Christian Dimmer

This paper offers a critical re-evaluation of what is arguably the clearest representation of a Japanese consumer electronic and media corporation in architectural form: the Ginza Sony Building. The paper argues that architect Yoshinobu Ashihara’s 1966 modern master- piece can be seen as a multilayered assemblage through which a number of distinct modernist traditions have evolved. This aspect of the building, we argue, is clearer in the present, ironically, after it has been demolished; in its absence. The building’s status as a modernist icon and, consequently, fame, developed gradually since it was opened. But a series of recent events and the resulting dynamic encouraged us to revisit the building to construct a wider, more satisfying understanding of its value. The renewed relevance of the Sony Build- ing, we know in hindsight, was determined when Tokyo was announced as a host of the 2020 Olympics. That announcement in September 2013 was a catalyst for a chain of events that revealed four distinct ‘evolutions’ in which the iconic building plays a distinct role. We discuss the change over time of: (1.) the emergence and presence of Sony in Ginza; (2.) the employment of modern architectural traditions and ideas; (3.) the linkage between Sony’s flagship products and the building; and (4.) the representations of Sony as an architectural form and how it evolved from building to park and the expected building-park. The paper, then, offers a re-reading of the modernist building as a non-discrete urban assemblage at the intersection of new technologies in consumer electronics, novel architectural ideas, a Post-War nascent consumer society, and, an urban district that transformed because of the 1964 Olympic Games and is currently re-transforming through the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The paper recognizes the Sony Building as a relevant object of study and repositions it in the current context. It accounts for the main evolutionary traditions and shows how the building encourages their composition.

Japan is currently supplying its energy demand mostly by importing fosile fuels, especially LNG. This is costly and contribute to CO2 related global warming. While the Japanese central government aims at reducing its reliance on LNG by restarting nuclear power plants, local initiatives show more concern for global and local environmental issues. In this chapter we are looking at three cases in Japan, a prominent Japanese branch of the transnational Transition Town initiative, a town in southern Japan and a mountain village in northwest Japan. We show that local initiatives within Japan differ strongly from national agendas and also from each other. We pay attention to geographic, demographic and political differences in order to point out the factors that contribute or hinder climate change action. We also point out, that climate change related activities in Japan, do not necessarily have to address or frame climate change as the main issue. Our cases show, that local problems seem to be much more eminent in the perception and motivation for taking action and that climate protection sometimes comes as a side effect. We also point out that while there is a huge natural, economic and social potential for renewable energies in Japan, committed politician, entrepreneurs and citizen activists face serious political and economic challenges.

Perhaps few other ideas have been more persevering in architecture or urban planning discourses over the past decades than ‘public space’. Ironically, its recent, expanded career as a central intellectual concept beyond those academic disciplines, concerned with the built environment, and its extensive use in professional and scholarly debates, in media and everyday language, didn’t help to lessen its semantic ambiguities (Gulick 1998, Nadal 2000). One substantial problem with the concept is its (mis-)conception as static and universal; as transcending the particularities of time, space, or culture, thus frustrating meaningful comparative discourses. As a result examining public space outside ones own cultural context may lead to early conclusions and normative distortions when observations do not match the preconceived repertoire of spatial archetypes, or familiar patterns of appropriation. Neil Smith reminds us thus that "(d)ifferent societies and different modes of production produce space differently; they produce their own kinds of spaces” (1998: 54). He argues that “specific societies and specific periods have distinctive spatial codes (… that) are integral to the social and spatial practices of a given place and period (…)” (ibid.). Consequently, public space is better conceived as a complex multi-dimensional notion, perpetually reproduced by local and global actors and discourses, shaped by hard and soft social institutions, as well as specific spatio-culturally induced systems of perception, interaction, representation, and language in a particular time and place. The job of theory and empirical enquiry is then elucidating the emergence, performance, and change of those spatial codes, constituting particular public space notions, rather than superimposing a priori views. Interestingly, international debates showed hitherto a strong bias toward Europe or North America —underplaying public space in non-western settings. Referring to the ultimately related and equally abstract idea of ‘civil society’ Frank Schwartz points out the intricacies of applying concepts across cultures that evolved in distinctively western milieus (2003: 3). After all, as the etymology of the Latin publicus (‘of the people’) suggests, delineating the social universe in public and private spheres or spaces has been a recurring concern of Western thought since antiquity. Cultures, however, have always borrowed from one and another in the past and thus rarely constitute homogeneous entities in the present. “Defying abstract considerations of authenticity and universality, ideas and institutions are constantly spreading beyond their place of origin to take root elsewhere, where they may be reconceived in local terms” (ibid.). Jennifer Robertson adds that “culture (...) is every bit as much an ongoing production as it is a constantly transforming product” (1998: 11). With Henri Lefèbvre (1991) I suggest that space, or more specifically public space, both reflects and contributes to this process and thus deserves further attention. The objective of this article is therefore to sketch out a more nuanced, flexible and culture sensitive understanding of public space. The key is Lefèbvre’s influential idea of the social construction of space, after which space is continually and dynamically constructed through a trialectic between the perceived, the conceived and the lived. The paper elucidates this idea with the example of urban Japan and applies it for a close examination of the underlying socio-spatial and historical processes, leading up to the present public space boom. In order to reduce complexity, the focus is on one particular spatial archetype and its related institutional and discursive context. So-called privately owned public spaces (POPS) are quantitatively highly significant as they thrived adjacent to hundreds of downtown skyscrapers since the late 1960s. Moreover, since these privately owned, yet publicly accessible spaces result from a trade-off between bonus floor area for open space, involving developers and local governments, their design and operation reflects how public space was thought by both public and private key actors at a specific point in time. This is a fresh perspective, as most writing on the subject focused hitherto mostly on government policies but ignored the motivation of private developers.

At the centre of this article is arguably one of the most significant yet underexplored voids at the heart of the major cities in Japan: the temporal void of approximately four hours, which occurs between the last train on any day and the first train of the following one. Many cities, including Tokyo, have witnessed debates in recent years about their competitiveness as "always on" 24-hour global cities. In these debates "night" is often characterised as a temporal void, a comparatively unproductive urban time that might be better utilized to improve the city's economic position as well as urban experience. This article argues that such a view is institutionally biased, as it marginalizes or ignores the everyday experiences of city inhabitants and is also a misunderstanding of the broader temporal and spatial context of "night" and the apparent void it creates.

Rarely has the value of modern architecture and heritage in the Japanese city been more trenchantly depicted than in Kon Ishikawa's classic "Tokyo Olympiad" of 1965. The monumental film that chronicles the 1964 Tokyo Olympic begins with a staggering scene of destruction: The image of a rising sun, representing the Japan that has similarly risen out of the ruins of World War II, seamlessly blends into a wrecking ball, vociferously knocking down complete ferro-concrete building facades. After these violent opening scenes and now framed by an ethereal, almost angelic score, the camera gracefully pans along the astounding architectural jewels that were created for the 1964 Tokyo Olympiad-the National Stadium by Katayama Mitsuo, the Komazawa Stadium by Murata Masachika, the Komazawa Gymnasium by Ashihara Yoshinobu, and the Yoyogi Gymnasiums by Tange Kenzo-and that catapulted modernist Japanese architecture into the global limelight almost overnight. This sequence of a dignified, quiet monumentality, devoid of people, harshly ends with a crosscut to a bustling, chaotic Tokyo street, underscored by a nervous score. On the most abstract level, the wrecking ball functions as a powerful symbol, "denoting the violence implicit in [Japan's overall] modernizing process" (Russell 2002: 218). On another level, these scenes seem to suggest that the old city naturally should give way for the new to emerge. Only the creative destruction of the outdated buildings and neighborhoods allows for the Olympic city to materialize. On yet another concrete level these scenes graphically depict the unsentimental and utilitarian treatment of building structures throughout the country's modern history. Like in few other places in the world, perfectly maintained ferro-concrete office buildings that couldn't be much older than 20 to 30 years at the time the film was made are torn down just because changed regulations, new building technologies, or a tense real estate market demanded bigger, more profitable structures. And indeed, few modern building structures last longer than 50 years in Japan. Wrecking balls are no longer used today, but the incessant replacement of outdated building structures continues to this day.

It is clear that attempting to address environmental problems at their point of harm through identifying immediate causes has not been successful. The rate of change and growth in human activity, science, technology and society continues to create environmental crises which outpace remedial actions attempting to safeguard the ecosystems of the planet. Moreover, the uncoordinated application of technological fixes on many scales without properly understanding their long-term side effects has caused new, unpredicted wicked legacies. At the same time, prior efforts to identify root causes of the environmental crisis failed to provide a basis for designing policy interventions which could have direct impacts on the environmental crises within a timeframe suited to the rapid rate at which these crises unfold. Identifying proximate factors contributing to the environmental crisis, in which interventions can be considered short of revolutionary or unlikely societal changes, provides a way to bridge this gap between band-aid solutions and unachievable aspirations. The paper explores a range of proximate factors contributing to the environmental crisis, including: The momentum and self-sustaining logic of money and raw materials; Warfare and the environmental crisis; Wicked legacies; Ownership and legal systems; Modernity, utopian thinking, pursuit of personal happiness, and the idea of progress; Externalising waste, exporting harm, creating inter-generational debt; Information transparency and deliberate blindness; Compartmentalisation and specialisation; Decision making and accountability: Sovereignty, nation-states and the international system; Poverty, redistribution, Malthus and the limits to growth; and, Adaptability.

Das Idealbild der europäischen Stadt mit ihrer dicht gewachsenen Baustruktur und ihren öffentlichen Räumen steht als Synonym für'Urbanität'und beeinflußt bis zum heutigen Tag das planerische Denken und Handeln. Eng verbunden damit tauchen immer wieder ...

Das Idealbild der europaischen Stadt mit ihrer dicht gewachsenen Baustruktur und ihren offentlichen Raumen steht als Synonym fur 'Urbanitat' und beeinflust bis zum heutigen Tag das planerische Denken und Handeln. Eng verbunden damit tauchen immer wieder Assoziationen zu Agora und Forum auf, die als Archetypen des 'Offentlichen' schlechthin, den Mythos einer sich dort artikulierenden und konstituierenden, idealen und demokratischen Stadtgesellschaft transportieren. Zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts stellt sich jedoch die Frage, ob sich die tradierten und erprobten Denkmodelle und Bilder des offentlichen Raumes aufgrund der rasanten gesellschaftlichen und informationstechnologischen Veranderungen, uberlebt haben. Haben die typischen Ideen von Stadt, die auf dem offentlichen Raum beruhen nur noch rein symbolische Bedeutung? Verlagern sie sich mehr und mehr in den virtuellen Raum? 'Die Stadt der kurzen Wege' mit ihrer raumlichen Mischung ist als 'Marktplatz'...

"In recent years the issue of public space in urban Japan has won great prominence. Since 2002 for example accredited street artists and vendors (re)appear in parks and streets of Tôkyô as part of campaigns to promote Japan and its capital as attractive, bustling tourist destination. So-called 'Open Cafés' are proliferating in private plazas as well as public pedestrian malls, parks, or sidewalks in order to stimulate new public life in places were previously modernist paradigms of efficiency and functionality ruled such out, or to capitalise on a revival of outdoor life styles. Symbolic, beautified public spaces －parks, squares, promenades, waterfronts－ are created to endow identity to local communities, or to brand office complexes and whole business districts. The growing professional interest in the quality of public space stands in a dialectical relationship with the increasing body of literature on the subject and related burgeoning discourses on civil society, citizen participation, public sphere, and the very concept of Public. This thesis seeks to explore why there is such keen theoretical and practical interest in urban public space and the reasons for this changing focus on public space design and development. How have designers, developers and planning authorities approached public space in the past, and which factors have led to the current re-valuation? What are distinctive meanings of public space in Japan, and, how do those changing meanings influence its production, regulation and use? In order to account for the multiple actors and inanimate elements －texts, images of successful urban spaces－ which equally contribute to the discursive negotiation of public space, the study adopts Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a meta-theoretical framework. Much recent writing points out the social construction of public space with the consequence that values and meanings ascribed to it are never fixed but vary among cultures, places and over time. Nevertheless, when it comes to analysing it in non-Western contexts, often Western views are presumed, which make it difficult to describe relevant phenomena in their own right and against their own conceptual histories. Chapter one deconstructs therefore such dominant Western understandings of public space and contrasts them with intrinsic Japanese meanings and the particular ways these influence the evolution of urban space. After arriving at a workable definition and illustrating its dynamic social construction, an analytical framework is proposed, which accommodates the diverse policies, ideas, and actors, which inform the physical production of public space, and which are exemplified in the subsequent parts of the study. Chapter two takes a critical historic perspective on the genealogy of public space in urban Japan within the wider context of the urban governance system, planning culture and other socio-economic transformations, as current urban developments cannot be adequately understood without a firm knowledge of their particular institutional (formal regulations as well as informal social conventions and social practice), physical and historical background. From the introduction of the first early-modern, western-style precedents －parks, sidewalks, squares, waterfronts－ over comprehensive, open space visions of regional park systems in the inter-war and early post-war period, unitarily used public space came under jurisdiction of highly specialised, non-cooperative, at times antagonistic government authorities, impeding a more comprehensive understanding. An exclusive idea of the public good further eliminated an increasing array of activities and the rampant motorisation dissolved it in insular spaces. In recent years growing private influence and a growing number of successful local initiatives have led to a re-interpretation of public space and with it, the underlying very idea of the public. In global urban studies views prevail, which see mobile capital and multi-national corporations exerting a homogenising influence on urban space and lead to a worldwide convergence. As the guiding hypothesis of this research argues against such a priori simplifications, it looks in the second part into specific, influential projects, which promoted in their aggregation a re-definition of contemporary public space. In order to allow for a differentiated analysis of local and global, public, private or communitarian influences, the main part of the study is structured into three chief chapters: Chapter three scrutinises groundbreaking, small scale projects, where local governments, residents, citizen activists, or external experts advanced unprecedented, alternative types of public spaces through new open planning processes, significantly deviating from established bureaucratic routines of former decades. Chapter four looks at the growing private production of open spaces through incentive planning…

Over five years after the “triple disaster” of an earthquake, a tsunami, and the subsequent nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant that devastated Japan’s Tohoku region on March 11th, 2011, reconstruction is still progressing slowly. The difficulties are unprecedented and vast in scope: over 400 communities in 62 municipalities are affected in six different prefectures, along hundreds of kilometres of coastline. The challenges are complex and differ in their particular manifestations: earthquake damage, displacement from nuclear disaster, and tsunami destruction. They are dynamically interrelated and cumulative; rural regions, long confronted with depopulation and ageing, are additionally affected by disaster, and the effects are exacerbated by slow recovery and uncertainty. It will be difficult to rebuild more resilient communities that are sturdy and adaptable in order to respond to the challenges of inevitable demographic and economic transformation and global clim...

This paper offers a critical re-evaluation of what is arguably the clearest representation of a Japanese consumer electronic and media corporation in architectural form: the Ginza Sony Building. The paper argues that architect Yoshinobu Ashihara’s 1966 modern master- piece can be seen as a multilayered assemblage through which a number of distinct modernist traditions have evolved. This aspect of the building, we argue, is clearer in the present, ironically, after it has been demolished; in its absence. The building’s status as a modernist icon and, consequently, fame, developed gradually since it was opened. But a series of recent events and the resulting dynamic encouraged us to revisit the building to construct a wider, more satisfying understanding of its value. The renewed relevance of the Sony Build- ing, we know in hindsight, was determined when Tokyo was announced as a host of the 2020 Olympics. That announcement in September 2013 was a catalyst for a chain of events that revealed four distinct ‘evolutions’ in which the iconic building plays a distinct role. We discuss the change over time of: (1.) the emergence and presence of Sony in Ginza; (2.) the employment of modern architectural traditions and ideas; (3.) the linkage between Sony’s flagship products and the building; and (4.) the representations of Sony as an architectural form and how it evolved from building to park and the expected building-park. The paper, then, offers a re-reading of the modernist building as a non-discrete urban assemblage at the intersection of new technologies in consumer electronics, novel architectural ideas, a Post-War nascent consumer society, and, an urban district that transformed because of the 1964 Olympic Games and is currently re-transforming through the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The paper recognizes the Sony Building as a relevant object of study and repositions it in the current context. It accounts for the main evolutionary traditions and shows how the building encourages their composition.

When Walter Lippmann famously called the public a phantom he meant less to question its very existence, but to stress its fragile and rather provisional nature ̶ that it could cease to exist, once no longer upheld, re-assembled, or performed. Clive Barnett suggests that publics do not simply exist a priori , but must be convened, or called into being in open-ended, contingent processes without any certainty of success. Nancy Fraser, in turn, highlights the presence of many “subaltern Counterpublics.” where marginalised groups can come together to discuss matters of common concern. The absurdity of the idea of a single, unitary public sphere, where only the quality of the best argument matters but not the identities of those who present it, is nicely expressed by Bruno Latour: “We were told (by the public sphere thinkers) that all of us ̶ on entering this dome, this public sphere ̶ had to leave aside in the cloakroom our own attachments, passions and weaknesses. Taking our seat under the transparent crystal of the common good, through the action of some mysterious machinery, we would then be collectively endowed with more acute vision and higher virtue.” By suggesting that the public and the political are constantly {re}assembled through devices, procedures, and mediums, crystallising around specific issues, or topoi, Latour shifts our attention to the processes of how publics are created, and emphasises the many small, mundane acts and things that support these processes. This exposition, then, is to point out the performative and ephemeral quality of ‘true’ public space, or the rare instance when a public sphere is temporally supported, or even convened into being by a physical setting. In such a moment a public space turns into more than just a state- owned venue of accidental, amorphous sociability and begins to take on a broader collective, often political, relevance.

The Community Innovation Forum (CIF) is a mobile workshop and exhibition that initiates a visioning dialogue in and between local communities confronted with significant socioeconomic, demographic, or environmental problems. Where residents lack awareness and confidence and are skeptical of interacting with outside experts it serves to spark bottom up development potentials, energize networks of neighbors already working on the ground, stimulate creativity, and increase local knowledge of community assets. These are important enablers for later, more systematic visioning processes. The CIF is run by a design team, but the designers' role is one of enabler, working with local instigators to organize events and identify participants. Key elements of CIF are discussion forums where non-expert but seasoned citizen innovators from nearby neighborhoods are invited to share their experiences that inspire and impel the host or "base" community to take action. These are followed by town walks that start in the base community and expand to other neighborhoods where revitalization has occurred. In community mapping sessions participants create an analogue exhibition that presents knowledge collected during the workshop. The co-learning process creates social capital, a more positive sense of self-efficacy, and shared problem awareness. In this way community innovators expand their network, while the dialogue creates new innovators, and together they have confidence to take on new collaborative projects. Instructions 1. Make an agreement to work with a group in your base community-local people who have realized there are problems and want to do something about it. Within the group you will need to identify key participants or local organizations that can serve as intermediaries between the base community, innovators from other neighborhoods, and the design team. They are crucial to mobilizing the event but will also play a vital role in moving the dialogue forward after the CIF. At the same time begin to identify the human and place resources that can be knit together to create a cross-community dialogue about positive change. 2. Next select an appropriate workshop venue. It should have a strong meaning for residents in the base neighborhood and should not be monopolized by the corporate or government sectors. The space should be big enough to hold community discussions and to work in small groups. The space also needs to be big enough for a mapping exhibition that will become the record of what is learned.

Rarely has the value of modern architecture and heritage in the Japanese city been more trenchantly depicted than in Kon Ishikawa's classic "Tokyo Olympiad" of 1965. The monumental film that chronicles the 1964 Tokyo Olympic begins with a staggering scene of destruction: The image of a rising sun, representing the Japan that has similarly risen out of the ruins of World War II, seamlessly blends into a wrecking ball, vociferously knocking down complete ferro-concrete building facades. After these violent opening scenes and now framed by an ethereal, almost angelic score, the camera gracefully pans along the astounding architectural jewels that were created for the 1964 Tokyo Olympiad-the National Stadium by Katayama Mitsuo, the Komazawa Stadium by Murata Masachika, the Komazawa Gymnasium by Ashihara Yoshinobu, and the Yoyogi Gymnasiums by Tange Kenzo-and that catapulted modernist Japanese architecture into the global limelight almost overnight. This sequence of a dignified, quiet monumentality, devoid of people, harshly ends with a crosscut to a bustling, chaotic Tokyo street, underscored by a nervous score. On the most abstract level, the wrecking ball functions as a powerful symbol, "denoting the violence implicit in [Japan's overall] modernizing process" (Russell 2002: 218). On another level, these scenes seem to suggest that the old city naturally should give way for the new to emerge. Only the creative destruction of the outdated buildings and neighborhoods allows for the Olympic city to materialize. On yet another concrete level these scenes graphically depict the unsentimental and utilitarian treatment of building structures throughout the country's modern history. Like in few other places in the world, perfectly maintained ferro-concrete office buildings that couldn't be much older than 20 to 30 years at the time the film was made are torn down just because changed regulations, new building technologies, or a tense real estate market demanded bigger, more profitable structures. And indeed, few modern building structures last longer than 50 years in Japan. Wrecking balls are no longer used today, but the incessant replacement of outdated building structures continues to this day.

In summer 2010 a small urban park in Tokyo’s iconic Shibuya shopping district became the scene of an occupation that lasted nearly half a year. Homeless citizens, artists, youth activists, unionists, and public intellectuals congregated not only around the physical space of Miyashita Park but also catalyzed heated debates among planning professionals, or social movement schol- ars, in which the nature of public space in urban Japan was broadly discussed (Dimmer 2010, OurPlanet-TV 2010, Nikkei Architecture 2011, Tsukamoto and Nakatani 2011). These intensive debates were fomented by a controversial deal brokered between the Shibuya local government and Nike Japan, who agreed to buy the naming rights for a period of ten years and install rental sports facilities in parts of the park. These plans were leaked to the public only after major deci- sions had been made behind closed doors. The ensuing protests against what the activists called the “Nike-fication of public space” (Ogawa 2012) utilized a new cultural repertoire of protest in which expressive means like graphic design, visual art, and music played a central role.

Few recent ideas have equally captivated the imaginations of politicians, corporate strategists, and citizen activists as much as the Smart City. The ubiquitous and pervasive application of information and communication technology (ICT) like big data, Internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), or robots is widely identified as a means to make cities smarter and more sustainable at a time when 55 percent of the global population resides in urban areas, produces 60 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions and consumes 78 percent of the world’s energy. Critics of the Smart City decry it as an evocative slogan that high-tech companies, entrepreneurial politicians, and international consultants employ in order to advance their agendas. To gain a clearer understanding of this ambiguous concept, it is necessary to cut through the hyperbole and examine how existing smart city policies are actually assembled in specific places, how they are filled with meaning, and how they are implemented.

Japan is currently supplying its energy demand mostly by importing fosile fuels, especially LNG. This is costly and contribute to CO2 related global warming. While the Japanese central government aims at reducing its reliance on LNG by restarting nuclear power plants, local initiatives show more concern for global and local environmental issues. In this chapter we are looking at three cases in Japan, a prominent Japanese branch of the transnational Transition Town initiative, a town in southern Japan and a mountain village in northwest Japan. We show that local initiatives within Japan differ strongly from national agendas and also from each other. We pay attention to geographic, demographic and political differences in order to point out the factors that contribute or hinder climate change action. We also point out, that climate change related activities in Japan, do not necessarily have to address or frame climate change as the main issue. Our cases show, that local problems seem to be much more eminent in the perception and motivation for taking action and that climate protection sometimes comes as a side effect. We also point out that while there is a huge natural, economic and social potential for renewable energies in Japan, committed politician, entrepreneurs and citizen activists face serious political and economic challenges.

In the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 many Japan- observers initially hoped for a broad renaissance of social and political life and a departure from what they saw as an “ageing, dysfunctional (socio-political) system” that proved unfit to reform. However, such initial optimism soon disappeared.1 Political deadlock persisted despite the national crisis, and Japan’s famously inflexible institutions and segmented administrative landscape stymied far-reaching socio-political reform and swift reconstruction.2 Although such pessimism might be confirmed by an examination of the actual seemingly slow recovery process or warranted on a macro-political level, I argue that 3.11, as the day of the cataclysmic disaster has come to be known, has also spurred strong positive energies in the place- and space-forming disciplines. To make my argument, I begin by raising the following questions: 3.11 has been often depicted as a hallmark event and critical juncture, but did it really create entirely new place-making practices from scratch? What is the role of 3.11 in the fusing of different design domains and what are the other drivers? What are the established alternative place-making practices that existed prior to 3.11, which co-emerged with the post-disaster situation? Why did 3.11 lead to an unprecedented collaboration of so many different creative domains?

Perhaps few other ideas have been more persevering in architecture or urban planning discourses over the past decades than ‘public space’. Ironically, its recent, expanded career as a central intellectual concept beyond those academic disciplines, concerned with the built environment, and its extensive use in professional and scholarly debates, in media and everyday language, didn’t help to lessen its semantic ambiguities (Gulick 1998, Nadal 2000). One substantial problem with the concept is its (mis-)conception as static and universal; as transcending the particularities of time, space, or culture, thus frustrating meaningful comparative discourses. As a result examining public space outside ones own cultural context may lead to early conclusions and normative distortions when observations do not match the preconceived repertoire of spatial archetypes, or familiar patterns of appropriation. Neil Smith reminds us thus that "(d)ifferent societies and different modes of production produce space differently; they produce their own kinds of spaces” (1998: 54). He argues that “specific societies and specific periods have distinctive spatial codes (… that) are integral to the social and spatial practices of a given place and period (…)” (ibid.). Consequently, public space is better conceived as a complex multi-dimensional notion, perpetually reproduced by local and global actors and discourses, shaped by hard and soft social institutions, as well as specific spatio-culturally induced systems of perception, interaction, representation, and language in a particular time and place. The job of theory and empirical enquiry is then elucidating the emergence, performance, and change of those spatial codes, constituting particular public space notions, rather than superimposing a priori views. Interestingly, international debates showed hitherto a strong bias toward Europe or North America —underplaying public space in non-western settings. Referring to the ultimately related and equally abstract idea of ‘civil society’ Frank Schwartz points out the intricacies of applying concepts across cultures that evolved in distinctively western milieus (2003: 3). After all, as the etymology of the Latin publicus (‘of the people’) suggests, delineating the social universe in public and private spheres or spaces has been a recurring concern of Western thought since antiquity. Cultures, however, have always borrowed from one and another in the past and thus rarely constitute homogeneous entities in the present. “Defying abstract considerations of authenticity and universality, ideas and institutions are constantly spreading beyond their place of origin to take root elsewhere, where they may be reconceived in local terms” (ibid.). Jennifer Robertson adds that “culture (...) is every bit as much an ongoing production as it is a constantly transforming product” (1998: 11). With Henri Lefèbvre (1991) I suggest that space, or more specifically public space, both reflects and contributes to this process and thus deserves further attention. The objective of this article is therefore to sketch out a more nuanced, flexible and culture sensitive understanding of public space. The key is Lefèbvre’s influential idea of the social construction of space, after which space is continually and dynamically constructed through a trialectic between the perceived, the conceived and the lived. The paper elucidates this idea with the example of urban Japan and applies it for a close examination of the underlying socio-spatial and historical processes, leading up to the present public space boom. In order to reduce complexity, the focus is on one particular spatial archetype and its related institutional and discursive context. So-called privately owned public spaces (POPS) are quantitatively highly significant as they thrived adjacent to hundreds of downtown skyscrapers since the late 1960s. Moreover, since these privately owned, yet publicly accessible spaces result from a trade-off between bonus floor area for open space, involving developers and local governments, their design and operation reflects how public space was thought by both public and private key actors at a specific point in time. This is a fresh perspective, as most writing on the subject focused hitherto mostly on government policies but ignored the motivation of private developers.

In recent years the issue of public space in urban Japan has won great prominence. Since 2002 for example accredited street artists and vendors (re)appear in parks and streets of Tôkyô as part of campaigns to promote Japan and its capital as attractive, bustling tourist destination. So-called 'Open Cafés' are proliferating in private plazas as well as public pedestrian malls, parks, or sidewalks in order to stimulate new public life in places were previously modernist paradigms of efficiency and functionality ruled such out, or to capitalise on a revival of outdoor life styles. Symbolic, beautified public spaces －parks, squares, promenades, waterfronts－ are created to endow identity to local communities, or to brand office complexes and whole business districts. The growing professional interest in the quality of public space stands in a dialectical relationship with the increasing body of literature on the subject and related burgeoning discourses on civil society, citizen participation, public sphere, and the very concept of Public. This thesis seeks to explore why there is such keen theoretical and practical interest in urban public space and the reasons for this changing focus on public space design and development. How have designers, developers and planning authorities approached public space in the past, and which factors have led to the current re-valuation? What are distinctive meanings of public space in Japan, and, how do those changing meanings influence its production, regulation and use? In order to account for the multiple actors and inanimate elements －texts, images of successful urban spaces－ which equally contribute to the discursive negotiation of public space, the study adopts Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a meta-theoretical framework. Much recent writing points out the social construction of public space with the consequence that values and meanings ascribed to it are never fixed but vary among cultures, places and over time. Nevertheless, when it comes to analysing it in non-Western contexts, often Western views are presumed, which make it difficult to describe relevant phenomena in their own right and against their own conceptual histories.
Chapter one deconstructs therefore such dominant Western understandings of public space and contrasts them with intrinsic Japanese meanings and the particular ways these influence the evolution of urban space. After arriving at a workable definition and illustrating its dynamic social construction, an analytical framework is proposed, which accommodates the diverse policies, ideas, and actors, which inform the physical production of public space, and which are exemplified in the subsequent parts of the study.
Chapter two takes a critical historic perspective on the genealogy of public space in urban Japan within the wider context of the urban governance system, planning culture and other socio-economic transformations, as current urban developments cannot be adequately understood without a firm knowledge of their particular institutional (formal regulations as well as informal social conventions and social practice), physical and historical background.
From the introduction of the first early-modern, western-style precedents －parks, sidewalks, squares, waterfronts－ over comprehensive, open space visions of regional park systems in the inter-war and early post-war period, unitarily used public space came under jurisdiction of highly specialised, non-cooperative, at times antagonistic government authorities, impeding a more comprehensive understanding. An exclusive idea of the public good further eliminated an increasing array of activities and the rampant motorisation dissolved it in insular spaces.
In recent years growing private influence and a growing number of successful local initiatives have led to a re-interpretation of public space and with it, the underlying very idea of the public. In global urban studies views prevail, which see mobile capital and multi-national corporations exerting a homogenising influence on urban space and lead to a worldwide convergence. As the guiding hypothesis of this research argues against such a priori simplifications, it looks in the second part into specific, influential projects, which promoted in their aggregation a re-definition of contemporary public space. In order to allow for a differentiated analysis of local and global, public, private or communitarian influences, the main part of the study is structured into three chief chapters:
Chapter three scrutinises groundbreaking, small scale projects, where local governments, residents, citizen activists, or external experts advanced unprecedented, alternative types of public spaces through new open planning processes, significantly deviating from established bureaucratic routines of former decades.
Chapter four looks at the growing private production of open spaces through incentive planning instruments, represented by an exemplary discussion of so-called privately owned public spaces (POPS). These are quantitatively highly significant and have been created in downtown areas since the late 1960s. In this form of public-private partnerships the public sector trades in the private production, ownership and management of publicly usable space for an incentive of bonus floor area bonus or other zoning concessions. Focusing on this specific type of public space doesn't simply serve as an end in itself. Its very appearance marked in fact a major turning point in urban governance, as the public sector relinquished its dominating role as sole provider of urban public space. Examining it allows therefore transcending conventional government-centred research frameworks by also appreciating values and meanings, attributed from the private side. As the real estate sector is most perceptive for changing socio-economic trends, it translates them into new built urban form following the logic of profit maximisation. Thus, the New Public Spaces of mix-use mega-developments like Ebisu Garden Place, Roppongi Hills, Shinjuku Southern Terrace, SIO Site Shiodome, Midtown or Marunouchi serve as indicators for established power structures as well as wider social trends of fusion of work and leisure, a longing for collective memory and shared narratives, a new awareness for environment and quality of life or the feminisation of urban space.
Chapter five takes a longitudinal, long-term perspective on the particular urban governance and planning culture of Yokohama City, one of Japan's most progressive local government, whereas the preceding two chapters focused on particular, innovative examples of new publicly and privately owned, publicly usable spaces. Since the 1960s a long-term strategic planning vision envisioned here a comprehensive reconquest of public pedestrian space under utilisation of private initiative for its realisation. Through intensive publication, initial deliberations in the public sphere of planning experts and later in the broader public, the integrated urban design approach exerted a strong influence on public space policies of other local governments, which finally added to a changed attitude of the national government towards the liveable city.
Chapter six summarises the findings of the preceding chapters and discusses the complex processes, which came to influence the production, management and use of urban public space, culminating in its current renaissance. While the quality of public space was important in early modernist planning during the 1920s and 30s, it fell into neglect in the post-war period. Scholars and local urban designers rediscovered quality public spaces as means for local identity promotion and participation in Machizukuri projects and beautification strategies during the 1960s and 70s. This was more and more taken up by the real estate sector for the creation New Public Spaces at large mix-use redevelopment schemes, were it served as distinguishing element in an increasing area competition, but also responded to changed socio-cultural values. In the struggle against the perceived loss of competitiveness of the world city Tôkyô vis-à-vis its burgeoning East Asian rivals, the government identified it also as means for city branding and image policies.

El presente ensayo analiza la proliferación de una de las categorías más significativas de espacios de uso público en el Japón metropolitano contemporáneo. El texto explora cuándo y por qué el gobierno comenzó a traspasar la producción de espacios públicos a actores privados, y reflexiona sobre cómo se han transforma- do estos espacios en el transcurso de los últimos cuarenta años, pasando de ser «espacios públicos muertos» a convertirse en «escenarios totales de trabajo y es- parcimiento». Resulta interesante observar que la transformación cualitativa de esos relevantes residuos de materia urbana fue, más que el resultado de la presión de la sociedad civil o de los planificadores gubernamentales en pro de la creación de entornos urbanos de alta calidad, el efecto de mecanismos del mercado que identificaron a los espacios públicos como medios importantes para valorizar locaciones específicas.

Few recent ideas have equally captivated the imaginations of politicians, corporate strategists, and citizen activists as much as the Smart City. The ubiquitous and pervasive application of information and communication technology (ICT) like big data, Internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), or robots is widely identified as a means to make cities smarter and more sustainable at a time when 55 percent of the global population resides in urban areas, produces 60 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions and consumes 78 percent of the world’s energy. Critics of the Smart City decry it as an evocative slogan that high-tech companies, entrepreneurial politicians, and international consultants employ in order to advance their agendas. To gain a clearer understanding of this ambiguous concept, it is necessary to cut through the hyperbole and examine how existing smart city policies are actually assembled in specific places, how they are filled with meaning, and how they are implemented.