say do you remember niihaomaa in china 04: Thames Town, an interpretation of britain in shanghai

in big cities in china, it seems it has been getting remarkably popular to plan cities that are imitating images of cities of the West. during my stay in shanghai, a chinese friend of mine took me to one of them, the Thames Town. it is one of newly developed areas of 1city9towns initiatives by shanghai's planning commission from 2001 to accommodate about 10000 people. it is named after the Thames river and is inspired by british architectures and city design.

when i got to the thames town, i was surprised to see its unique function as a town. usually cities or towns function as places to live and work, and that generate some sort of vibe and energy. this is even more applicable in the case of cities in china, that people play games, cook, meet, eat and do whatever they want. however, in the case of the thames town, there were really nobody. although all the built environment were nicely furnished, nothing lively was going on. due to its emptiness, some articles i found even described it as "ghost town."

instead, it was used as a massive studio for brides and grooms. there were tens of couples making photo shoots everywhere around the town.

when i saw them photo shooting, i came to recall that chinese couple-friends of mine told me that it was really popular to take photo shoots at this sort of studios to make pre-wedding photo albums. when i heard the story and saw their albums, i really couldnt grasp the concept at all, because i couldnt imagine there would be this massive studio-like-towns in many big cities in china, and because nothing like this is happening in japan. obviously china offered me much more than i expected. seeing this town somehow made me re-realize that cities and towns have much more potentials than just offering accommodation and jobs.

the other finding about this area that interested me was its interpretation. it looked much like a british city or at least european city. this is what many of japanese developers should learn, since many of european-inspired towns in japan cannot really offer a bit of their originals.

what has tsunami left in northern part of japan

its been about 9months since the quakes and tsunamis hit in northern part of japan, and i still remember clearly the grotesque way of tsunami's eroding cities. it looked like mercury flowing or amoebas propagating. cars and even houses were swept away as if they were duck toys sweeping in the rivers. cities are the biggest creature made by humankind, but they didnt have any other choices but to be invaded, and people had no chance but to runaway or to surrender. thousands of precious lives were deprived and millions of people got grief stricken.

regardless of the amount of loss, it seems people there have been struggling to overcome the trial. since the catastrophe, disaster affected people have been working for the recovery of their cities and lifestyles together with various stakes. a tremendous number of people have been thinking what they can do and many actually have been participating in volunteer work. the numbers of companies and organizations have supported for the recovery by what they are good at. and millions of millions of financial supports were donated from all over the world even from our favorite neighbor of the great nation of kim jong-il. due to the supports, cities with no tsunami erosion has regained their ordinary lifestyle.

(in the city of ishinomaki)

(in front of the iwaki station at night)

however, as the government has been busy dealing with political games, the recovery of seriously wounded areas has been progressed at a snails pace. although it is obvious that it cannot allow to rebuild the same cities on the same ground and it hasnt reached to any conclusion what to do for the area, it is really irritating to see nothing has done yet.

it appears that most of rubble have been cleaned up already, but nothing else is happening yet. most of the affected areas had been shrinking even before the catastrophe hit, and this fact has made the restoration more difficult. it is meaningless to make cities recover by bouncing back to where they were before the tsunami, as many of them have lost their charms and attractions already. it is also pointless to make them bring back to the state that they were still growing, as the industrial structure has changed dramatically in a past few decades. i have still no clue what these areas should become like other than making them become super resilient and creative and making the former residents become happy. i hope something will bring hope to those who are in the deepest despair there as soon as possible. in order to do that, i should become more creative and productive so that i might be able to contribute at least a bit.

yuubari, the city of past-the city of future

in the middle of september, i made a brief stop in yuubari during my first trip to hokkaido. it had been one of the most attractive destinations for me for a few years since i had started researching shrinking cities.

yuubari started developing as a coal mining town in the latter half of the 19th century. when coal was the main resource for energy production, yuubari experienced a rapid growth and became one of the biggest coal mining towns in japan. however as the energy production started shifting from coal to oil, the city faced its sunset. the coal mining industry started fading away from the 1970s and the last mine stopped operating in 1990. since the city was heavily dependent on mining industry, its fall let labors to leave the city. after the sunset of the mining industry, the city shifted its economy to tourism oriented. however neither its vision, strategies, or operation were appropriately set, and the lack of sense of crisis oppressed city's finance. the fall of mining industry and following failure of measure for economic recovery ended up with municipal bankruptcy in 2007. now its population is about 10,600. this is 90% smaller than its peak in 1960. its aging rate is as high as 44%...

these are what ive learned from wikipedia.

in order to get to know the city, i stopped by at the coal mine museum and mining lifestyle museum, and this choice was a diamond. i could really learn the rise and fall of the city. what impressed me the most was the underground exhibition room which i could actually walk the former driftway. there were plenty of tools and machines displayed that were actually used back in the coal mining era. the museums were super rich in local cultural heritages and were much much much more absorbing than my expectation and shabby reputation. i could grasp the situation at once.

after the brief stop at the museums i headed to a former thermal power plant which was under the demolition work, because there was an opening of an art event. the venue (lets leave aside the event for the moment) was really fantastic. in the field of art, it has been popular to utilize old factories and garages as these buildings provide big spaces for artists to express. this trend could be found anywhere around the world, such as china. whats interesting about this venue is the story after the event finished. in the most cases, people in the art industry are utilizing abandoned spaces to renovate to use as galleries or workshops. on the other hand, this former thermal power plant will keep being demolished. the event was possible thanks to the collaboration with the company to demolish the power plant. i wondered how could the city of yuubari pay for the demolition but i failed to ask about it.

in these two tourist attractions(?), there were people (not many, but at least, some). however, while i was driving from the museums to the power plant, i remember there were only three people on the street although i was driving on the main (or only?) road of the city. i passed by plenty of shops but most (or all? i dont remember) of them were closed. i couldnt even buy a souvenir from the museums as even the gift shop was closed.

it can be said that yuubari is the city of past. it was once flourished as the main mining town of japan and was a dynamo for the economic growth of the nation. although now it has lost its hegemony, no one can deny its importance and contribution of the past.

at the same time, it can also be said that yuubari is the city of future. on one level or another, there are plenty of cities in japan (and even japan itself) having similar problems as yuubari has been facing, such as sunset of key industries, lack of vision and strategies, population emigration, high aging rate, and so on. from this view point, yuubari is the most advanced city in this country. cities have to learn from the story of yuubari for their future.

i went to visit yuubari to see the future of this country. however, yuubari showed its future as well. it is its people. i had a noodle for a lunch there and surprisingly the restaurant's keepers told me that they were not from yuubari but to move to there in recent years. if this sort of outsiders' pioneering spirits and yuubari's unique story can collaborate, they will surely bear a fruit in the future i believe.

say do you remember niihaomaa in china 03: traffic jams

when im stuck in traffic jams, i always wonder who, where, when, how, and why the mess shows up so suddenly. sometimes the cause is rather obvious, like accidents, but most of the times its less visible.

in china, traffic jams are a part of life. people cannot live without them. in fact i was stuck in traffic jams couple of times and was even almost miss a flight. a chinese friend of mine told me the reason was because of the increasing number of car owners in the case of wuhan. another said its simply because of the number of cars and people.

when i was observing roads in china, i also found another reason, the different speed of adaptability to chinese changing built and technical environment. although individual economic level has been improving so rapidly and consequently the number of cars has been increasing, the infrastructure to control traffic (i.e. traffic management) is not catching up with them.

furthermore, the number of people are not catching up with chinese rapid speed of development. i came across to number of people who were trying to cross roads making the flow of traffic suffocated. there were plenty of people walking on roads rather than sidewalks. there were some motorbikes ran counter to the traffic flow.

i believe that the traffic management technique will be soon improved. in fact, the metro network in shanghai and beijing was reliable and wuhan is implementing metro system. yet it would be real hard for some to adapt the speed of development. the trend of urbanization cannot be reversed and more and more people are coming to cities from rural areas for better job opportunities and they might not know urban lifestyle. further, the number of car ownership will continue to increase in a next few decades i guess. from these perspectives, probably the life with lighter traffic jams will not be realised so soon.

say do you remember niihaomaa in china 02: where creativity heads (beijing and shanghai)

since Richard Florida wrote his famous book "the rise of the creative class," creativity has caught the spotlight in the field of urban studies. although there are plenty of oppositions against him, it is undeniable that the creative capital now plays the decisive role in urban discourse. cities all around the world compete to attract people from the creative class, and consequently some areas become the mecca for them. and these sort of areas are often used to brand the cities.

this sort of trend is especially remarkable in the field of modern art. as artists tend to demand cheep big spaces in urban areas, they started settling down in former factory or garage buildings. this movement is widely observed in the world. for instance chelsea in nyc and east end in london are the most famous examples of this sort. like other major cities around the world, both beijing and shanghai have successfully attracted artists to 798 (beijing) and M50 (shanghai).

what surprised me the most from these areas were their scale. they were HUGE!!! i could easily spend a day or maybe two there. the quality of exhibitions were pretty good and the built environment was splendid although both of them are former industrial areas;) the areas were filled with creativity.

(exhibition of Song Dong)

(built environment of M50)

many of asian growing cities tend to neglect what they have and just implement scrap-and-build strategies for development. yet we have to be smart enough to realize whats valuable for the cities.

say do you remember niihaomaa in china 01: peace outside the gated society

while i was walking around in wuhan, i immediately realized that the gap between rich and poor in china was much bigger than i had imagined. there was a clear class segregation visualized by physical boundaries. most of fancy neighborhoods equipped walls, gates and security check in order to probably keep safety or just segregate others. ive never seen a real "gated society" before, so it was quite a shock.

as i was segregated from any of fancy neighborhoods unfortunately, what i did was wondering around ordinary "unsecured?!" neighborhoods without walls or gates, and it was a great opportunity to encounter the reality of china. what surprised me was its rich street culture. famous Jan Gehl's three types of activities (necessary activities, optional activities, and social activities) were naturally found everywhere. people not only just walked to their destination, but also met friends, had a good conversation, went shopping on street markets, and played games together. it seemed to be chinese habit but they even hang their laundries on the street.

when i found these peaceful sights of non-fancy neighborhoods, i came to realize that such areas' quality of the physical environment was not poor at all, regardless of how they looked, and came to wonder what was the gate for. Gehl claimed in his famous "Life Between Buildings" (1980) that optional activities are "dependent on exterior physical conditions. when outdoor areas are of poor quality, only strictly necessary activities occur." yet obviously this good quality of life was found outside "safe and peaceful" gated societies that are supposed to produce good quality of physical environment. i somehow understood why Jane Jacobs kept living where she lived.

it might be true that Gehl's cultural background and that of china is totally different, yet this chinese street culture made me understand that it is not fancy neighborhoods that create a good physical environment, it is the people that create.

say do you remember niihaomaa in china 00: ibaraki airport

as i was luckily invited to my friends wedding in wuhan, i decided to spend my summer holidays in china. of course my initial plan was to attend the wedding, my motivation to discover something unknown and curiosity about the country drove me to fly from one city to another, ended up with 2days in wuhan, 4days in beijing, and 2days in shanghai.

usually it is really convenient to fly from tokyo to big cities in china like shanghai and beijing, as both haneda and narita airport have direct flight to major cities there. yet i took the alternative choice which was not really convenient at all this time; flying from the ibaraki airport. it is said to be the third airport in tokyo region but it has only 3 destinations; sapporo, kobe, and shanghai.

as it is not well connected with public transportation system, there is a direct bus connection available between tokyo station and the airport and it costs only 500yen if u fly. in order to use it, u have to make a reservation beforehand.... thats what i didnt know until a day before my departure, and it was too late to book a room for my ass to fit in anymore then. so what i had to do was to take a metro, a local train, a local train, an express train, and a bus with my huge backpack.... and it costed me like 4000yen....

one of the reasons that i decided to fly from the ibaraki airport was that i could take a cheap flight there, but thanks to the transportation fee to get there, this reason became a phantom.

apparently the ibaraki airport and host municipalities are investing a lot to build better city networks intranationally and internationally. if they really want to, what they have to do is clearer than crystal; prepare an easier and cheaper access to the airport with public transportation system.

tokyo wonderland 03 interpretation of italian city in tokyo

there are plenty of foreign theme amusement parks in this country as gifts from the time of the babble economy. in such places people of japan can absorb japanese version of europe-ness or america-ness or whatsoever you call cheaply with ease. yet its popularity is not necessarily content anymore (or from the beginning) so many are struggling to survive, and some went bankrupt already.

recently this sort of theme-park concepts have been eroding the real city, mainly in suburbia. there are plenty of residential sights developed with themes of, for example, italy, germany, england, and more. some name themselves as "Lebenplatz," some market themselves by "having the identity of italian style architecture" or "duplicating the good-old-times of Cotswolds" and so on. if u visit housing companies homepages, there are thousands of these. and u will instantly notice the unique ways of interpreting them.

italian style (from http://kodate.homes.co.jp/s/special/369/list_rws100/?scid=ls01)

hmm, in which points?

Cotswolds style (from http://kodate.homes.co.jp/s/special/369/list_rws100/?scid=ls01)

Cotswolds (from wiki)

hmm im really not sure whether this Cotswolds style is actually replicating the same Cotswolds ive found on the internet.

this sort of trend is even invading the space of central business districts of tokyo.

in Shiodome, newly developed CBD in tokyo, there is a district replicating the city of Reggio Emilia in Italy. its piazza was completed in 2003, and the district as a whole was completed in 2007.

the main redevelopment sight of Shiodome was owned by JR so that the consensus building for the redevelopment was not a difficult task, i believe, although the district is not necessarily well developed. on the contrary, there were various landowners involved with the redevelopment of the sight of Shiodome Italia. from this aspect, its really surprising that they could reach to the consensus to replicate Italy here, because if i were there, i would not really understand the purpose to build a fake italian city there.

when i first visited there, what came to my mind was "not that bad at all." what made me surprised was the street fabric and urban structure. unlike other parts of the city, it had stone paths and there was even a piazza-kind of public space. these were positive because 1) it looked different from others, and 2) its generous enough to provide benches on the public space, which is rather rare in this country.

but while i was strolling the area, i had to change my mind eventually.

usually european cities have their symbols next to their town squares, and they are "symbols of religious, political, military, educational, and cultural interests." Shiodome Italia has this JRA building as its symbol. JRA stands for Japan Racing Association, which deals with horse racing as its business, which is not quite "religious, political, military, educational and cultural" in my opinion. whats more, as you can see, its facade is rather ugly and looks like 3-stories Parthenon which i dont think is from italy.

and when i approached to the square, what i noticed was that it had no intention to welcome people. it was a lovely sunny day but at the same time was a cruelly hot and humid day. it was rather suicidal to stay outside under the sunshine for a long time. yet what it provided was just some benches and tiny trees. squares today are supposed to have "modern commercial functions, such as [...] restaurants" or cafes with some nice tents or umbrellas to provide some decent shades. there was no way i could stay in this piazza.

squares in europe are usually meeting spots and supposed to be places that somethings going on. but here, nothing was happening.

ive never been to Reggio Emilia so there might be the slightest possibility that it looks exactly like this. but what ive learnt about cities and observed in europe are totally different from what Shiodome Italia presents.

Shiodome Italia clearly declares that it duplicates Reggio Emilia, so i have no intention to deny that. likewise, i have zero intention to deny that those examples from suburbia dont duplicate italian houses or english towns or whatsoever.

what i really dont understand is the way they duplicate. at least i cant comprehend how they duplicate what they are duplicating. i might need to learn japanese ways of interpretations of cities in order to become able to understand what majority of japanese people want in cities.

tokyo wonderland 02 whats happening in rainy season in tokyo

we usually have rainy season from the first half of june to the mid of july in tokyo, yet this year its arrival was about two weeks earlier. i really dont like this time of the season for two reasons, firstly, of course because of bad weather, and ridiculously unpleasant humidity. whats worse, although its getting really hot already, the stupid (yet reasonable) energy saving campaign has made us hesitate to use AC, and my unpleasant-index is rocketing up.

in the end of may, on a madly rainy sunday, i went for a nice tokyo tour with chinese and dutch friends from my master program in sweden, dutch friends brother, and chinese friends husband. the rain was heavy enough to motivate me to show them somewhere indoor but it turned out that there were not many indoor exciting touristy spots around here, except nice (and costly) museums and shopping malls that my friends werent so interested in. so we just walked around shibuya-harajuku and shinjuku although the rain was bad enough to make the netherlands sunk:)

what good about rainy days in tokyo is that we are supposed to be able to see how resilient to the natural disaster tokyo is. (although the day of the earthquake totally paralyzed the city, the magnitude of the disaster was exceptionally chaotic so lets not count it.) the sewage disposal system is well-prepared and reliable enough to make traffic run smoothly and urban fabric cannot be damaged by ordinal heavy rain.

although we were totally soaked, nothing really disturbed us except rain until we came to a semi-underground path, which connects east and western part of the shinjuku station. this path is the only shortcut available between two main roads penetrating the railroads, which are like 500meters distant from each other. when people need to travel about shinjuku from east to west, thats the most useful and common choice.

after having a dinner together in western part of shinjuku, we headed east via the path. but we couldnt. apparently some trash were stuck to the drain making the sewage system numb, and it could no longer handle the amount of rainfall. and this is what happened there then.

apparently, just a heavily rainy day reveals that human creation cannot compete with mother nature, let alone earthquake and tsunami. some might say that this rain fall was also rather exceptional, but this guy who was blocking the path told us that this kinda thing happened several times a year or so, so nothing exceptional. just a heavy rain.

what ive learned is that we have to be smart to cope with nature, not compete with it.

city branding in japan, a case of nara

its been already 2 years since i wrote my thesis. at that time i often felt weird seeing differences in city branding strategies between japan and other nations mainly in the West. i dont remember clearly anymore how i define city branding actually, but if i remember correctly, it is supposed to be "monolithic consumer oriented representation" (thats what i remember for sure) to create cool images by overlapping built cities by narative cities and to attract the flux of external capitals, or something like that.

for instance, I love NY and I amsterdam are two of most famous city branding campaigns around the world. each of them has its own origins but they both have the common result; overlapping built cities by narative and attracting various capitals from all over the world.

on the other hand, the case of city branding in japan is apparently taking a totally different vector from the global trend. cities in this country are often promoting themselves by creating some weird characters which are often far from cool in my opinion. city branding in japan often doesnt have any "monolithic consumer-oriented representation" but has only names of characters, often neither its objectives, messages, or targets are clear and these aspects make me doubt if what i believe city branding in japan is actually city branding. i leave this doubt aside for now and assume what i believe city branding in japan as city branding. there are hundreds of city branding characters in japan but the most famous (or notorious) example can be seen in nara.

nara is an old city of japan which has been the capital of this country and therefore is having many valuable cultural heritages, mainly buddhism temples, such as houryuuji and toudaiji. because of its importance in japanese history, it is one of the most popular student-trip destinations. and i really dont know why but there are millions of deer around here and all tourists feed them rice crackers (yet they are said to be "wild animals"). thanks to those aspects, you can learn not only about japanese history but also trend of japanese junior-high-students, tour guides, and nature of deer around nara.

nara hosted national capital several times in ancient times and heijoukyou is the most famous one, which was capital between 710 and the end of the 8th century. in order to celebrate 1300th anniversary of heijoukyou, nara decided to promote itself by city branding campaign and started using this guy.

his name is sentokun, designed by satoshi yabuuchi, a professor at tokyo university of the art. he visualizes two major characteristics of nara successfully; deer and buddhism. i think this guy looks rather better than other branding characters. in fact, i wanted to see him when i visited nara last month. when this guy was first introduced to the media, japanese public criticized him as he was not cute enough or rather creepy. yet eventually hes become popular and successfully attracted tourists including me......

is this a happy ending or at least satisfactory outcome of the branding campaign?

im not sure about it. the data i found shows that the number of tourists is rather increasing after this dude appeared on the media. yet city's population and tax income is decreasing. from this aspect, although sentokun is famous enough to be recognized by most of japanese citizens and attract some additional tourists, hes not necessarily a successful branding figure for nara to attract the flux of external capitals to boost its status quo that what city branding is supposed to contribute to.

yet if sentokun is recognized as a successful branding character in this country, i really have to study about city branding of this country.

visiting russia in sado

my third annual trip to sado in the beginning of may started with just a short conversation with a local friend about my plan after the sado trip. whats on my mind was to visit a site of an amusement park which went bankrupt some years ago, named "Russian Village" (although i couldnt make it in the end). this conversation made him recall that there was a russian tomb in the island.

the root of russian tomb goes back to the russia-japanese war in 1904-1905. it seems there were plenty of casualties at the battle on the japan sea, and the tsushima current brought them to the island. people in sado first became confused but eventually they buried enemies' bodies. this fact was long forgotten from the history for about a century, but the embassy of russia uncovered it in 2001 and built a proper tomb for their loss during the war.   

and this is what they built

obviously, no descendants would notice it as its grave marker is written in japanese. it says "russian peoples tomb" by the way. and no descendants would even notice this tombstone is dedicated to russian casualties because of its appearance. 

whats funny about this tomb is that its not only russian descendants unfriendly to find and pray for their ancestors, but its even difficult for locals to find as it is built just behind a roadside small buddhist temple. in fact, we failed to find it in the beginning.

if any of you having russian background who have chance to visit sado island, make sure to stop by (if possible) :P

tokyo wonderland 01 sengakuji

a month and half has passed since the quake hit in northeast part of japan. seemingly besides the lack of electricity, most of the things are back to normal in tokyo. milks back, no crazy purchasing habits anymore. still we cannot be completely carefree about the situation, i guess we really have to move on. so i for now write about a cool thing about tokyo this time.  

regardless of rumors (or some believe its the fact, hopefully not) that tokyo is getting affected by radiation, its not deniable that tokyo is one of my favorite cities around the world still. there are so many beautiful, weird, or cool people, places or things everywhere in this massive city. its balanced with chaos and contradictions. the city has been developed with the most advanced technology and economy yet there are so many downshifters living as they like at the same time. everything is in a package in this city. especially minatoku has an edge of it.

minatoku is the very central ward of tokyo. super rich people are living, super high-tech buildings are uprising, and million of business people are making massive amount of money everyday and night. what people usually imagine from minatoku should be something fancy, like those skyscrapers in roppongi and shiodome or funny designed stuffs in odaiba or elsewhere. yet there are always exceptions even in minatoku. this area is near sengakuji in minatoku. 

to tell the truth, this area is quite famous for its restaurants. ive been willing to go one of them for a long time but unsuccessful yet unfortunately. surrounded by modern built environment, this area looks as if its totally abandoned from development. or maybe its been successfully escaping from development. anyways its awesome that it has completely different and unique character comparing to other parts of minatoku. 

there is a funky tunnel some hundreds meters away from this area which seems to be forgotten as well. as i described sometimes ago, public transportation system is really advanced in tokyo. yet some parts of infrastructure related public transportation system seems to be really rough. this tunnel under the railway has a ceiling of only 1.5 meter height. apparently this tunnel is no use for most of trucks and van type automobiles. 

when ordinary people walk in this tunnel, they can look like giant with ease. 

i think what people tend to imagine from TOKYO should be something fancy, cool, high-tech, and some other stuffs like that, but obviously there are always exceptions. id try to discover these sorts of interesting exceptions in this city and try to spread them to the world in order to contribute to tokyo to re-attract more positive global attentions.

tokyo after quake 3

many labor forces in tokyo got affected by the quake. some have relocated their labors to osaka or hongkong or shanghai or wherever temporary (hopefully), some have changed their working hour in order to (try to) avoid the planned blackouts, and some have been forced to stop operating. my cousin, for instance, works at Tokyo Disney Land and she cannot work for a while as its in a break until... who knows. 

as for my work life, there are/were 4 things changed at least. a forum i was organizing for a municipality was canceled, a survey i was supposed to make was canceled as well, and one of my clients has been facing a huge problem and it has turned out that it cannot pay for a project i am supposed to work for any more, so there is a need to find other sponsors to sustain this project. these three are quite direct influences from the quake. and the other thing hasnt really affected my work itself but my motivation quite badly. its all about the Tokyo Tower.

its always great to see tokyo tower with lights on on the way home after hard days. maybe because im not originally from tokyo and having a strong aspiration for tokyo, what the tower represents (probably ambition that ill achieve something special in tokyo) always cheers me up and recharge my battery for a new hard day. "every dog has its day."    

yet because of after quake electricity shortages, now lights are gone

whats worse, the tower got a direct impact from the quake. because of the quake, the edge got somehow bent a bit. (its not that obvious from the photo tho)

i think there are many people getting cheered up by seeing tokyo tower with full of lights in the darkness after their hard days. its a real unfortunate that at the moment theres no other choice but to accept this dark tower, yet from the bottom of my heart, i want tokyo to be fine to relight the tower to cheer us up:)

and btw, i really should buy a new camera. somehow i cant get rid of this stain any more.