City of the Future

Mori Building

Since the 1990's the literary and cultural approach to urban research has seen the concept of the "flâneur" as the key to understanding the way we see and experience modern cities.

Tokyo's example makes it clear that the reconquest of urban space by the "flâneur" can in fact contribute to providing the residents of mega-cities with new strategies to help each individual to accept and adopt the city he or she lives in, as well as to triggering impulses for the development of alternative forms of town planning. Tokyo is a city that quite understandably is no longer able to be categorised by the usual European standards. The Greater Tokyo-Yokohama conurbation with more than 35 million residents is one of the world's largest metropolitan areas. The 23 districts which actually form the city of Tokyo are home to 8.5 million people. Suburbanisation and administrative reforms have led to the city limits being re-drawn again and again – today Tokyo's 23 districts cover an area of more than 620 square kilometres. The Greater Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan region extends over an area of 5,200 square kilometres which makes it more than twice the size of the state of Saarland and almost six times the size of Berlin.

Global City Tokyo – A labyrinth of localities and layers of history

To add to the geographical confusion there is also a multi-layered, historical complexity. Although Tokyo was founded at the beginning of the 17th century under the name Edo, today very little remains from that time – apart from a few shrines and temples. The history of Tokyo is characterised by a continual process of restructuring and growth. Tokyo is a city whose architectural fabric is renewed on average every twenty years and that is why there are only a few buildings that have survived from past epochs. The reason for this on the one hand is the fact that Tokyo became the capital of Japan in 1868 and as the most important showcase of the Japanese modern age had to be correspondingly designed to promote this image. On the other hand, disasters such as the great Kantô earthquake in September 1923 and the widespread destruction in the course of the second world war, as well as construction projects for the 1964 Olympics all paved the way for reorienting their approach to urban and architectural planning. Compared to Germany, for example, where great emphasis is placed on preserving the architectural fabric of cities and as a result the image of the city, the Japanese approach to architecture and urban planning is marked by a tendency to radically modernise urban space – the same as in China, as is shown by the spectacular restructuring of Shanghai and Beijing. In the past few decades innumerable residential areas full of traditionally built wooden houses have been replaced by apartment blocks and large-scale construction projects that have added a concrete architectural note to Tokyo's image as a global city.

Mori Building

Residential Area

 

What strategies do the residents develop to be able to understand the constantly changing urban landscape and to be able to feel comfortable living there? What does the literary and cultural science side of urban research have to offer us here? Numerous publications, among them reports, cultural and socially critical essays, novels, autobiographies as well as information published by administrative and governmental agencies, describe the drastic changes Tokyo has undergone and testify to the enormous interest in the topography, history and future of this city.

The "flâneur" as the key to the way we see and experience modern cities

When it comes to all the information available on Tokyo there is a remarkably large number of essay-like guides and cultural topographies in the form of a description of a walk through the city. The walk serves on the one hand as means of slowing down the pace and, on the other, as a way of giving the reader a more private and personal access to the history of the city. In Europe it was Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) and in particular Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) who developed the figure of the "flâneur" into the archetypal image of the modern city dweller. Since the 1990's in the literary and cultural fields of urban research the concept of the "flâneur" has been the key to understanding the way we see and experience modern cities. On the one hand, this can be put down to the rediscovering of Benjamin's works and, on the other, to the epistemological challenges of today's mega-cities presented by their sheer size, their multi-cultural diversity as well as by the virtual and concrete networks that criss-cross the cities. In the past few years the way individuals perceive their cities in all their complexity has become the main focus of research. For this purpose Benjamin's figure of the "flâneur" (i.e. the way he thinks) has proved to be a helpful instrument of analysis.

In such works as Passagen-Werk, a comprehensive, unfinished study of Paris in the 19th century, as well as in his essay on Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin portrays the "flâneur" as a lone, urban wanderer who drifts through the crowds without any particular direction, reflecting often on all the little things he notices.

In order to better understand the Japanese version of the "flâneur" it is helpful to consult Benjamin's memories of his childhood in Berlin in his works Berliner Chronik (A Berlin Chronicle) and Berliner Kindheit um Neunzehnhundert (Growing up in Berlin around 1900). It was in these books that Benjamin introduced the "diachronic flâneur", a sort of amateur archaeologist who roams through the city exploring the past in the present. It was an impressionable depiction of the relationships that exist between a constructed environment and historical events, not to mention the importance of textual and visual representations of both individual as well as collective memories.

In Japan the equivalent of Benjamin's "diachronic flâneur" is the multitude of walking guides who are to be found in all the literature available on Tokyo and on other cities. The first publications aimed at helping individuals to accept the city they live in and search for the right approach to city life were the works of the passionate city wanderer and writer, Nagai Kafû (1879–1959). Nagai Kafû depicted many of his main figures as "flâneurs" who leisurely wandered through the city, reflecting deeply on the past when faced with the present

The re-discovery of the small district

The main element in this approach to Tokyo is the fact that it has an in-built intention towards being critical of the modern age and towards being nostalgic about the indigenous housing and ways of living that were lost in the wake of Japan's modernisation – and it all started with Nagai Kafû.

This is why the walks lead the reader primarily to places that have either been spared from or were not directly threatened by the urban planning of the modern age with its ideas on technical and cultural progress, redesigning the space with an eye to nation-state representation and modern means of transport, as well as the economic promotion of (multi) national building groups.

rori

These places are mostly small districts and what the Japanese call roji – small, narrow lanes and sidestreets that are only wide enough for a person to either walk or cycle through. Even today these lanes have managed to retain their semi-public or semi-private character, as the case may be, and that is why they are so difficult to categorise or register with the urban planning instruments of the modern age. In earlier times the roji with their little shops, inns and workshops were the most important meeting places in everyday life and formed the basis of the municipal community.

The "renaissance of the city" and the "flâneur"

Tsukudajima

The basic tenets of the international discussion that is in process at the moment on the "renaissance of the city" centre mainly on the various forms of sustainability, the genesis of a "liveable city" and strategies for the revitalisation of the urban community. In Japan the discussion is accompanied by criticism of large-scale projects that have a drastic effect on lifestyles and communication structures. The Mori Building in Tokyo's Roppongi district is the latest example of this. In most cases projects like this can only be realised by demolishing small residential districts to make room for them. The people living in the small districts are forced out and this is the end of the neighbourhood community that was so typical of old residential areas in Japan's cities. Instead of new housing in most cases they build exclusive business and apartment blocks that attract a completely different clientele. Where before there was a close neighbourliness with all its positive (and of course negative) sides, there is now anonymity and isolation.

This background, the effects of an ever-ageing society, as well as the fall in population in many places (shrinking cities) has induced Japan to search for alternative forms of urban planning that are often linked to its own cultural roots. This is why it is not particularly surprising that the specific urbanity of such small housing structures has been rediscovered and reassessed. Kurokawa Kishô, one of the leading representatives in the field of Japanese architecture, goes as far as to claim in his latest publication - The Revolution of the City (Toshi no kakumei; 2006) – that the revitalisation of the roji is the key to the future of Japanese cities.

This rediscovery is not just being promoted by experts, but has also been accepted by a broader public. Animated by the city-walks found in literature, more and more people are starting to enjoy these nostalgically inspired walks through the narrow lanes and districts. The walk on the one hand has become a means of delving into local history and, on the other, an important medium for organising and focussing resistance to large-scale projects of the kind mentioned. In this way residents are also made aware of how important it is to take part in urban planning processes, even in cases when it is more or less clear that the voice of capital is going to win the day.

When it comes to researching the cultural and historical dimensions of these spaces Benjamin's "flâneur" provides us with an important instrument - not only for the way the residents experience and move about in these spaces, but also for any literature that is written about them from the anti-modern-age point of view. This is not just applicable to pieces about big Japanese cities, but also, for example, to the literature available on Shanghai or Berlin – in general to cities that have undergone enormous structural and social changes in the last few years. In Shanghai as well as in Berlin for quite some time now there has been a renaissance of the small district – as the expression of a regional form of housing and way of life. In Shanghai there has been more and more resistance, albeit in vain, to the destruction of the lilong – the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese roji. In Berlin the Kiez, the culture of the backyards, seems to be enjoying a comeback.