Project Details
Projekt
Tokyo: On the Way to Becoming a Slow City? Strategies and Initiatives to Slow Down Urban Life Contexts
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Evelyn Schulz
Subject Area
Asian Studies
Term
from 2015 to 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 240207984
In the course of the 20th century, processes such as population growth, industrialization and centralization have led to rapid urban growth and enormous population density in Japan. Since the 1990s, these growth processes have slowed down and even show signs of stagnation. Economic transformations such as the deindustrialization of rural regions and the transfer of production to neighboring Asian countries in response to the pressure of globalization as well as demographic shifts such as population decline and the aging of the population have led to complex socio-spatial differences. For some time now, various actors have been developing strategies to revitalize rural areas and to develop cities in an ecologically and socially sustainable way to make them more livable., with Tokyo as a trendsetter in the national and global location competition. In contrast to the city of the modern age, which is based on the separation of functions, acceleration, growth and discarding urban boundaries, the post-industrial city is associated with multifunctional spaces, diversity in architecture and urban planning, deceleration, deindustrialization, de-growth and spatial limitation. This is connected with a shift to the compact, the decelerated and the informal. Against this backdrop, considerations surrounding a partial deceleration are taken up and developed further. Such considerations have their origins in the European model of the slow movement and the slow city and are circulating globally.The present project pursues several objectives. First, Japanese discourses on deceleration and slowness are analyzed with regard to the question of how these urban-ethical designs and visions relate to European and North American discourses and what role they play in the current discourse on Tokyo. In this context, Tokyo is considered as a contested field of opposing developments of and discourses on growth, on the one hand, and on deceleration, on the other, and their respective spatial appropriations. The project, therefore, investigates the characteristics associated with decelerated urban spaces and social practice leading to deceleration. The question in the foreground is to inquire into the ethical views of a ¿good life¿ which are guiding the negotiation processes. Then the project will examine how such discourses are taking concrete form in social practices such as revitalization programs and urban design activities in selected areas in Tokyo. In this context, participatory (or ¿bottom-up¿) ways of urban development, so-called machizukuri, play an important role in mobilizing the citizens¿ potential for social creativity. Led by ethical ideas and notions of community and cooperation, neighborhood communities are joining together to launch projects for improving the local environment. Locations in Tokyo, in which a partial deceleration, initiated by machizukuri projects, can be identified are Yanaka, Nezu and Sendagi, among others. These small-scale, mixed-use are
DFG Programme
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