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038 Issue # 11/11 : PublIc Issues
Usages and appropriations in Tokyo
Life on the streets of Tokyo is less versatile than it
is in Shanghai, even on the very small streets, the roji.
At the beginning of the 20th century, some intellectuals
liked to stroll through the small streets of Tokyo's old
town. Following Walter Benjamin, some writers turned
strolling into literary content and a lifestyle (Schulz
2008). But not much of this remains in the 21st century.
Strolling in the city, rather, seems to correspond to
a European idea. Nowadays, Tokyo residents move through
the city very purposefully, whether they cover great
distances using the extremely efficient public transport
system, or whether they only move within their quarter,
in which most of the distances can be covered comfortably
on foot or by bicycle. Tokyo is a paradise for cyclists.
You can ride everywhere and in both directions, even on
the pavements (fig. 17). In addition, bikes are very cheap
and are seldom stolen.
Tokyo's public space is appropriated much less intensively
by residents than in Shanghai. A typical appropriation
which is quite refined (and therefore accepted by the muni-
cipal authorities) appropriation in Tokyo are so-called
pot gardens, which stand in front of the houses on the pave-
ment and sometimes on the street (fig. 20). Thus, in an
unobtrusive way the residents of the buildings extend their
interior space to the exterior space, thus transforming
the roji almost unnoticeably from an open area to an inner
area.
The street as task
This investigation of urban spaces in Tokyo and Shanghai
shows that the Western way of dividing space into private
and public areas cannot be transferred to Chinese and
Japanese cities. The different sense of space – or better,
the different production of space – in China and Japan
has given rise in the course of the centuries to specific
kinds of building, which cannot be meaningfully grasped
by the private/public dichotomy. A lilong quarter in Shang-
hai or a roji in Tokyo are both designs that give this
different constitution of space a visible form. The inter-
play between spatial perception, spatial conception and
material space design has yielded an attractive living
space where people have felt comfortable for generations.
There is the danger that these spaces will disappear if
municipal authorities and multinational investors do not
respect the specific sense of space of their own culture
and prefer architectures and master plans from the West.
The street in particular – and this applies to both East
Asian and Central European cities – plays a role for
preserving active living spaces that should not be underestimated,
which is why the architect Kisho Kurokawa,
for one, has repeatedly pleaded (and I would like to close
by joining him in this plea) that the street should be
taken seriously as an urban development task (see note 5).
Reference list
ETH Zurich, Swiss
Federal Institute
of Technology
(ed.), Faculty of
Architecture,
Professor Günther
Vogt. See also:
http://www.
taking-to-thestreets.com.
Haarmann, Anke.
"Public Blue: Eine
Besetzung des öf-
fentlichen Raums",
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Plattform für
Kunst und Kritik
(30 March 2007):
http://www.thing-
hamburg.de/index.
php?id=499
(accessed 08 March
2011).
Kurokawa, Kisho
(2005). Das
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Krusche, Jürgen
and Frank Roost
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strasse als ge-
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Schoon, Sonia.
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Die stadt als
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Schulz, Evelyn.
"Die 'Renaissance
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Jonas, Marburg.
Soja, Edward
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