Tokyo
Like all organic systems, cities fare better without central planning. Additive, centrifugal, Tokyo starts with individual parts and expands. Proliferates. Undefined. Unclear centers. Looser and ambiguous, freedom is valued over regularity of form and clarity of outline.
Tokyo, a complex of:
(1) Center-less-ness,
(2) A heritage of scattered ownership (see Shelton, 1999),
(3) Pie-and-crust (high-rise buildings on the perimeter of a block sheltering the interior low-rise buildings – creating a protected, low-key ‘urban village’) neighbourhoods patchworked by
(4) Successive inheritance-tax induced subdivisions
(5) Focus on the plot, use of the street (Kurokawa, 1991)
PLUS
(5) The Shinto-Buddhist spirit
AND
(6) The uchi-soto conception of relation & space
This city form is the constant logic of the unselfconscious process of continuous adaptation and piecemeal building by bricoleur gardeners who make do with their heterogeneous repertoire of resources to explore connections and new uses through action.
