Abstract
In the introduction to his 1960 exhibition New Babylon, Constant Nieuwenhuys describes how the world is turning into a “single vast city” as a result of “an exploding, increasingly mobile population”1 that requires us to readdress urban environments. This mobility raises the question of whether we are transgressing to a state of nomadism, of perpetual transience. This nomadism is heavily explored in works such as A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari as they contrast the nomad to the state and suggest nomadism as a means of subverting power structures. While governments are still struggling to deal with the shift in habitation and social structure that increased transience has brought about, there are growing economic forces seeking to capitalise on the service based industry arising due to the development of technology.
Transience requires that the city change as we move away from sedentary lifestyles. However, while Constant advocates a new form of architecture that “can never assume the solidity and immobility of traditional buildings,”2 urban populations are already pushing the saturation point of available space and it is the resulting human mobility that is reconstituting the fabric of cities. This has implications for urban planning and the way in which we continue to develop urban architecture as we see the problems that migration, immigration and integration are causing the world on both an international and urban scale. As a result, our cities and the way we think about them must adapt to cope with increasing human transience. This dissertation aims to explore this neo-nomadic lifestyle along with the impact that such transience has on Tokyo’s urban landscape to begin to unravel the factors responsible for change and how the city has adapted to cater to such a lifestyle.
1 Constant and Mark Wigley, Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire. (Rotterdam: Witte De With, Centre for Contemporary Art, 1998), 9
2 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 17
2 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 17
Introduction
With the population of urban areas recently surpassing those of rural areas3 and showing no signs of stopping, there is an increasing focus on how to develop urban environments in response to this transition. The expansion of urban areas poses issues for the organisation of increasingly dense cities, forcing people to adapt to the way urban space is inhabited. As part of this adaptation, more and more people are travelling greater distances for work and leisure than ever before and while transport infrastructure continues to cater to such transience, urban space itself is also required to adapt to facilitate the temporary migration of millions moving daily from suburban residential areas into the city. With the concept of ‘Neo-Nomadic Urbanism’, this dissertation refers to the establishing of a connection between a new form of nomadism emerging from human transience and its relationship with the city. We are increasingly nomadic in the sense that in many places around the world, we are leading a lifestyle where we are leaving the place of habitation in the morning, commuting sizable distances to work, eating, socialising and living our lives inhabiting the city and not the place we call home. These different places could be a routine in itself or they could be a continually changing set of locales that move at the whim of the city or, as the city changes as a result, of the nomads inhabiting it. In this way, our nomadism stems from a placeless-ness that arises due to the expansion of what we define as our locality. This alters the way we perceive and interact with urban space as we spend more time in the boundary between public and private. This gives rise to the questions: What defines these spaces? How are these spaces changing? What is the effect of the human on these spaces and what is the effect of these spaces on the human?
In order to investigate these themes, the dissertation will be split into two parts, the first will explore concepts of nomadism relevant to urban space in order to discover the reasons behind theories that pose a current change in lifestyle and how this affects the way we inhabit space. This will provide a backbone crucial to understanding the way in which we perceive space and also raise the contextual specificity of neo-nomadism. The second part will develop this discussion by looking at the effect of a transient population on urban conditions, extracting themes embedded in Constant’s design for a mobile city, New Babylon, and using these themes to analyse and interpret spatial conditions in Tokyo as an example of a metropolis with a huge population and an advanced transport infrastructure.
Tokyo is a city that is undergoing this change at a rate faster than that found in other cities due to a combination of socio-economic factors such as redevelopment after recent destruction, smaller rooms due to lack of space that encourage much more activity outside of the home, a vast, well used public transport system and a population density of 6,158 people per square kilometer.4 However, these particularities and data introduce a contextual specificity that must be acknowledged. The concept of neo-nomadism is one that has been defined through a context-less theory yet, as it is understood and explored as a product of its specific urban environment, much of this research is limited to the conditions in which it is observed. This explains the need to focus on a particular location for this study, as each place would have its own set of specific effects. There is a tendency to produce generalised conclusions from contextual research which is something this dissertation will avoid where possible or acknowledge when doing so. Of course, many parts of the theoretical research have contextual variables such as the scholarly divide between east and west, a discussion of which is used to introduce part two.
Thus, the research explores the human use of space within Tokyo at various scales, specifically spaces that are being affected by population transience such as new typologies that cater to this nomadic lifestyle. Research will be conducted through critical literature review to understand nomadic concepts, before resorting to more practical methods that will be further explained in part two such as transport data analysis, psycho-geographic mapping and a study of urban spatial typologies. However, to understand the concept of the neo-nomad, we must first explore the origins and history of the nomad and its associated nomadic thought.
3 “Urbanization,” United Nations Population Fund, accessed December 31, 2016, http://www.unfpa.
org/urbanization
org/urbanization
4 “Tokyo’s History, Geography and Population,” Tokyo Metropolitan Government, accessed April 14, 2017,
http://www.metro.tokyo.jp/ENGLISH/ABOUT/HISTORY/history03.htm
http://www.metro.tokyo.jp/ENGLISH/ABOUT/HISTORY/history03.htm
Part 1: The Nomad
The Origins of the Nomad
The historical nomad stands out as a mythical creature, wild and uncontrollable, at one with the space in which they transition. It conjures a vision of pre-civilisation, before the constraints of progress shackled us into the conformative state of being that we presently occupy.
Before the reign of Jove no tillers subjugated the land:
even to mark possession of the plain
or apportion it by boundaries was sacrilege;
man made gain for the common good,
and Earth of her own accord gave her gifts
all the more freely when none demanded them.5
(Virgil (70-19BC), Georgics 1.125-29)
Originally described as the Golden Age,6 the idea of man roaming from place to place, taking sustenance from the earth, has been romanticised by many as the age in which mankind was truly free. This view was turned on its head as theories about the origins of architecture began to firmly locate human life as a necessity of building. The sedentary human was born, in the view of Laugier,7 out of the desire to shelter oneself from the discomforts of nature. We can see quite clearly the effect of the built environment in its attempts to fix man in space, to exert control over movement. Vitruvius even went as far as describing man without architecture as “beasts”8 and celebrating the nature of architecture as bringing man’s itinerancy to a standstill.
The contrasting opinions about the dawn of man portray a fear and fascination of the nomad that is contradictory to the notions of architecture and thus the notions of civilisation. It is this inescapable contradiction that has continued to inform architectural development as the permanence of building went unchallenged. Indeed, the word landmark (or land-mark) itself is symbolic of this rooting of building to land. As will be discussed later, the notion of architecture as a sedentary device has been challenged, most notably by Constant in his exhibition New Babylon, however for this to be understood in the context of the nomad, it requires us first to develop a more concise notion of who and what the nomad is.
Nomad, n. - ‘A member of a people that travels from place to place to find fresh pasture for its animals, and has no permanent home. Also (in extended use): an itinerant person; a wanderer.’9
While the definition of Nomad assumes no connotations, it is apparent that the Nomad has been viewed historically in a negative light.10 This is due to several reasons but ultimately stems from an inability to assign such a person to a piece of land, representing a struggle to define and categorise someone of the nomadic lifestyle. Deleuze and Guattari, in their Treatise on Nomadology, pit the Nomad against the state with the state being “the rational and reasonable organization of a community.”11 With such a definition, it is easy to understand the Nomad as a being thought to subvert the very foundation of what state power stands upon. If the world as we know it is formed around the state governance of populations, with local forms of agency responsible for subset on subset of populace, there is an unavoidable conclusion that a person unattached to the land does not fit into the organisation that state seeks to achieve. Certainly, there can be no greater contemporary example of this than the difficulties faced by western nations in dealing with the ongoing refugee crisis. To be specific, this is not the work of the Nomad but of the migrant and care should be taken so as not to confuse these two definitions. However, the commonality between the migrant and the nomad is that movement is taking place and it is this movement that the state is struggling to deal with in this ongoing crisis. If millions of people are left without a home, without an attachment to land, then the myriad of issues stem from the necessity to reattach them to a location.
5 Virgil (70-19BC), Georgics 1.125-29, trans, H. Rushton Fairclough, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 107
6 "the natural world was spontaneously bountiful and provided all necessities." William S. Anderson, Ovid's Metamorphoses Books 1-5, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 161
7 Marc-Antoine Laugier, Essai sur l'Architecture, trans, Wolfgang Herrmann and Anni Herrmann, (Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, 1977), 11-12
8 Vitruvius, Vitruvius: 'Ten Books on Architecture', ed. Ingrid D. Rowland and Thomas Noble Howe. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 34..
9 Oxford definition
9 Oxford definition
10 For a brief overview of such negativity see Rance Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City: Composing an Architectural Dissonance” (M.Arch Diss., Carleton University, 2010), 4-21
11 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “Treatise on Nomadology – The War Machine,” in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
11 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “Treatise on Nomadology – The War Machine,” in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
The Nomad as Subversive
After observing the origins and reactions to the nomad, we must now take a closer look at what makes a nomad in the current urban condition. In order to do this, it is important to understand the relationship the nomad has to space, place and the city. What we begin to see is the variety of definitions that the word nomad entails. Deleuze and Guattari provide an in-depth study into nomadism whilst Rance Yan Ki Mok poses alternative forms of contemporary nomad and their relation to the city. What is synonymous throughout is the subversion of state inherent to such a being.
If a crisis such as the ongoing refugee crisis is proving so difficult to deal with, this may lead to the conclusion that, if the involuntary movement of large numbers of people is seeming to subvert the power of the state, then the nomad exists as a dangerous (or heroic, depending on principle) entity seeking to dismantle the state agency. Certainly, Deleuze and Guattari propose that nomadic space, or nomos, stands in opposition to the enclosed city space, the polis, even referring to the essence of nomadism as a war machine.12 This is not the purpose of the nomad but a product of the antithetical nature of nomadism to the sedentary. Nonetheless, the nomad has the power to undermine the state through sheer existence and whether this power is exercised intentionally or otherwise, it is a power that is synonymous with the existence of the nomad. The responsibility for this lies within the state as the nomad seeks only to continue transitioning from point to point, the subversion occurs due to the intolerance of the polis and its incapacity to organise such individuals.
There is, however, an inherent contradiction embedded within the opposition of the nomadic and city space: Whilst the nomad inhabits, and indeed embodies, smooth space and the sedentary occupies a striated space, a space formed of enclosure,13 this would deny any acceptable form of spatial coexistence. Rance Yan Ki Mok argues that, using Deleuze and Guattari’s example, smooth space can be found within the striated urban landscape and that these smooth spaces are in a constant state of flux, as befitting the space of the nomad.14 He terms the two forms of space continuous and discontinuous,15 and deems continuous space to be accepted forms of occupying land in the city whilst discontinuous space is that which is less effectively controlled and ordered such as pavements and the areas under bridges.16 Here, it is evident that Yan Ki Mok’s nomad departs from the kind understood by Deleuze and Guattari. While the latter’s nomadic war machine seeks to confront state agency, Yan Ki Mok’s nomad slips through the polis as somewhat subservient to the city. He identifies three forms of contemporary nomad; the foreign, the exotic and the dissonant.17 The foreign nomad here being closest in resemblance to Deleuze and Guattari’s as one who “moves as a consequence of his preferred way of living”,18 echoing the way in which the nomad belongs to a ‘local absolute.’ The exotic nomad “moves because of reasons that place the environment as a backdrop for leisure,”19 the nomad favoured by travel agency marketing, leaving the nomad identified above as the dissonant nomad. What can be seen here is not so much that the nomad assumes an ambiguous definition but that it can contain a varying set of actions that develop based on context. The dissonant nomad’s actions are still subversive in the way in which they inhabit space under the jurisdiction of the city, yet they neither acknowledge the space as organised nor disregard the agencies that oversee it. An example of this would be the squatter, aware that the spaces they move through are simultaneously both temporarily smooth and constantly striated. There is a creativity to the actions of the dissonant nomad as they are described as exploring “alternate interpretive uses of the city’s spatial resources”20 and this creativity is the tool that enables such a being to exist. Whilst it is acknowledged that such a nomadism is largely manifest in nomadic action as opposed to nomadic people, the concept that such a nomadism is active around us provides an interesting glimpse at the issues inherent in the pre-existing urban landscape.
12 David Pinder, “Nomadic Cities,” in The New Blackwell Companion to the City, ed. Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 224
13 Deleuze and Guattari, “Treatise on Nomadology,” 379
14 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City.”, 19
15 These words are not used as antonyms.
16 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City.”, 19
14 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City.”, 19
15 These words are not used as antonyms.
16 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City.”, 19
17 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City.”, 4
18 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City.”, 8
19 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City.”, 8
18 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City.”, 8
19 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City.”, 8
20 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City.”, 10
The Nomadic Being
Whilst the nomad we have so far been concerned with is one of spatial transience, it is important to recognise the development of a further definition of nomad that is encapsulated in our notion of being. This nomadic state of being is not responsible for creating a form of nomad by itself but is crucial to understanding nomadic tendencies that affect our interpretation of the urban landscape and contribute to this neo-nomadism.
The thought of a nomadic, transient state of self is something that seems associated with mental conditions such as schizophrenia and the like. We attempt to fix our being to a single point out of a fear for the weakness it appears to represent. However, Heidegger realised that this adaptability, despite contradicting his previous ideas,21 is a necessity for overcoming the various ages of being of which we progress through. He refers to the age we are currently occupying as the age of technicity,22 a state of being based on an overuse of logic that has been informed by the increase in our dependence on technology. Heidegger advocates the importance of objects (things) and the gathering power they have in enabling us to have moments of escape from technology. We must have an element of fluidity to our being in order to ensure we separate ourselves from a fixed state of being. Dreyfus and Spinosa note that to accept both Heidegger’s criticism of technicity and his appreciation of technology, we must have an “openness to dwelling in many worlds and the capacity to move among them.”23 This suggests that, like the geographic nomad, we must be aware of the fixed, striated space surrounding us to de-territorialise our being and transition freely through smooth space.
Robert Jay Lifton connects the geographic nomad with nomadic being even more explicitly in his thesis ‘Protean Man’. He observes how the constituents of our identity are increasingly in a state of flux due primarily to two factors: Historical dislocation, “the break in the sense of connection which men have long felt with the vital and nourishing symbols of their cultural tradition,”24 and “the flooding of imagery produced by the extraordinary flow of modern cultural influences over mass-communication networks.”25 These have an impact on our identity that often pose contradictions at various stages of our lives yet help shape our self. He provides several examples26 of people who have, due to their situation, what he terms ‘identity fragments’27 that are responsible for a fluidity in the identity of the individuals. In many of his examples the individual is subject to drastic geographic transience that affect their identity due to contradictions in cultural belief. He acknowledges how, through numerous changes to a person’s situation and the beliefs imposed upon someone throughout this experience, we are becoming Protean Men, adaptable and multifaceted. Understanding our own identity flux could help us overcome technicity in the way Heidegger suggests, opening ourselves up to a more nomadic being.
Michiko Kakutani discovers the omnipresence of this nomadic self within contemporary culture in her article ‘When Fluidity Replaces Maturity.’ She notes the pervasive notion of rebirth and transformation being encouraged (and potentially abused) by politicians, celebrities and mass media.28 This conveys how deeply ingrained the notion of a change of self is in western culture that continues to juxtapose the traditional view of solidity being a positive trait. Interestingly, this traditional fixation with longevity is not shared by the east, where the notion of rebirth and renewal is seen as a benefit and a necessity. In Japan, the Shogu (Main Palace) at Kotaijingu in Ise has been rebuilt every 20 years since 690 A.D.,29 observing the importance of the process and ritual of renewal, while in Buddhism, reincarnation forms a central notion of the religion. Dreyfus and Spinosa associate this with Heidegger’s view on technicity that we are striving to make ourselves more efficient30 and they recognise that this view is still being accepted reluctantly by Kakutani’s negativity towards the idea.31 The understanding of how technicity has brought a change in our notions of identity has implications that affects our perception of space, and how our perception of space relates to the nomad.
21 Hubert L. Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa, “Further Reflections on Heidegger, Technology, and the Everyday,” Bulletin of Science Technology & Society (October 2003): Accessed October 23, 2016. 342
22 Dreyfus and Spinosa, “Further Reflections on Heidegger,” 342
23 Dreyfus and Spinosa, “Further Reflections on Heidegger,” 348
24 Roberts J. Lifton, “Protean Man,” Arch Gen Psychiatry 24 (1971): Accessed October 23, 2016. 299
25 Lifton, “Protean Man,” 299
26 Lifton, “Protean Man,” 298-300
27 Lifton, “Protean Man,” 298-300
24 Roberts J. Lifton, “Protean Man,” Arch Gen Psychiatry 24 (1971): Accessed October 23, 2016. 299
25 Lifton, “Protean Man,” 299
26 Lifton, “Protean Man,” 298-300
27 Lifton, “Protean Man,” 298-300
28 Michiko Kakutani, “When Fluidity Replaces Maturity,” New York Times, March 20, 1995, accessed November 23, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/20/books/critic-s-notebook-when-fluidity-replaces-maturity.html?pagewanted=all
29 “About Ise Jingu,” Ise Jingu, accessed November 23, 2016, http://www.isejingu.or.jp/en/about/index.html
29 “About Ise Jingu,” Ise Jingu, accessed November 23, 2016, http://www.isejingu.or.jp/en/about/index.html
30 Dreyfus and Spinosa, “Further Reflections on Heidegger,” 342
31 Dreyfus and Spinosa, “Further Reflections on Heidegger,” 342
31 Dreyfus and Spinosa, “Further Reflections on Heidegger,” 342
The Nomadic Perception of Space
In order to understand the importance of a transient self to this discussion of nomadism, we must first look at how our identity affects the way in which we understand the space we inhabit and the way this affects our sense of place. As we have previously discussed, the nomad has a specific detachment to place that enables them to inhabit and move through a smooth space, rejecting the boundaries that attempt to contain them. With the development of a nomadic state of self, we continuously reassess our relationship to place that, although different to the nomad’s detachment from place, results in an ability to transverse space in a way similar to that of the nomad.
As Adam Sharr explores in his investigation of Heidegger’s Hut, it is our identity that informs our interpretation of space. He notes that “embodied and lived temporalities bring specific conceptions of place into play.”32 When cities are so diverse and dynamic, being the foremost representation of a globalised society that incorporates a plethora of different experiences into a single mass, the way we interpret space is an enormous factor in understanding the world developing around us. This ability to question and define place is not restricted to urban space, it is simply the fastest changing area. These changes are often difficult to comprehend but the fact that they are taking place is easily understood. Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows is an excellent example of a collection of observations that critique the changes taking place in the world through the personal interpretation of the author.33 He shows first-hand how his own understanding of place informs the topic of his consternations. This, of course, is understood by the western world through the work of Martin Heidegger which is why Sharr’s interrogation of Heidegger’s own connection to place is so relevant.
Heidegger used his hut as an escape from the city and his formal work.34 He was drawn to the power of the landscape and the isolation it provided for self-reflection and to consider and develop his notions of being.35 He idealised the traditional life found in the Black Forest and described, in his portrayal of a typical farmhouse, how “the farmhouse was a clock of sorts, each sacred place demarcated in time through physical presences and absences.”36 This temporal aspect of existence, of place as a means of externalising being, can be found everywhere. Despite his reluctance towards the city, it is urban space that reflects a certain hyper-temporality in the connection between place and person. The increase in crowds on weekends, the smells of food around meal times and the throngs of commuters at rush hour demarcate time in space. It is a personal understanding of place based on the projection of a collective mass of inhabitants, encouraging a reciprocal dialogue between interpretation and place. Heidegger’s identity is fundamental to his examples of being, showing a concern for the tradition that technology is jeopardising, a belief echoed by Tanizaki.37
However, while both Heidegger and Tanizaki are concerned with the loss of traditional associations of place tied to their own experience, there are an increasing number of people whose identity is so adaptable that traditional associations of space are meaningless as an assumed part of someone’s identity. This is not to say that these associations should be disregarded, indeed, within the city, Yan Ki Mok acknowledges that for the dissonant nomad, “[t]he perceptions of space that have come to define the modern phenomena of inhabitation are important to acknowledge, as they are the foundation of the social landscape that the dissonant Nomad must address.”38 The constitution of the urban environment is a product of historical notions of space, layered on top of each other to create the unique environment that contemporary inhabitants face. However, Lifton’s observations in Protean Man reveal a character whose identity changes as a product of inhabiting multiple places and as a means to adapt to new places. Given the ability of the self to adapt and change given the circumstances, and given our interpretation of space is so tied to our identity, our perception and interpretation of spatial constructs is liable to shift. This results in a physical dislocation to place and an increase in the acceptance of movement as an assumed part of life.
32 Adam Sharr and Digne M. Marcovicz, Heidegger’s Hut, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), xvi
33 Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, (Rutland and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Inc., 1977), 1
34 Sharr and Marcovicz, Heidegger’s Hut, 67
35 Sharr and Marcovicz, Heidegger’s Hut, 68
36 Sharr and Marcovicz, Heidegger’s Hut, 67
34 Sharr and Marcovicz, Heidegger’s Hut, 67
35 Sharr and Marcovicz, Heidegger’s Hut, 68
36 Sharr and Marcovicz, Heidegger’s Hut, 67
37 Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, 1
38 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City,” 12
38 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City,” 12
The Neo-Nomad
Whilst these definitions of nomad and the nomadic perception of space consider the various ways in which nomadic beings inhabit space, they fail to address the contemporary urban and socio-economic conditions relevant to the increasing expansion of urban areas. This brings us to the introduction of a further form of nomad, the Neo-Nomad. As has been previously observed, the nomad, whilst capable of inhabiting the urban environment, is still at odds with the state controlled space found in cities. However, a shift to a more nomadic state of self results in a demographic less fixed in space and more transient in nature. This produces the major difference between the traditional and neo-nomad: Whilst the traditional nomad’s actions subvert state organisation, the neo nomad is a product of state and largely conforms to its organisation. Because of this, the neo-nomad is not limited and subject to the discontinuous space of the dissonant nomad, they exert an influence over organised urban space producing smooth space and dismantling boundaries.
In many ways Constant predicted the development of such a nomad in New Babylon, a project that consisted of years of theorising with the aim of responding to such a shift in lifestyle. We can divide his project into two parts, the first, the theory behind the project that discusses the change of lifestyle that we will undergo and the second, the project itself that consists of a series of models and drawings that Constant produced as a means of responding to his theory of what a future world must consist of. New Babylon is both an attack on existing social structures and a vision of what the future could be should such changes come to pass. In this discussion on nomadism we will discuss the first part of New Babylon, leaving the latter to fuel a discussion on the city.
Bartomeu Marí describes New Babylon as “the last comprehensive formulation of an idea of the new man”,39 dubbed by Constant as the New Babylonian. It is a body of work that explores the implications that social change has on urban space and presents us with a proposal for how to address urbanism in the future. It is a hypothetical project grounded in reality that presents “not an image of the future but an image of what the future may require.”40 This understanding of the issues faced by urbanism stems from Constant’s involvement with the Situationist International group of artists that emerged in the middle of the 20th century. They sought to challenge the way in which we view the everyday through a critique of modernism that removed the focus from the individual building to the city as a whole.41 Mobilized by Guy Debord, they produced a manifesto expounding the concept of Unitary Urbanism,42 where all arts were together responsible for creating a new urbanism. Constant describes Unitary Urbanism as “a deliberate intervention in the praxis of daily life” that “respects our freedom to change our way of life.”43 Here we see Constant acknowledging Lifton’s Protean Man as a right that we should each bear.
The liberation that Constant envisages is from the chores and necessities of life, freeing us to whatever endeavour we set ourselves to. He sees Unitary Urbanism as a method to revolutionise a life in need of change and his intention is clear, to abolish the existing bourgeois culture and usher in a “conscious transformation of our environment”44 built on the privileges that technology allows us.45 New Babylon then must be seen as both a subversive gesture to existing agency and a genuine urge to imagine a future free of the restrictions once placed on us. Constant does not see his project as a utopia but a necessity that we must face as a result of changing times. This explains the difference between the subversion of the war machine nomad and that of the neo-nomad that, whilst the former nomad operates with the intention of undermining state power, the neo-nomad, as a natural product of the state, operates out of necessity with any attempts to attack pre-existing agency one of unavoidable repercussion.
This can be seen more clearly in the way Constant focuses on the role that the nomadic being has in the development of the project. His primary concern is to put into practice the Situationist International (S.I.) recognition of the importance of the built environment on “the dwellers’ behaviour and existence.”46 This is a precursor to the ideas fleshed out by Heidegger over a decade later in ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ that gave a philosophical benchmark to the work that S.I. produced. It is an idea formed from the psycho-geographic research heralded by S.I., most famously in the form of the Dérive. These explorations aimed to put the inhabitant first as a person that constructed the city around them through the experience of the ambiences within it. The idea of the city as a collection of ambiences inspired much of the work of New Babylon as Constant encouraged Debord to acknowledge that “[i]nstead of producing new atmosphere with architecture, atmosphere will produce new architecture.”47 Atmosphere was something that could be created with light, sound and movement by the inhabitants themselves. Mark Wigley puts it eloquently: “The pleasure seeking drift through atmospheres that subverts urban structure becomes indistinguishable from the construction of new urban form.”48 This relationship between the Dérive and the city is transience defining urban space, the nomad as architect. S.I. saw dérives as a way to turn the city into a playground and exploring the city became a means of enjoying the freedom of life that technology would grant us.49 Certainly, Constant remarked that the greatest thing holding us back from such a future is a fear that we will have too much free time.50 With hindsight, this conveys more of a utopian, idealised belief than a genuinely visible future and Constant does acknowledge this, yet whether technology is providing us freedom or not, it is correct to say it is changing our behaviour and the way we inhabit space.
39 Bartomeu Marí, preface to Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire, by Constant and Mark Wigley, (Rotterdam: Witte De With, Centre for Contemporary Art, 1998), 5
40 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 13
41 Tom McDonough, introduction to The Situationists and the City, by Tom McDonough, (London and New York: Verso, 2009), 2
42 Constant and Mark Wigley, Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire. (Rotterdam: Witte De With, Centre for Contemporary Art, 1998), 131-135
43 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 132
44 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 96
45 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 96
43 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 132
44 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 96
45 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 96
46 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 101
47 Debord’s Report on the Construction of Situations in Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 17
47 Debord’s Report on the Construction of Situations in Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 17
48 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 18
49 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 115
50 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 132
49 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 115
50 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 132
The Neo-Nomadic City
It is not just the act of being nomadic that Constant observes but the process by which we become specifically neo-nomadic as well. It is this neo-nomadism that necessitates a new form of urbanism to respond to the changes that technology and population increase have brought about:
“the living space of each individual is getting bigger and bigger, their radius of action is extending further and further afield, the tracks they leave behind them form an increasingly complicated pattern. Human beings are leaving the closed community for a nomadic existence that will cover ever larger areas.”51
This recognition of the expansion of the area in which we live is due in part to the development of infrastructure brought about by the increasing power of technology. He was aware that the more nomadic our lives become the more we must make do with urban space not originally designed for use in such a transient way. He anticipated that “[t]his will entail the formation of enormous, perpetually expanding conglomerations.”52 Constant thus designed New Babylon as a sprawling interconnected urban space that would enable and encourage such a mobile population. It is envisioned as a global network of many different things: Space; communications; infrastructure; services, all of which are continually sculpted by the inhabitants as a collective so that everything and everyone are interconnected.53 He imagined the whole semi-permanent structure raised above the ground on pilotis, creating an “artificial landscape above the natural landscape”54 where human social life would take place. This raised landscape is composed of interlinked Sectors that house movable divisions and comprise the majority of the various necessities for social infrastructure as well as the elements of created atmospheres that underpin Contant’s idea of a future society. In essence, he proposes an ‘offline’ version of the current state of the internet, taking our digital interconnectedness and making it a physical reality.
Whilst no one took his work all too seriously at the time,55 it is becoming increasingly apparent that we are entering a future containing elements of which Constant predicted half a century ago. With the number of people commuting longer distances increasing,56 it is slowly becoming an accepted part of life that is arising out of both necessity and desire. As the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with 13 billion yearly rail journeys, Tokyo is a prime example of just how transient we are becoming, revealing a reality close to the conglomerations predicted by Constant.
To return to the original definition of nomad, the principle of constant transience to the point where one has no fixed abode, there is an openness that allows such a definition to apply to each nomadic state without defining any state in absolute terms. It requires a closer examination of each to reveal the characteristics that set one apart from another. Perhaps the defining characteristic that differentiates the neo-nomad is the circumstances surrounding its appearance. While there is a certain amount of choice involved in the pursuing of various nomadic lifestyles, the neo-nomad is born out of necessity due to the expansion of urban areas to the point where movement becomes a necessary part of urban life. It is aided by the effect technology is having on our being that enables us to infinitely adapt to our surroundings, encouraging an historical and physical dislocation that is uprooting us from cultural traditions.
51 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 133
52 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 133
53 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 160
54 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 161
55 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 232
56 Damian Gayle, “Daily Commute of 2 Hours – Reality for 3.7m UK Workers,” The Guardian, November 18, 2016, accessed December 3, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/nov/18/daily-commute-of-two-hours-reality-for-37m-uk-workers
54 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 161
55 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 232
56 Damian Gayle, “Daily Commute of 2 Hours – Reality for 3.7m UK Workers,” The Guardian, November 18, 2016, accessed December 3, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/nov/18/daily-commute-of-two-hours-reality-for-37m-uk-workers
Neo-Nomadic Urbanism
As we understand how the neo-nomadic being is developing within urban environments, we must now look at the city to explore neo-nomadic urbanism, the ways in which urban space is developing to accommodate such transience. This is to reveal the extent to which such spatial qualities are pre-existent in the city and whether there are qualities that may still emerge as urban space continues to be reinterpreted. These spatial qualities that both enable and propagate neo-nomadic urbanism can be grouped into three areas; the quality of transport infrastructure as a primary means of enabling transience, the spatial conditions of the city itself and the specific typologies that arise due to an increased transience that in turn enable a neo-nomadic lifestyle. By evaluating these key conditions that range from an urban scale down to the spatial scale of an individual inhabitant, a framework can be provided with which to discuss the effect of population transience on urban space within Tokyo.
A transport infrastructure that provides widespread coverage of an urban area is essential for the mobility within a city. This must be continually evolving to span greater and greater areas as a city expands, however, this accessibility has spatial implications for the neo-nomad in the way in which controlled space is inhabited. With Deleuze and Guattari, they define space as either smooth or striated as a measure of the control exerted over it. Striated space implies a disjointed fixity controlled by the agency of the state that contrasts the smooth, open space of the nomad. This conjures images of civilisation in opposition to plains and deserts, yet their predominant concern is the nomad as a product of the space they inhabit. Smooth space is uncontrollable and so the nomad stands as an equal to it. This is supported by Yan Ki Mok’s nomadic urban space, a space of discontinuity. Here, space is disjointed, yet the defining factor is again one of control. He identifies the areas within the urban environment that are out of the control of anyone: Smooth space within the striated urban landscape. Yet with the neo-nomad, we are suddenly referring to the inhabiting of very controlled urban space through the terms of its smooth, open transience. Because the neo-nomad is a product of state organisation, the definition of spatial control is inherently different. Transport infrastructure imposes restrictions to movement and connects areas of the city in a non-geographically contextual way.
The context-less-ness of the train journey imparts a bridging of space via the uniformity of transportation. Similar to the way in which airports are anonymous entities responsible for connecting multiple geographies “by creating thresholds that enable disparate systems to meet each other”57 and “invite a connective type of thinking that operates at a geological scale”,58 the transport infrastructure of the city connects disparate areas to be traversed in non-geographic ways. In this sense, these non-negotiable journey spaces are not categorised as either smooth or striated as the user undertakes no movement in space as they are instead transported. Of course, the train itself contains space, yet in the context of the city, the carriage is space-less. It is for this reason that the Situationists consider the use of transport a “dividing line” between Dérives.59 What happens, then, is the stitching together of parts of the city at the whim of the user. It is in this sense that the urban environment becomes spatially smooth. As one is allowed to move across the city in a way almost entirely open to them, the traditional spatial boundaries of the city are broken down at the micro level as the transport infrastructure creates a network of smooth space interconnecting the existing macro-structure of the urban environment. Thus, the quality of transport infrastructure within a city will determine how spatial boundaries are broken down and how space is re-contextualised.
Secondly, the urban spatial condition at street level is significant in dictating public/private relationships and availability of items of necessity and convenience. Here, the evidence showing the effect of neo-nomadism is found in the more recent urban forms. This brings us to a question posed by Constant as he contemplated the requirements for the birth of conglomerations such as NewBabylon:
“If men preserve goods and take them with them when they move, it is because these goods are difficult to acquire or replace. One does not transport that which one finds everywhere in abundance. So the question is, to find out if it will be possible to produce in abundance the goods, which man needs to live decently wherever he wants to go.”60
One of the potential reasons why New Babylon was disregarded is due to the artificial nature of its development, as it fails to address pre-existing space as a catalyst for the lifestyle he identifies. As has been seen with many master-planned cities, there is a drastic disconnect between previous associations held by the occupants and the top-down planning of such urban environments. The New Babylonian is an entirely new entity that proves difficult to relate to. The neo-nomad, in contrast, is a term applied to existing behaviour and certainly in Yan Ki Mok’s discussion of his dissonant nomad, he recognises that nomads “must face existing spatial organizations, even if they do not intend to follow them.”61 This is not only true for the neo-nomad but an essential part of their existence. The existing spatial organisations are what allow such a nomad their transience. Much of this is down to the historical development of cities that develop to provide dense networks of streets that facilitate movement and discourage private modes of transport as an area based approach to navigation is adopted.
The third area which highlights the effect and extent of neo-nomadism is in the typologies of temporary inhabitation that arise to cater for a more transient lifestyle within urban areas. These come in various forms but once again seek to provide the necessities for man in a spatial sense, enabling an inhabitation of the city outside of the traditional notion of home.
“A person’s living quarters become less important to him as his radius of action expands and his amount of leisure time increases. [...] [T]here is a growing demand for temporary accommodation – hotels, and even caravans and tents. The proportion of dwelling space to the total social space requires immediate reassessment in favor of the latter, for the needs of an emerging race of nomads must be satisfied.”62
Familiarity plays a crucial role as the user is able to occupy typologies at any given location and immediately interpret the usage and function of the space. This introduces questions of embodying space and how the notion of home is redefined for the neo-nomad. D.J. Van Lennep uses the hotel room to define the antithesis to home, through its blank ambiguity that contains no trace of one’s self,63 but in the transient city, such a black and white example does not realise the full breadth of inhabitation.
The analogy of the hotel room and the home ascertain elements of the relationship between the individual and the publicly available nature of consumed space and through this, Van Lennep explores the relationship between person and space:
“a room is not personal from the fact that it is a completely original and free act of the will independent of the milieu and the existing possibilities of making or setting up a house; no, the personal element manifests itself in the manner in which one has made and still makes use of it,”64
The personal quality of space is determined by one’s previous and continued use of it as well as their familiarity and embodied relationship with the space. This human-spatial relationship is understood and encouraged within all typologies of inhabitation: The arcade allows a user to tap a card and bring up their profile, the fast food restaurant allows a patron to take a spot and chat to the single chef/worker as if entering a friend’s living room, the bath house allows one to relax in the familiarity of habitual cleaning and the multitude of quick accommodation allow one to trace a route to a bed as familiar as it is anonymous. It is as if the functions of the home are spread around the city; the living room, the dining room, the bathroom, the bedroom. The familiarity of the typologies ensures that users are able to quickly adapt to each space, much like Merleau-Ponty describes the ability to navigate ones room even when the lights are off due to the importance the brain places on spatial memory.65 He equates the act of remembering, both spatial or otherwise, with the state of re-experiencing,66 exactly the intention of such typologies. Wherever you are in the city you can enter into this act of re-experiencing, eliciting a response similar to that of navigating the home with the lights off.
Neither home nor city is superior in accommodating the lifestyle of the city-dweller, each have conveniences and benefits that the other lacks. Interestingly, Van Lennep identifies this crucial difference between the hotel room and the home as a product of the lack of personal ownership that is inherent in the social structure of the home: “this room at home forms a part of my social home even when I am “on my own.””67 He described the hotel room as a truly private space that provides a liberation not found in one’s home.
In the same sense, many typologies offer the rental of private space for far more than sleeping such as the booths found in internet cafes and at karaoke. Each of these features aid the temporary urban inhabitant in using the city and this ease of use further promotes neo-nomadism within the urban environment. Sharr’s confirmation that our identity informs our perception of space is critical to understanding both the adaptability required to lead a transient lifestyle and how the continuously changing nature of the city is responsible for encouraging further transience through the reciprocal nature of space and our identity.
The second part of this dissertation will attempt to observe the effects of the neo-nomadic lifestyle on the city by applying this framework of analysis to the specific context of Tokyo, Japan. There is a strong correlation between the nomad and space and the same holds true for the neo-nomad. In contrast to the other identified forms of nomadism where the way in which space is inhabited defines the nomad, the correct spatial conditions are a requirement for neo-nomadism to exist in the first place. Thus, we must identify these spatial enablers to further understand the effect that such an entity has on the city.
57 Gillian Fuller and Ross Harley, Aviopolis A Book About Airports, (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004), 104
58 Fuller and Harley, Aviopolis, 104
59 Guy Debord, “Theory of the Dérive,” http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/theory.html
60 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 213.
61 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City,” 12
61 Yan Ki Mok, “Nomad in the City,” 12
62 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 213
63 D.J. Van Lennep, “The Hotel Room,” in Phenomenological Psychology: The Dutch School, ed. Joseph J. Kockelmans, (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), 212.
63 D.J. Van Lennep, “The Hotel Room,” in Phenomenological Psychology: The Dutch School, ed. Joseph J. Kockelmans, (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), 212.
64 Van Lennep, “The Hotel Room,” 210.
65 Jonathan Hale, Merleau-Ponty For Architects, (Oxon: Routledge, 2017), 20
66 Hale, Merleau-Ponty for Architects, 21
67 Van Lennep, “The Hotel Room,” 213.
66 Hale, Merleau-Ponty for Architects, 21
67 Van Lennep, “The Hotel Room,” 213.
Part 2 – The City
Context of Tokyo
While the nomadic approach presented in part one applies on a non-contextual scale, in order to research the effect of this thought in practice, it is necessary to examine urban conditions at a more localised level. As will be explored below, Tokyo is a city where the effects of such human transience could be understood as well developed due to the spatial infrastructure within the city. It must be acknowledged that the research presented in this section of the dissertation is only relevant to Tokyo as the quality of transience and the urban arrangements observed are heavily contextual and a product of both the urban development and socio-economic conditions of the city as well as the cultural specificity of Japan. This is all the more relevant due to the scholarly divide between east and west that results in many of the authors quoted in the research in part 1 having their own thoughts on conditions specific to the east that are relevant to this analysis. Many of these thoughts help explain why the development of neo-nomadism is particularly prevalent in Tokyo.
In A Treatise on Nomadology, Deleuze and Guattari discuss the state of nomadism in the orient in comparison to the west: “In the Orient, the components are much more disconnected, disjointed, necessitating a great immutable Form to hold them together”.68 They reason that because of “the low communication content of the town-country relation,”69 these components (people, wood, fields, gardens, animals and commodities that serve as the foundation of the state) are not as connected as in the west. This means that the state must be more rigid to ensure its survival and thus, there is little room for the subversive nomad to exist in areas that such a state operates. While this may apply historically, the supply and demand of such components are now at an international level of operation, with states outsourcing much of the work to others as global infrastructure has developed. With the neo-nomad being a product of state and dependant on state rigidity, Deleuze and Guattari present a potential reason as to why neo-nomadism is more developed in eastern metropolises like Tokyo.
Dreyfus and Spinosa also differentiate between east and west in their article Further Reflections on Heidegger, Technology and the Everyday. They use Japan as an example of a culture that has been able to transcend technicity through a coexistence of technology and traditional non-technical practices.70 Heidegger deemed this necessary for us to understand our being as more than that which we currently believe, that technicity is just another state of being.71 This implies that Japan has been able to achieve a more complete understanding of being through the significance it places on traditional culture and the acceptance of technology. In relation to nomadic thought, this could symbolise a greater readiness to accept placeless-ness and neo-nomadism. While Dreyfus and Spinosa’s claim that Japan has transcended technicity is loosely based on pieces of anecdotal evidence, Tanizaki appears to agree with the claim that Japan can coexist with technology. Despite acknowledging that items of technology are superseding aspects of traditional Japanese life72 and noting the effect technicity is having on Japan,73 he stresses his own dependence on technology, whilst attempting to avoid the implications this has on his being.74 When comparing Tanizaki’s essay to Heidegger’s thoughts on technology and being, it is apparent that Tanizaki, despite writing in the fifties, has already transcended technicity through the means Heidegger himself suggested. Whether this is indicative of Japan as a whole is another question, but if one of the methods of achieving an understanding of technicity as one of many states of being is the continued use of traditional culture to create moments outside of a particular being,75 then Japan’s cultural stubbornness plays a big part.
There is a further element of differentiation important to the contextual specificity of neo-nomadism in Tokyo in regards to the cultural relation to space, both in the traditional perspectives on embodying space and the historical development of a nation characterised by destruction and rebuilding. Whilst the west typically assigns programs to space that inform the specific mode of inhabitation, in Japanese houses, the use of space is “never determined unambiguously; the same space can be used for sleeping, eating or receiving guests, and each of these functions may flow easily into the next.”76 Space is arranged to enable a multitude of functions that allow a smaller programmatic footprint and an inherent adaptability of inhabitant to space. This was exacerbated by the destruction Tokyo faced in the 20th century as a series of significant historical events sparked the trend for smaller and smaller dwellings. The Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 resulted in the destruction of over 50% of the buildings from fire, as most of the buildings were made of wood.77 Following this, World War II meant that much of the city centre was destroyed in air raids78 that prompted an intensive program of often chaotic rebuilding in the ensuing decades.79 Planning laws were relaxed allowing the subdivision of properties and construction of taller and taller buildings.80 These events ensured that most of the buildings in contemporary Tokyo are modern, removing the necessity to protect historical areas that would otherwise limit development. The relaxed urban planning regulations allowed Tokyo to develop at a devastating pace with infrastructure a constant priority enabling an incredibly modern, interconnected city that forms the backbone of a transient lifestyle.
What these insights into eastern culture then provide us with, is an understanding of how the concept of neo-nomadism may be more easily observable in Tokyo. This is not to say that they are only observable in Tokyo as western cities are also undergoing the same changes that indicate the rise of the neo-nomad. In Britain, research by the TUC shows that in 2015, 3.7 million people faced a daily commute of over 2 hours, over a third more than in 2010.81 In Singapore, the average daily commute is 9.5km,82 whilst in the Öresund region, 18,000 commute between Sweden and Denmark each day.83 Whilst this only covers commuter data, it shows the scale of how many people are willing to travel much further from where they live to where they work, indicating an increased acceptance of mobility. This is relevant to paint a global picture, however, it would require further study not possible within this dissertation.
Thus, in accordance with the framework outlined, the research will start by analysing data related to commuting and the rail infrastructure to build a picture of the state of movement within the Tokyo area. This will be followed by an investigation into the use of urban space in Tokyo as a product of such transience. By mapping the public/private relationship of space and observing the spatial transitions encountered within Tokyo, we can analyse the effect of the neo-nomad on such space and how such space encourages neo-nomadism. A study of the typologies of various spaces in the city will underline the contextual nature of the study and explore how space is occupied and how these occupied spaces encourage transience.
68 Deleuze and Guattari, “Treatise on Nomadology,” 385
69 Deleuze and Guattari, “Treatise on Nomadology,” 385
70 Dreyfus and Spinosa, “Further Reflections on Heidegger,” 343
71 Dreyfus and Spinosa, “Further Reflections on Heidegger,” 343
70 Dreyfus and Spinosa, “Further Reflections on Heidegger,” 343
71 Dreyfus and Spinosa, “Further Reflections on Heidegger,” 343
72 Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, 36
73 Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, 36
74 Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, 2
75 Dreyfus and Spinosa, “Further Reflections on Heidegger,” 343
73 Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, 36
74 Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, 2
75 Dreyfus and Spinosa, “Further Reflections on Heidegger,” 343
76 Sacchi, Tokyo, 114
77 Sacchi, Tokyo, 51
78 Sacchi, Tokyo, 58
79 Sacchi, Tokyo, 60
80 Sacchi, Tokyo, 60
77 Sacchi, Tokyo, 51
78 Sacchi, Tokyo, 58
79 Sacchi, Tokyo, 60
80 Sacchi, Tokyo, 60
81 Damian Gayle, “Daily Commute of 2 Hours – Reality for 3.7m UK Workers,” The Guardian, November 18, 2016, accessed December 3, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/nov/18/daily-commute-of-two-hours-reality-for-37m-uk-workers
82 “Singapore Land Transport Statistics in Brief 2015,” Land Transport Authority, accessed November 28, 2016, https://www.lta.gov.sg/content/dam/ltaweb/corp/PublicationsResearch/files/FactsandFigures/Statistics%20in%20Brief%202015%20FINAL.pdf
83 ”Pendlingen över Öresund,” Öresunds Statistik och Analyser, accessed December 5, 2016, http://www.orestat.se/sv/analys/pendlingen-over-oresund
82 “Singapore Land Transport Statistics in Brief 2015,” Land Transport Authority, accessed November 28, 2016, https://www.lta.gov.sg/content/dam/ltaweb/corp/PublicationsResearch/files/FactsandFigures/Statistics%20in%20Brief%202015%20FINAL.pdf
83 ”Pendlingen över Öresund,” Öresunds Statistik och Analyser, accessed December 5, 2016, http://www.orestat.se/sv/analys/pendlingen-over-oresund
The State of Transience in Tokyo
Commuting in Tokyo is a fact of life for the millions that live there, with average rental prices drastically decreasing once you step outside the central 23 wards,84 many people choose to rely on the extensive railway infrastructure (fig. 10) to benefit from the strength of the Tokyo economy. This is responsible for shaping the landscape of the city in a myriad of ways, most notably the effect it has on land prices outside of the 23 wards, with prices not solely based on geographic distance to the centre of the city but by distance to the nearest train station. After the Heisei Boom of the 1980s and 90s, land prices in the centre increased to extortionate levels, making it difficult for the government to work on public space and left in the hands of the increasingly wealthy construction corporations.85 Middle and low-income families had to move further from the centre and often faced commutes of many hours.86 This encouraged people to think about distance in units of time, the measure most critical to the neo-nomad. This marks a departure from the insistence on domestic locality that occurs in urban areas without such well-established transport infrastructure, where land prices decrease radially from the city centre. This changes the way development occurs in cities, where expansion from a fixed centre
84 “What is the Average Rent in Tokyo,” Realestate.co.jp, accessed December 4, 2016, http://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/what-is-the-average-rent-in-tokyo/
85 Livio Sacchi, Tokyo City and Architecture, (Milan: Skira Editore, 2004), 68-69
86 Sacchi, Tokyo, 66
gives way to urban expansion along railway infrastructure, with urban sub-centres developing around train stations.87 This chapter is concerned with the predominant cause of neo-nomadism but will provide an understanding of where and how such a lifestyle is affecting urban space. Thus, by analysing commuter and rail data we can understand the extent of transience in Tokyo and how this manifests itself in the development of the city.
Tokyo itself is a prefecture that contains the 23 wards (fig. 9) that used to make up the definition of the capital, however, with many nearby prefectures also contributing to the expanded metropolitan area, it becomes difficult to distinguish just how many people make up the capital. While there are no statistics covering commuter data for the whole Greater Tokyo Area, there are a number of statistics available that build a picture of the extent to which people are commuting in the area. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has statistics for the numbers of people commuting daily into Tokyo Prefecture and puts this at 2.417 million88 people, however this figure only considers the number of people moving into the prefecture itself and not how many people are moving within the prefecture. The University of Tokyo Centre for Spatial Information Science has produced a means of defining the Tokyo population
Tokyo itself is a prefecture that contains the 23 wards (fig. 9) that used to make up the definition of the capital, however, with many nearby prefectures also contributing to the expanded metropolitan area, it becomes difficult to distinguish just how many people make up the capital. While there are no statistics covering commuter data for the whole Greater Tokyo Area, there are a number of statistics available that build a picture of the extent to which people are commuting in the area. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has statistics for the numbers of people commuting daily into Tokyo Prefecture and puts this at 2.417 million88 people, however this figure only considers the number of people moving into the prefecture itself and not how many people are moving within the prefecture. The University of Tokyo Centre for Spatial Information Science has produced a means of defining the Tokyo population
87 Sacchi, Tokyo, 85
88 “What is the Population of Tokyo,” Tokyo Metropolitan Government, accessed December 4, 2016, http://www.metro.tokyo.jp/ENGLISH/ABOUT/HISTORY/history03.htm
by analysing it as a metropolitan employment area (MEA), an area with a central core which considers the additional population of all areas where at least 10% of the population are employed within this core. This means that we can observe the extent to which people commute within the main employment areas (fig. 13, shown in red) in Tokyo. The latest data from 2010 puts the total population of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area at 34,834,167 people,89 noticeably higher than the 9,262,565 people that live within the 23 central wards themselves. While no data is given for the precise number of people commuting into these employment areas, by the definition of the study it is an absolute minimum of 2.557 million people.90
Even though this data shows just how mobile Tokyo is, it still doesn’t show the extent of movement within the city. By looking at data from the rail network we can begin to observe the mass transience occurring on a regular basis. The Tokyo Statistical Yearbook provided by the Statistics Bureau of Japan collects data from Tokyo’s railway infrastructure including ridership numbers by both line and station. We can use this data to build up a better picture of not just how many people move around the city but also how they do so. This will allow us to observe the extent to which Tokyo is transient and help explain the urban conditions that arise because of such movement.
The map (fig. 14) has been constructed using data from Tokyo Prefecture and so does not contain any data from stations in prefectures such as Saitama and Yokohama. However, it provides a good picture of how busy certain areas are within the 23 wards, highlighting the large quantity of people commuting to a comparatively small area. It also identifies the way in which such a transport infrastructure readdresses space within the city as many people temporarily inhabit the centre of Tokyo. Interestingly, we can see the lack of a fixed centre in the city, a result of “internal decentralization through the creation of alternative centers,”91 transforming “the city into its current polycentric form.”92 This quality encourages movement in a non-generic way whereby one does not travel to the centre but to a particular sub-centre based on one’s requirements. Even within the city, transportation is required to move between wards, creating both an acceptance of continual movement as well as an acknowledgement that there must be a certain level of independence achieved by each ward to cater for those that do not wish to travel so far to acquire goods or services.
89 “UEA – Urban Employment Area,” The University of Tokyo Centre for Spatial Information Science, accessed December 4, 2016, http://www.csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/UEA/uea_data_e.htm
90 Based on the metropolitan area definition of at least 10% of the population commuting into the 23 wards.
91 Sacchi, Tokyo, 65
92 Sacchi, Tokyo, 65
92 Sacchi, Tokyo, 65
Spatial Porosity in the City
One of the main observations from urban research in Tokyo was the distinct lack of public space within the city. With a road density of 18.97 km/km2,93 Tokyo has twice as many roads per area than London (9.41 km/km2 for London94) accounting for 16.4% of the total area of the city. This contributes to an extremely dense urban landscape with little land allocated to public squares and parks. As a result, most space within the city is consumed as private space rented out by businesses seeking to profit on the lack of available public space. This is in the form of either single use space that focuses on turning over customers (such as cafés and restaurants) or continual use space that seek to retain customers for as long as possible for financial gain (such as arcades and internet cafés). The fact that there are so many businesses renting out temporary space is a sign of the demand for such consumption and this affects the behaviour of the inhabitant. Because of the wealth of available temporary space, no planning is required, encouraging impulsive behaviour. This directly relates to Mark Wigley’s interpretation of New Babylon in the title of his book, The Hyper-Architecture of Desire, and draws parallels to the previously nomadic origins of mankind where men moved based on impulse and urge. The usual spatial separation of public and private are then inadequate in defining space in Tokyo, as a third category of private space designed to be consumed by the public is required to describe much of the urban infrastructure. This consumed space is often shifting in porosity as the line between public and private is continually blurred by the rattling of the pachinko parlours or the neon signs encouraging inhabitants to ascend compact staircases. For the neo-nomad, whose predominant habitation patterns depend on the nature of urban space, the theoretical release from public/private categorisation of space is necessary for understanding the spatial porosity of the city.
In order to research this urban phenomenon, a series of journeys were undertaken to document desire-based movement through these spaces. Using a hostel in Kawaguchi, an area chosen due to its residential nature and comparative isolation despite its proximity to central Tokyo that would enable a journey into the city via the Keihin-Tohoku line, one of the busiest in the world with an average daily ridership of over a million passengers. While the lack of diversity and the inherent researcher-subject bias must be taken into account, there is certainly something to be gained from understanding such spatial conditions as the observer.
These two maps (fig. 15 and fig. 19) documenting the journey from the hostel to both Shibuya and Akihabara convey the scale of changes to the urban environment available from a single point within the city with the sphere of influence that each station has over its surroundings. Buildings suddenly change in size as you exit the station as surroundings change drastically. Yet they portray a geographic mapping of the city that belies the timespan of the journey. Rearranging the journeys to showcase temporal distance (fig. 23) shows how distinct areas of the city become associated as experienced, drawing each area much closer in relation to one another. At this scale of mobility, the Derives of the Situationists become bursting with possibilities.
The streets themselves show how much can be explored within a small urban area, as alleyways and small roads, many of which remain nameless, increase the amount that can be seen and discovered within the city. Livio Sacchi notes that “experiencing Tokyo on foot gives a more concrete idea of the city’s hidden urban structure.”95 This macro-porosity provides an extra dimension to the transience of the city’s populace due to the optimization of buildings within built up areas that means much of the urban life takes place above street level, reminiscent of the multi-layered structures of New Babylon.96 This results in a truly three dimensional city with much of the available area located on the multiple floors of buildings in an effort to expand the urban density. Franco Purini describes Tokyo as “a city of situations […] which demands that those who traverse it develop dynamic, changeable mental maps.”97 Referring to the shifting porosity of the city that often comes across as intimidating, as businesses are spread haphazardly over different floors that produce dramatic change in spaces as one can move from multi-laned streets, directly ascending tiny staircases into areas of contrasting atmosphere with only a vague notion of the spatial relationship awaiting.
93 “Tokyo Statistical Yearbook,” Tokyo Metropolitan Government, accessed November 20, 2016, http://www.toukei.metro.tokyo.jp/tnenkan/2014/tn14q3e004.htm
94 “Length of the Road Network, Borough and Region,” London Datastore, accessed December 5, 2016, https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/length-road-network-borough-and-region
95 Sacchi, Tokyo, 85
96 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 161
96 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 161
Returning to Constant’s view of atmosphere as a creator of form, we can see that within Tokyo, the nomadic drift through the city is a product of the existing urban form as well as responsible for establishing urban form. Architects such as Jan Gehl are already urging a restructuring of urban space based on the flow of people. However the methods he uses for creating and encouraging vibrant communities, namely increasing concern for pedestrians,98 are already evident throughout the historical streets of Tokyo. Perhaps because of the overwhelming number of streets in the city and the lack of more conventional public squares, many of the streets are pedestrianised. Traditional market alleys, known as Yokocho (fig. 26), are dotted around the city providing areas for shopping and socialising while many businesses spill out onto the streets in an effort to attract customers when shop front space is limited. These pre-existing urban conditions have no doubt encouraged movement, by the shear nature of the street, each of them are linear and designed to be moved through and along. However, these all existed prior to the rise in urban transience that occurred as the population of the capital increased and transport infrastructure was better developed. It is these areas around train stations that particularly show the effects of neo-nomadic urbanism within Tokyo, especially in regards to Constant’s criteria of having everything “man needs to live decently wherever he wants to go” 99 It is no coincidence that such developments occur within the vicinity of train stations, as the mobility of the city is prioritised to ensure convenience for commuters.100
The network analysis of Shibuya (fig. 28) links places of temporary inhabitation with the station to show the density of flow along streets, highlighting how certain streets around the station are heavily laden with such developments as the colours closer to red show the streets with a heavier flow of people returning from the various establishments to the station. These developments are where porosities clash as the transition from the city-scale controlled space of the rail network gives way to the macro-porosity of the street network. This categorisation of the different scales of urban porosity show how the neo-nomad occupies space that is both striated and smooth, continuous and discontinuous. The rail network, while inherently controlled, continuous and striated, overlays a smooth spatial quality on the streets. The neo-nomad is provided a tool with which to create and dissolve smooth space at their whim, effectively blurring the lines between the spatial qualities imposed by Deleuze and Guattari. It also challenges Yan Ki Mok’s concept of discontinuous space, the pockets of smooth space within the striated landscape, by suggesting that, instead of these pockets being defined by the left over, uncontrolled space, smooth space is at the control of the nomad and instead facilitated by the state through an infrastructure that goes beyond the rail network. These individual typologies of temporary inhabitation that encourage urban transience are studied in the next chapter as the scale of focus increases to the individual.
97 Franco Purini, introduction to Tokyo City and Architecture, by Livio Sacchi (Milan: Skira Editore, 2004), 8
98 Jan Gehl, Cities for People, (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010), 22
99 Constant and Wigley,
Typologies of Temporary Inhabitation
As part of the research in Tokyo, various typologies of temporary habitation have been identified, serving a multitude of different purposes that all exist within the city as an extension of the home. Constant’s observation that “[a] person’s living quarters become less important to him as his radius of action expands and his amount of leisure time increases”101 is partly realised, however, it is not leisure time that is prompting an expansion of home but a lack thereof. In inferred support of Constant’s remark, it is the increased lack of leisure time that is making the activities associated with living quarters increasingly necessary for their expansion into the city. When time, both for leisure and work, becomes a valuable commodity, necessities are required to be increasingly efficient so as not to consume too much available time. The moral implications of such a statement are not to be discussed in this dissertation yet the issues of overwork and a lack of social engagement are pertinent to Japan and should be acknowledged as part of the context of this research.
This chapter documents the wide variety of different typologies that provide a place of temporary inhabitation to one degree or another. It marks Tokyo as a city that is constantly on the move yet equiped with the infrastructure to enable this transience.
101 Constant and Wigley, New Babylon, 213.
Conclusion
Neo-nomadic urbanism is the effect on the urban environment that this neo-nomadic lifestyle is having. Within Tokyo, it is encouraging a restructuring of spatial form to accommodate a more mobile lifestyle where Constant’s requirement of having everything that man needs available wherever he goes is being realised. The contrast between Tokyo and New Babylon is obvious as the historical development that New Babylon overlooked has produced a complex, multifaceted urban density in Tokyo that realises many of the theoretical ideals behind Constant’s project. This development is integral to the city’s realisation of the neo-nomadic lifestyle as its polycentric and continually changing landscape prompt a comparatively fast response to lifestyle requirements.
Although many of the forms of nomadism discussed subvert the state, the neo-nomad is an exception, being a product of state organisation. Because of this, there is a contrast between the subversive nomad, who sticks to the smooth space outside of state influence, the dissonant nomad, who moves through disorganised state space by identifying alternate uses for pre-existing urban form, and the neo-nomad who, as a being recognised by state agency, is able to exert influence over organised space without having to occupy left-over urban spaces within a city. However, this does not mean that it doesn’t present the state with issues as Tube strikes in London can bring the capital to a standstill whilst a lack of spatial infrastructure often results in compromise to the point of inaccessibility for urban citizens.
Yet Tokyo is showing that when an infrastructure of mobility exists that extends beyond transportation, cities can expand to the sizes required by urban population growth without the exclusion communities experience when pushed to the fringes of a massive urban geography. In the case of Tokyo, this is made possible due to the effect that technology has in enabling neo-nomadism and its associated urbanism. It affects the way we embody space through a change in our state of self to one of increasing adaptability as well as the way in which Tokyo is developing to produce an infrastructure that makes transience an accepted and required form of lifestyle. There is a recognition that, as Sacchi notes, “Tokyo, like other 21st-century cities, is resembling ever more closely a linked system of interacting, intelligent locations (both architectural and urban).”102 It reveals the onset of the vision of urban life anticipated by Constant and made possible by the stream of data accessible by both people and things.
While the elements of neo-nomadic urbanism are specific to their context, the neo-nomad is an entity that exists more generally within the appropriate urban conditions. As cities around the globe continue to expand, there will certainly come a point where infrastructure must adapt to enable citizens a more efficient movement through their city. This research has highlighted the importance of how this infrastructure is not limited to transportation and must encompass many other areas such as the provision of suitable temporary inhabitation as well as a particular urban spatial quality that sacrifices public space in a way that many cities aim to protect. Ultimately, it is the neo-nomads, the inhabitants of such a city, whose lifestyle, whilst a product of such urbanism, reshapes the urban environment around them to promote the efficiency of transience required to form a coherent entity as opposed to an urban sprawl.
102 Sacchi, Tokyo, 230
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Figures
Cover - Map of Tokyo. GIS. Source: The author, with data sourced from Open Street Maps/Mapzen. Accessed December 2, 2016. https://mapzen.com/data/metro-extracts/
Figure 1 - Train tracks running alongside Ueno Park. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 2 - Akihabara. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 3 - Rainbow Bridge from Odaiba. Photograph Source: The author.
Figure 4 - View under Rainbow Bridge. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 5 - Shibuya Crossing at night. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 6 - Shinjuku. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 7 - Children play in the mist on Odaiba. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 8 - The bustle of the last train home around midnight. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 9 - Map of Tokyo's former city boundary that now constitutes the central 23 wards. Internet. Source: Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. "Map Archive." Accessed April 18, 2017. http://www.greatkantoearthquake.com/map_archive.html
Figure 10 - Map of Tokyo's Extensive rail network. Internet. Source: JR East. "Major Railway and Subway Route Map: Metropolitan." Accessed April 18, 2017. http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/routemaps/pdf/RouteMap_majorrailsub.pdf
Figure 11 - Heatmap showing station density. GIS. Source: The author, with data sourced from Open Street Maps/Mapzen. Accessed December 2, 2016. https://mapzen.com/data/metro-extracts/
Figure 12 - Shinjuku Station. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 13 - MEA Map. Image. Source: University of Tokyo Centre for Spatial Science. Accessed November 29, 2016. http://www.csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/UEA/uea_map_e.htm
Figure 14 - Daily train ridership map of Tokyo Prefecture. GIS. Source: The author, with data sourced from Open Street Maps/Mapzen. Accessed December 2, 2016. https://mapzen.com/data/metro-extracts/. And Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Accessed November 20, 2016. http://toukei.metro.tokyo.jp
Figure 15 - Map of the route from Kawaguchi to Shibuya. Composite. Source: The author, with data sourced from Open Street Maps/Mapzen. Accessed December 2, 2016. https://mapzen.com/data/metro-extracts/
Figure 16 - The view outside the hostel in Kawaguchi. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 17 - Kawaguchi station. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 18 - The view from Shibuya station. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 19 - Map of the route from Kawaguchi to Akihabara. Composite. Source: The author, with data sourced from Open Street Maps/Mapzen. Accessed December 2, 2016. https://mapzen.com/data/metro-extracts/
Figure 20 - The view outside the hostel in Kawaguchi. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 21 - Kawaguchi station. Photograph. Source: The author
Figure 22 - The view from Akihabara station. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 23 - Map of the route from Kawaguchi to Shibuya and Akihabara based on distance relative to walking time. Composite. Source: The author, with data sourced from Open Street Maps/Mapzen. Accessed December 2, 2016. https://mapzen.com/data/metro-extracts/
Figure 24 - Street in Kawaguchi. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 25 - Street in Akihabara. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 26 - The yokocho Takeshita Dori, Harajuku. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 27 - An unnamed street in Shibuya. Photograph. Source: The author
Figure 28 - Urban Network Analysis map showing flow between Shibuya station and the surrounding places of temporary inhabitation. UNA. Source: The author, with data sourced from Open Street Maps/Mapzen. Accessed December 2, 2016. https://mapzen.com/data/metro-extracts/
Figure 29 - A traditional hostel in Ueno. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 30 - Arcade. Photograph. Source: The author
Figure 31 - Cafe. Photograph. Source: The author
Figure 32 - Capsule Hotel. internet. Source: Japan Guide. Accessed April 14, 2017. http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2025_capsule_hotels.html
Figure 33 - Department Store. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 34 - Fast Food Restaurant. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 35 - Festival. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 36 - Hostel. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 37 - Internet Cafe. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 38 - Karaoke Room. Internet. Source: Japan Guide. Accessed April 14, 2017. http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2066.html
Figure 39 - Konbini. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 40 - Love Hotel. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 41 - Pachinko. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 42 - Park. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 43 - Photobooth. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 44 - Sento. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 45 - Shrine. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 46 - Smoking Area. Photograph. Source: The author.
Figure 47 - Vending Machine. Internet. Source: Reuters. Accessed April 14, 2017. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-machines-idUSTRE6AE0G720101115
Figure 48 - Yoyogi Park. Photograph. Source: The author.
Unless otherwise stated, all content © Ieuan Pitts 2018