“The Vacant City: An Ethnography of Alternative Spatial Cultures in Post-growth Tokyo (2017)” by Sam Holden | Master Thesis

Abstract: “This research investigates recently emerging spatial cultures that seek to re-make vacant spaces in post-growth Tokyo as sites of alternative social relations. The burst of the economic bubble in the early 1990s and population decline since the 2000s has led to an erosion of real estate prices and a rapid increase in vacant buildings in Japanese cities. This thesis considers how new cultural movements of renovation, sharing, and rural migration use these spaces to enact alternative lifestyles and social relations outside of the dominant market logic of the city. Investigation through observation and interviews with actors appropriating vacant spaces reveals new ways of co-producing social space, conceiving of the self in relation to the city, and imagining livelihoods and community amid the indeterminacy of the post-growth present. Drawing on critical theories of space rooted in the work of Henri Lefebvre, I suggest that the spread of vacancy opens spatial horizons to imagine a city and social relations after growth, but realizing the potential for an urbanism beyond the market requires an active culture of bottom-up re-appropriation and re-use of space.”

 

This master’s thesis, written by Samuel Holden and supervised by Yoshimi Shunya, was defended in 2017 as part of the “Interdisciplinary Information Studies” program at the University of Tokyo. A copy of the dissertation is available in English on Academia.edu.

 

ANO

2017

AUTORES

Samuel Holden

EDITORES

Yoshimi Shunya