide better housing and social services for the population.

Given their physical locations, however, the population-development strategies were quite different. Singapore began an ambitious project to build high-rise subsidized housing for its population. Government took advantage of the extensive land availability outside the city center and began to build new communities to provide affordable housing and good social and commercial services. To expand port facilities, Singapore began dredging to create deep water wharves. Associated with one of these complexes at Jurong was a new industrial site with utilities and rail lines, and apartment-like buildings where entrepreneurs could rent floors or "flats" to create an innovative "flatted factories" facility. Industrialization moved rapidly in the 1960s, with what are now familiar products for early industrialization, such as textiles. Soon these changed to electronics and more high technology industries, and of course to extensive banking, service and warehousing activities. Today, Singapore has one of the world's largest and most efficient ports and is a wealthy city-state with high levels of human welfare.

Kobe's physical problems were more severe. With literally no place to go, space had to be created anew. This led to one of the most remarkable engineering feats of any modern port city. Kobe began to cut off the tops of some of the Rokko mountains, using the fill to create an artificial island off the main port. The island, "Port Island" would be ringed by container port facilities and it would have apartments for more than 20,000 people, with facilities for modern economic activities such as fashions and pearls, and a world class sports facility. Where the tops of the mountains had been cut to provide fill for the island, new towns were built, and connected to the central city by efficient rail and bus lines. Kobe's "Mountains to the Sea" project proved so successful, that soon a second island, Rokko Island was planned alongside of the original Port Island.

Perhaps the most striking differences in the two development strategies, however, lies in their financing. In Kobe, the central government provided resources for the sea wall and some of the port work. Most of the work, however, was financed by municipal bonds sold on the German bond market. In this, Kobe was to be most fortunate. The bonds were sold in the late 1960s when world trade was expanding rapidly, but prices were remaining remarkably stable. The bonds would be redeemed after the sale of port facilities on the island in the late 1970s and early 1980s, by which time the rise of oil prices had brought worldwide inflation, greatly reducing the burden of repaying the bonds. In the process, of course, Kobe's port facilities improved greatly and it was transformed from a bottleneck to an engine of national development, bringing rapid economic development to Japan and a high level of welfare to its citizens.

Singapore was forced to use a more internal, "bootstraps" method of financing. With a high proportion of the labor force employed as a wage and salaried force, the colonial government had earlier created an Employee's Provident Fund (EPF). Workers contributed 25% of their wages, and the employer contributed another 25%, giving the city-state something close to a 50% savings rate, with capital mobilized in a highly concentrated government institution. Government borrowed funds from the EPF to construct the subsidized apartments that would relieve the housing shortage without driving up the cost of labor. The subsequent rapid economic development raised the value of land, attracted many external investors, and Singapore was off and running on a process where success breeds more success.

These were very different experiences in some respects, but they also show important similarities. The identification and observation of these helped to shape the future aims and direction of AUICK.

*1. See below for a fuller explanation of this problem.
*2. Though independent only in 1965, Singapore began to have substantial control over its own internal development with home rule, and the electoral success of the People's Action Party in 1961.

Urban administration and administrators were seen as the front lines in the effort to promote population and development initiatives.