276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City

£10£20.00Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

These urban patterns are emergent: that is, they are the combined result of numerous modifications and appropriations of space by small agents interacting within a broader socio-economic ecosystem. The spaces under elevated railways were initially occupied by black markets after the war but the authorities (like in the case of Ameyoko Shotengai) regularised these by working with the railway companies to offer micro-lots to vendors under the tracks. This emphasis on smallness and fragmented egalitarian ownership has fostered an emergent sense of community and shared responsibility. This answers it instead via fine-grained urban history and good, clear diagrams, performing a major service in the process. Com­pared to Western metropolises like New York or Paris, however, few outsiders understand Tokyo’s inner workings.

Tokyo at its best offers a new vision for a human-scale urban ecosystem, where ordinary residents can shape their own environment in ways large and small, and communities take on a life of their own beyond government master planning and corporate profit-seeking. Emergent Tokyo seeks to unpack the conditions - the interplay between buildings, infrastructure, local culture and practices, legal codes and ground up responses to these conditions - that led to Tokyo's unique cityscape. Some cities, like Singapore and Vienna, have bucked the trend by using public money to build affordable housing.Like yokocho alleyways, the authors argue that zakkyo buildings offer a prime urban location for relatively small establishments. For cities around the globe mired in crisis and seeking new models for the future, Tokyo’s success at balancing between massive growth and local communal life poses a challenge: can we design other cities to emulate its best qualities?

It offered a practical, systematic and objective view of what the city actually is and how it works. Unlike many of the discussions on Tokyo that emphasise cultural uniqueness, this book aims at transcultural validity, with a focus on empirical analysis of the spatial and social conditions that allow these patterns to emerge.There is nothing "inevitable" about Tokyo's character; although it has been remarkably resilient, with its social fabric, sense of place and character surviving generations of natural disasters, political upheaval, and economic transformation, it is not indestructible nor immune to threats. This book is a treasure trove of information about how these neighborhoods have evolved over decades. It's given me an inspiring new framework for understanding cities, and I'm inspired to see how I can work to encourage more "emergent urbanism" in my own city of Seattle. Emergent Tokyo explores the city's conditions of development by examining 5 Tokyo patterns: yokocho alleyways; multi-tenant zakkyo buildings; undertrack infills; ankyo streets; dense low-rise neighbourhoods.

The authors of Emergent Tokyo acknowledge the distinct character of Tokyo without essentialising or fetishising it, offering visitors, architects, and urban policy practitioners an unparalleled understanding of Tokyo's urban landscape.I doubt there is a country on Earth with more economic regulations than the US, and we’re regarded as a free market economy. In progressive cities we are maybe too critical of private initiative,” said Christian Dimmer, an urban studies professor at Waseda University and a longtime Tokyo resident.

Golden Gai landowners have faced pressures from developers to sell up so that the plots can be consolidated but in 1986, some bar owners banded together to protect their interests. Compared to Western metropolises like New York or Paris, however, few outsiders understand Tokyo's inner workings. These neighborhoods were not initially planned, per se—they emerged, and their ramshackle, spontaneous spirit can still be felt today when walking Tokyo’s backstreets. It seems fitting that on these streets you can see greenery growing as a result of the water still flowing underneath. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.I work as an urban planner at a downtown development authority, and this book has many practical insights. This is a sad fact, but on the positive side many of these covered waterways are now used as intimate walking spaces and as extensions of residences or businesses.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment