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032 Issue # 11/11 : PublIc Issues
a different sense
of sPace. Public sPaces
in tokyo and shanghai
Jürgen Krusche
Roji in Tokyo, Tsukishima / roji in Tokyo, Tsukishima
Streets have formed the basic framework of every city since
time immemorial. They are the lifelines of a metropolis
and provide people with necessary connecting and common
spaces, linking inside and outside, the private and the
public. Besides parks and squares, streets also constitute
very important public spaces. Street space is public space,
an area of action and movement, of presentation and com-
munication, of political expression and subversive intervention.
The research project Taking To The streets (ETH s.a.),
initiated by the Faculty of Architecture of the ETH Zurich,
investigated street spaces in the West and in eastern
Asia with a view to the quality of the public space. The
focus was on the interface between the built environment
and people's actions. The aim of the project was to show
how the two sides interact and influence one another. To
this end, the project made use of current discourse about
city, space and the public, examining discourses in field
work in four selected cities: Zurich, Berlin, Tokyo and
Shanghai. The goal of the research was to develop criteria
for assessing the quality of public spaces based on ana-
lyses of usages and interactions (Krusche and Roost 2010;
Krusche 2011).