Excellent categorization of different types of urban areas in Tokyo. Tokyo is unique in its density and public transport and this book conveys how it has historically been achieved in Tokyo. Interestingly, Tokyo achieves many things desired in modern urban planning as espoused by Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl but with patterns that differ from those in other cities. Seeing Tokyo's implementation of various pattterns gives an idea of alternatives to standard ideas and acts as a foil to better understand what's desirable about the dense patterns of, say, Copenhagen. Additionally, this book succeeds excellently in explaining Tokyo's development as a result of just one historical path that is not a uniquely Japanese or Asian, but could have resulted in a Western city given different urban and political constraints. Both editions are practically identical, with a difference in framing. The English edition contextualizes Tokyo in the global discourse, emphasizing lessons that we can extract for other cities around the world. The Japanese version is framed within the internal discussions in Japan. For example, an island I worked with, we had a fully – we had a lot of people coming in to visit from a lot of places and party and stuff like that. So, we had a fully written out enthusiastic consent policy that people had to read and understand and get a little wristband, that proof that they read and understood it, before coming aboard our island. Whereas another island, it might be that during the rest of the year, they all know each other, they’re all in community with each other. So, they have strong community norms. They don’t see the purpose of that sort of thing. And so, they’re more casual about it, and people can decide where they want to link up with. That competitive governance aspect of seasteading and charter cities, it’s like yours different, but it’s also the closest thing I can think of in my immediate vicinity of people experimenting with that.

Joe: Yeah. Well, let me tell you another one for Tokyo that really makes a huge difference is Shintoism, not necessarily as a religion, but as a practice, I’m a non-theistic Jew, shall we say. I’m Jewish, but like I’m more cultural Jewish. I’m not on my knees praying to God. Shintoism is pretty relatable to me and how it’s often practiced in Tokyo because the Shinto, the little shrines, especially the portable shrines in different neighborhoods of Tokyo, there are all sorts of festivals where the portable shrine you got to get for usually men, not always, but usually in men with decent, semi decent muscle to them to lift this portable shrine on there four shoulders and kind of carry it around to represent the neighborhood in the local festival or things like that. Jeffrey: Yeah. I think it’ll be curious to see how that sort of continues to play out and what the sort of Chinese response will be.Joe: Yeah, it’s a lemon economy, I think is the term. But these days, Tokyo, or Japanese building standards, I should say, have gotten so high, and there are these government incentives for what they call 100-year homes, homes built to last 100 years, that it may no longer be the case going forward, that it’s just the bulk of the value is in either land and not the house and your house is a depreciating asset. And so, what if modern construction in Tokyo, what if it starts to be an appreciating asset, like so much American housing has been in cities and things. And if the economics start to look more like housing in the rest of the world, and this is something where, for a long time, a lot of kind of more orientalist writers about Japan, they would talk about how it’s – well, in Japan, you buy a used house, you’re inhabiting the sins and the tragedies of the previous owner. Joe: First off, you should know to call me. Like any charter cities project, I’m always someone – I describe myself as a little bit pessimistic, on charter cities to you offline, I think, but I’m still interested. And also, I’m someone who wants to be involved and my motive is not particularly financial. I have a lot of thoughts on relatively low-cost ways to make cities of the future, whether they be charter cities, or just evolutions of current cities, more dynamic and livable from what I’ve learned studying Tokyo.

Jeffrey: Yeah, absolutely. So, something that I think is kind of come out of our conversation, and one of the examples that makes me think when you talked about the proof of parking policies and the restrictions on the street parking and all of these kinds of things. It doesn’t seem like there’s an expectation among the residents of Tokyo that you kind of get to live your life externality free, in the sense that in American cities, there’s seems to be kind of a, I’m going to have my cake and eat it too attitude, where any sort of policies that would sort of force you to sort of internalize the social costs of your actions is extremely opposed. There’s no great way – as far as I can tell, right? There’s no great wave of opposition to say the proof of parking policies, maybe not. Salim Furth: In the first chapter, you draw a sharp distinction between “chaos” and “emergence”. Why is emergence a better concept than chaos for understanding Tokyo?Emergent Tokyo” doesn’t overly romanticize Tokyo’s relatively laissez-faire residential neighborhoods. In the case of earthquakes or fires, the authors point out, Tokyo’s single-family neighborhoods can be very hazardous because their exteriors are not built to fire codes, their foundations do not meet modern earthquake codes and their very narrow streets and minimal public open spaces leave scant room for evacuation. Jorge Almazán: “Emergence” is a property of “complex systems,” which are distinct “chaotic systems” (See Stephen Wolfram’s work.) Roughly speaking, complex systems’ behavior is not regular, but it isn’t chaotic either. Complex systems have structure, even if it is difficult to define. In this formal sense, cities (including Tokyo) are closer to emergent complex systems than purely chaotic systems. In Nonbei Yokocho the valuable land under the bars is held collectively and managed through a trust. The fragmented ownership and low overhead costs help facilitate economies not of scale, but of agglomeration, with rows of idiosyncratic spaces that feel personal, informal and intimate. Despite their small size, the bars offer plenty to drink—and plenty for other cities to ponder. ■ Contemporary observers tend to focus on the advantages of Japan’s relatively permissive zoning laws. Those support the theories of Jane Jacobs, a mid-20th-century American writer who challenged the orthodoxy that cities should be organised by function. As André Sorenson notes in “The Making of Urban Japan”, Tokyo shows how dense, mixed-use neighbourhoods can enliven a city. Many of its best bits were the least planned.

This book examines the urban fabric of contemporary Tokyo as a valuable demonstration of permeable, inclusive, and adaptive urban patterns that required neither extensive master planning nor corporate urbanism to develop. These urban patterns are emergent: that is, they are the combined result of numerous modifications and appropriations of space by small agents interacting within a broader socio-economic ecosystem. Together, they create a degree of urban intensity and liveliness that is the envy of the world’s cities. If you read one book about Japan this year, it should be the beautiful, new Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous Cityby Jorge Almazan and hisStudiolabcolleagues, including Joe McReynolds. —Market Urbanism So, that’s something where I think it’s if we can think kind of as a more about the cohesive whole, how we’re creating an urban environment that allows for community and serendipity, and discovery and the feelings of belonging, and that emotional color palette, especially for people unlike ourselves, or who are in different social strata, or different communities, you name it. That can allow for a more organic design than simply saying, we have determined scientifically that parks are good, and therefore you need these many parks per square miles or per thousand people. That kind of algorithmic formula. Different contexts can produce very different kinds of equilibriums. I’m not an econ person, but I if I vaguely recall correctly, the idea of like Nash equilibria. The idea that there can be multiple stable equilibria, rather than a single best equilibrium point. I’m probably completely butchering that concept, but that’s kind of where I’m going with this. Joe: Lots that go, basically, right up to the street or the alleyway or the pathway without a whole lot. No one’s got a lawn that they’re attending for the most part. I mean –There’s been a lot in the past year, I think, written about sort of what Taiwan can learn from Ukraine’s experience and their ongoing war with Russia, sort of, given the David and Goliath dynamics. What, if anything, is China learning from Russia’s experience in that war? How much really relevant learning for China? Is there a given sort of the different geography, economics, politics, objectives, and so on? At a more popular level, “chaos” is always mentioned when talking about Tokyo, especially outside Japan. “Chaos theory” was popularized among architects in the late 1980s, and it allowed Japanese architects to see Tokyo in a more positive light. But this narrative of chaos is a dead-end. It left many architects without critical tools to analyze the city and charter a vision for the future.