Section = 005_1
TOKYO, an example
“When you squeeze this city, juice is sure to come pouring out. A juicy urban space that is permeated with an ample amount of good flavor in a soft urban shell is something that works surprisingly well.” (Tsukamoto, quoted in Kitayama 2010c:69).
“..a detonation of human vitality”
(Kawazoe, et al., 1960[1])
Though Tokyo is the site of major economic activity, the majority of its space consists of living places. And its form guarantees a kind of freedom. Tokyo has the potential to create change in the city through the quiet accumulation of urban elements rooted in everyday life – and up close presents one type of future for the contemporary city[2]. The living, successful geometry observed in Tokyo is loose, complex, decentralized and highly conjunctive – communicative, continuous and feedbacky; ‘Messy’ with the handmade and rich with natural habitat and life (see Salingaros et al., 2010, discussion of success) plants come out to chew at the borders[3]. Viewable as successful in terms of the ‘cities the poor build’ (e.g. Salingaros 2010a,b; Salingaros et al., 2010; Turner and Roberts, 1975:127) but without the tarpaper, squalor, amoebic dysentery, and lack of basic infrastructure (Wilsher and Righter, 1975:138). Tokyo displays human-based PROCESS[4] (e.g. Wiener, 1954:96, 101-2), in dynamic heterogeneity (Bookchin, 1974:98) not geo-architecturally defined corpo-governmental IMAGE (e.g. Salingaros, et al. 2010) and does so uniquely, in an aging, wealthy city.
[1] Metabolist manifesto, referring to the proper use of design and technology (cited in Lin, 2007).
[2] Collage: In order: Kitayama (2010a); Tsukamoto, in Kitayama (2010c:71); Kitayama, (2010a); Kitayama, (2010e:131).
[3] Huidobro (1919:123). View in context of conjunction
[4] Note on change in MacIver and Page (1967:523)