In a new international and university funded research project we set to explore the untapped potential of urban alleys to boost resilience and community spirit in cities facing increasing risks from environmental and climatic challenges. The project, which spans Japan, Australia, and Taiwan, aims to transform these often-overlooked urban spaces into vibrant, functional parts of the cityscape.
Focusing on comparative analysis between Sydney, Taipei, and Tokyo, the study seeks to uncover how urban alleys can be redesigned to foster community engagement and enhance urban sustainability. By integrating innovative design strategies and community feedback, the project hopes to offer practical guidelines that could reshape Tokyo’s alleys into more inclusive and resilient public spaces.
The research will be supported by Senshu University and happen in form of a collaboration between different international research institutions in the three countries, emphasizing a mix of visual analysis and secondary data to craft tailored urban solutions.
The study will have several key goals, such as:
Enhancing Urban Resilience: To determine how alley redesign can contribute to a city’s ability to withstand and adapt to environmental and social challenges.
Promoting Sustainability: To explore sustainable urban design practices that utilize alleys for green spaces, waste management, and energy-efficient initiatives.
Increasing Community Engagement: To engage local communities in the redesign process, ensuring that the changes reflect their needs and enhance their quality of life.
Boosting Economic Opportunities: To examine how revitalized alleys can stimulate local economies by supporting small businesses, markets, and tourism.
Improving Public Health and Wellbeing: To create safer and healthier environments through improved alley designs that encourage physical activity and social interactions.
Preserving Cultural Heritage: To respect and incorporate historical and cultural elements of the alleys in the redesign, preserving the unique character of each city.
Encouraging Innovation in Urban Design: To use the project as a laboratory for testing new urban design ideas that could be applied to other parts of the city or exported to different urban settings.
Looking Back and Looking Forward: Community and Justice in Crisis
The Pacific Rim Community Design 2023 Sendai took place from 16-18 September 2023. At Day 1 all participants visited Futaba, a town erased by 3.11, the Futaba Disaster Museum and listed to the major and how the town tries to recover. He showed us around the derelict city hall where the time stood still and displayed the time of the event: 14.46pm at 3.11. Afterwards we had the opportunity to see one of the local elementary schools and how also here time stop suddenly when the triple disaster hit. Parents were able to pick up belongings some 7 years later, but some never did as the memory must have been too sad.
From former 6500 residents just 100 returned (09.2023) or moved here (e.g. newcomer) since the lifting of the evacuation order on 30 August 2022. Many areas near the destroyed coastal areas are mainly planned for work/shopping but not living or residential purposes (even though around the new JR Futaba station (which is located along the Joban line) new low rise housing is constructed at the moment, offering affordable and subsidied houses and apartments for rent).
Also many (new) companies settle in the area, some are still under construction, attracting even more companies as 70 percent of the construction cost can be covered by public funds. Newcomer who plan to settle in the town can receive 200man/ 16.000 Euro, returnees cannot receive this, which leads to more inner conflicts and shows how complex the situation is. Thanks to all who organized this tour, it was a very inspiring to see the development, even though the town might never recover fully.
On day 2 we visited the Tomioka Archive museum, its impressive installations which featured items which were collected from private homes (70 percents of the items on display) including clocks, calendars but also a wrecked police car which reminds the visitor of the tragedy of the triple disaster which caused so many death, not just immediately but also many years later (the Futaba museum mentioend a number of a total of 2337 disaster related death in Fukushima by 31 March 2023). Minachan who is working as story teller for a local NGO eventually joined us on a bus tour around Tomioka showing us the former shotengai (central shopping street), schools, station buildings and even the fundament of her own house which is she now rebuilding in Tomioka.
After lunch we visited the Tomioka winery which started 2014/2015 to plant vines to better use the area and create something for future generations. Three school friends (who are now in their 50s) came together, used their own land and funds to start the procedure and continue to realize the project with the help of crowdfunding and many volunteers to finally to suceed to produce 500 bottles per year (as of 2022). Most of the bottles go to the crowdfunders, volunteers and all people involved but they have high hopes to be able to sell wine very soon to the general public. More about their initiave can be found here: https://tomioka-wine.com/
Our final stop brought us to Namie Cafe and the Ocafe, which is the initiave of a former residents and other women to tell the stories of 3.11 and their survivor.s Oka-san rebuilt and opens her house as cafe to all who want to know more about the disaster which especially hit Namie town but also many other local communities so hard. We listed to three kamishibai stories, narrated by three amazing women who work effortless to create a local network to which we should listen to and learn from so that such disaster will not happen again. If you are in the area, give them a call, surely they are welcoming you: https://ocafe-utuwa.mystrikingly.com/
On monday all participants came together at the Tohoku Universitie’s International Research Institute of Disaster Science – IRIDeS together to discuss their impressions, listen to different researchers and finally to poster presentations who featured many new ideas. Many thanks to all the organizers for all the efforts, energy and time as they took months to prepare this event, lets not just talk but realize how to create livable communities.
Ocafe is growing 1000 Sakuratrees to give to schools and other groups
This years summer fieldwork trip brought us to London and Paris, where we had the chance to walk and discover different neighbourhoods, present our recent research about urban walking methods and made new connections for upcoming seminar projects.
When the next semester starts in some weeks, the new seminar students will not just discuss the human scale of global cities, but also learn about different methods to visualize their diversity, creativity and subcultural spaces.
After some eventful weeks, a new semester and academic year has started in April. We will enter the second year back F2F and final year for some of the students who started at this faculty in 2020, survived covid-19 and went abroad in 2022. It will be my honor to guide these and all new students to learn more about communication, connections and the city which has so much creativity and dynamics to offer. In some new research project we will also address more current problems as post-pandemic public spaces under pressure, how to achieve urban sustainability/ diversity and support urban-rural linkages to learn more about urban and rural Japan common and different problems. A not complete list:
A recent fieldwork trip brought us to New York City, where we had the chance to walk and discover different neighbourhoods, present our recent research about global cities and creative clusters to a small audience and make new connections for upcoming projects.
What a fascinating city, which was hit hard by the pandemic, yet always seems to be able to rise like phenix out of the ash. So many facets, faces and feelings, so many communities, creativity and connections were made.
Some interviewees stated during our fieldwork that the people need a thick skin to survive in the city, especially people which belong to the creative sector. Is that the case also in other cities like Tokyo, London or Paris, and what does that mean for their daily life, practice and creative work? Many questions which we hope to answers with more in-depth data.
More can be found on the research and project website
After a general introduction and weekly theoretical lectures covering topics such as urban renewal and gentrification, students learned a toolset of fieldwork techniques such as city walks, visual mapping, observation, and interviews. To better get to know the community, the students took ten walks around Jimbocho. First interviews were conducted in October (which was also published in the Nikkei Shimbun in December 2022), and a list of people we want to interview in the future was created.
In the second stage, the students began to discuss the usage of local parks, highways and skyscraper rooftops, etc., and began to create their own research questions. . To consolidate these topics, Kanda Jimbocho’s Mock-up Model was built.
With the start of a new research project, which is part of the Chiyoda Studies Project(千代田学) students, staff and teachers aim to obtain diverse opinions and suggestions from a wide range of community members to analyse how the everyday life in Chiyoda-ku, especially in the Kudanshita, Jimbocho and Ogawamachi neighbourhoods has changed. In accurately reflecting on the diverse opinions of the residents, we can consider and develop better approaches for the revitalization of local communities and re-integrate various policies, including different machizukuri, tourist and local branding plans.
2022-2044 Next Steps include:
Understanding the local community setup
Interviewing different members of the community
Reflecting on the different social problems (as result of in depth data analysis)
Formulating and Suggesting specific approaches for each community
After some eventful weeks, a new semester is starting in April and we will be back in the classroom from next week F2F. I am not sure what will come out of this as the pandemic has still not ended, but several new courses and research projects have been set up and organized so students will hopefully learn a diversity of skills this academic year. Just a short but not complete list:
Course Area Studies Eastern Europe (with special attention given to Ukraine)
Course Environment and Culture
Course Urban Studies Seminar
Research Project: Urban Ethnographies and Narratives of Asian Cities
Research Project: Qualitative Methodology and Interviews with different Community Leader
All courses and results will be featured here over the next month:
Special Issue: The present issue of Asian Studies is devoted to the investigation of the causes, effects, and ethical and ideological implications of the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia, particularly in East and South-East Asia. COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on global societies. There have been enormous changes in the economy, lifestyles, education, culture, and many other aspects of social life (Caron 2021, 1). The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed societies, cultures, organizations, infrastructures, and many social services into a completely new reality. In this respect, the COVID-19 pandemic is without doubt a crisis of global proportions. Therefore, the whole of humanity should try to find a strategic solution to it, and to this end, the importance of intercultural dialog is manifested in a particularly clear and unambiguous way.
Paper Abstract: Different disasters throughout history have prompted Japan to develop diverse approach-es to recovery, revitalization, and local resilience. The current global COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. In this paper, we argue the need to study the impacts of COVID-19 on outside major cities such as Tokyo as such areas were already experiencing socioeconomic decline. Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture is a city that has also been undergoing extensive post-disaster reconstruction after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE), nota-bly through various bottom-up approaches, often initiated by volunteers and migrants bringing new, creative ideas to community revitalization. These efforts continue to shape the social life of its residents during COVID-19, making Ishinomaki an important case study in both disaster reconstruction and rural revitalization. This paper examines exam-ples in which creativity played a key role in revitalization, recovery, and community re-silience in Ishinomaki over the last decade to shed light on current creative revitalization initiatives at the grassroots level, initiated and carried out by citizens. Drawing on an eth-nographic approach conducted remotely in the form of semi-structured interviews, the paper presents the personal narratives of a diverse range of residents and social networks committed to rebuilding the soft infrastructure that is often overlooked compared to hard infrastructure. The paper proposes suggestions for the future based on lessons learned from the past decade, and hopes to illuminate how Japan’s rural areas are adapting to a new normal in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are very happy and proud that we recently received the 2021 Book Award given out by the Slovene Sociological Association for our book Creativity in Tokyo: Revitalizing a Mature City (Palgrave, 2020). Many thanks to Matjaz Ursic for receiving the award in a virtual session held in October.
More about the virtual ceremony here (unfortunately only in Slovene, scroll down the webpage until you come to the movie entitled Znanstveno delo (pri tuji založbi: dr. Matjaž Uršič)
A student from Oxford Brookes University, doing a Master in Architecture (how small the world can be as I was doing my master there 2004-2005) approached me a while ago to talk semi-public and semi-private spaces in the case of Tokyo, especially in relation to different housing projects which are either preserved/revitalzided, refurbished or newly built. Coming to Tokyo, in early January we had the chance to talk about more specific aspects including the situation of low rise, traditional neighbourhoods, their appeal and problems, how the government and local municipalities are reacting to these and how a better, medium type of housing (not being either an old, wooden low rise building or sparkling new (tower) manshon) can be planned or realized. Questions about general or personal lifestyle choices, diversity, mixed use, gentrification, commodification, akiya banks and alternatives came to mind and I look forward to see what the student will come up with in the end. Good luck and looking forward to discuss more during your next visit.
Recently I was interviewed for the Nikkei Business Newspaper, talking about the differences between Japan and Germany business concepts. During the interview, which was published in the newspaper on monday, 7th October 2019, we touched upon different topics, but especially talked about traditional Japanese values including the ‘mottainai‘ concept, which can be translated in German as ‘zu schade..‘ or in English as ‘what a waste‘. The concept is in times of promoting SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) reemerging again to encourage people to “reduce, reuse and recycle” more. Lets hope it is not just a trend but a return to some basic and great values the Japanese culture has to offer.
As both cities, Tokyo and Seoul, face similar challenges as an aging society, shrinking birthrate, hidden poverty and changing social values, it is to compare the specific reasons, consequences and solutions. Between 29-30 May 2019, Prof. Jung In Kim and 15 architecture students from Soongsil University visited the Faculty of Global and Interdisciplinary Studies, Hosei University to take part in a workshop about political space, which was very successful and a good chance to collaborate together. In a second session, the architecture students presented and discussed their design projects for Seoul 2035 with GIS Students, exchanging new ideas and comparing urban life in both cities.
To get a real impression of ongoing changes in Tokyo, the whole team also conducted fieldwork in Kagurazaka to study ongoing trends as gentrification, commercialization and social segregation. We look forward to collaborate and work together on common problems and solutions.
Three excerpts from the book Tokyo Roji were featured in the Italian Magazine Internazionale: Junko Terao, editor in charge, featured in this special edition on Tokyo different parts from the book focusing on a portrait of the neighbourhood Yanesen (Yanaka, Nezu and Sendagi) and the typical yokochos, different alleyways found in Tokyo. The excerpt , translated into Italian, appeared along with texts from Ian Buruma, Moriyama Daido and Jinnai Hidenobu.
