The Keihin Waterfront Area (see here for pictures) lies by the sea within Yokohama’s Tsurumi and Kanagawa Wards. Since the end of World War II, this area showed one of the highest concentrations of industrial and technological development activity in the country, being a major force behind Japan’s astounding recovery and subsequent economic growth. It has an excellent urban infrastructure and is easily accessible by port (Port of Yokohama ), airport (Haneda International Airport ) and expressway.

In recent years, however, the area has lost a good deal of its vitality, with symptoms such as aging manufacturing facilities, rising rates of land idleness and falling numbers of workers. Therefore, in February 1997 Yokohama City drew up a master plan to revitalize the area. The plain aims to transform the district into an internationally competitive center for advanced industrial activity, with the flexibility to adapt to structural change and economic globalization.

The plan focuses on a number of key tasks, such as promoting manufacturing-related R&D; enhancing the environment by remodeling the landscape and planting trees along the waterfront; and creating bases offering human resources, technology and information services to facilitate exchanges between industry and academia.

The area already harbors a science park with a number of high-class facilities which will help to accelerate the development, for example the Industry and Academics Joint Research Center, which will serve as a base for exchange, or the Factory Park, an estate for R&D-oriented companies. The world-famous RIKEN Yokohama Institute and the Yokohama City University Graduate School of Integrated Science , situated both at Keihin Waterfront, are already carrying out joint educational research and educational initiatives and are playing a leading role in the whole process of creating a strong R&D-area.