I love New Tokyo: questioning contemporary urban identities of Tokyo and their potential for sustainable urban regeneration

Marieluise Jonas and Heike Rahman

From large to miniature to site specific: On the approach of design processes in contemporary Japanese landscape architecture

This study examines the design processes in contemporary Japanese landscape architecture. It is framed by the question whether exposure to smallness and dense environments generates knowledge that motivates and enables Japanese landscape architects to approach small spaces different from large-scale projects. The aim is to investigate if design strategies exist that reveal specific methods in designing for small spaces and to further understand how theses methods are applied in designing for small spaces. Interviews as well as a specific design task focus on designers’ understanding, perception, and appraisal of design possibilities for small urban spaces through investigation of their design process and work practice. The study reveals that rather than a single approach on designing for small spaces differentiated design strategies are utilized, which consider spatial context, sensory experience and processes and emphasize the understanding of site specific-ness in the design process for these spaces.Heike I. Rahmann and Marieluise C. Jona

Spatial Barriers and the Formation of Global Art Cities: The Case of Tokyo

This paper addresses a neglected dimension of global cities research: how the idea of economic concentration, its surplus and consequent global influence can be applied to the art world. The research presented here relates to Tokyo as a well‐known example of a global city, advancing existing understandings of Tokyo from the neglected perspective of the arts. Based on qualitative and quantitative research by the author, including cultural and spatial mapping, interviews, ethnographic observations and visual documents, the findings confirm that the role of space and materiality is overlooked in global cities research. The results demonstrate the active contribution and intervention of spatial patterns in the formation of artistic activities. A number of Tokyo's spatial features have an inhibiting effect that shifts artistic activities underground, creating asymmetries in the constitution of symbolic meanings in the city and a failure to openly stimulate artistic practices. As a consequence, Tokyo's vivid art world remains invisible not only to outsiders but to Tokyo itself