I’ll be presenting my paper: “Tokyo, a transitional city of networks”, at the Internet Research Conference in Copenhagen.Â
This is the abstract of the paper:
Title: Tokyo, a transitional city of people networks.
In 1927 Ludwig Hilbersheimer wrote in his book Grosstadtarchitektur: “The architecture of the large city depends essentially on the solution given to two factors: the elementary cell and the urban organism as a whole. The single room as the constituent element of habitation will determine the aspect of habitation, and since the habitations in turn form blocks, the room will become a factor of urban configuration, which is architecture’s true goal.”Â
In Tokyo the single room has indeed become the main factor of the urban configuration, but not as the constituent element of habitation. Habitation in Tokyo is a mere transitional point along a path of single, activity-based cells which the average Tokyoite transverses.Â
 The greater Tokyo area (a radius of 50 km from the centre of Tokyo including Yokohama) with a population of 35,197,000 is probably the largest urban area in the world. Tokyo has 247, 250 companies with a work force  of about 12M, which is 22.7% of Japan’s total workforce. Almost 1/3 of these employees live outside of the central area and commute into Tokyo. On average their commute time is 62 minutes, packed into trains which during peak times are 400% over capacity.Â
 The work environment is not much better, with a density of about 10m2/person, a third of most European work environments. They live in apartments that are as small as 20sqm to 50 sqm for a family of 4. Japan is well-known for working long hours, however the average Japanese spends more time on shopping and leisure than they spend at home. Major brands such as Louis Vuitton or Paul Smith see up to 30% of their global profits coming from Japan. Thirty million Japanese go to play Panchiko, gambling away about 30 trillion a year, a higher turnover than the car industry. Tokyo has with 160,000 restaurants more than any other urban centre. Paris for example has only 20,000 restaurants, while New York has 23,000. The adult entertainment business in Japan is significant, 1% of GDP. One “sex zone” in Tokyo, only 0.34 sq. km., has 3,500 sex facilities, including strip theaters, peep shows, “soaplands,” “lover’s banks,” porno shops, telephone clubs, karaoke bars, clubs etc.Â
 In this paper I want to show what at first glance looks like an incoherent and chaotic urban sprawl, Tokyo really is a city of hundreds of thousands of single activity-defined cells. I would like to show that the connection between these single cells has started a long time ago, today with the raise of digital media the change is shifting vertically with the addition of layers that  “visualize” the network of cells as well as opening these networks to a broader public.
 In Tokyo, like in many other cities there exists a network within the city that predated the internet, the strongest being the network of Otaku. The word otaku is a honorific term for “your house”. The otaku subculture, consists mainly of men in their 20’s and 30’s, most of them still living with their parents and obsessed with a particular hobby. These otaku will gather in shops to exchange information and buy and sell whatever their interest is: from comic books, girly cards, anime, manga books, miniature toys to fantasy costumes. Tokyo is not a city in the Western sense of the word: it lacks a clear city centre, streets have no name but “blocks” in the city are carved-up in smaller “pieces”, making navigation in Tokyo notoriously difficult. Belonging to a specific otaku group is not unlike being a member of a secret society with its own rules and codes of conduct. As otaku shops are often located in apartments, the pre-internet otaku would pride themselves to be able to find their way within the maze of the otaku subculture; be it the shops or the events related to their specific interest. Being a hard-core otaku has, and will, always require enormous efforts, however, today’s digital media is acting as an initiation protocol, making entrance easier and broader. The influence of the internet in Japan with over 100M of mobile phone users, has created additional layers of networks onto the city, and has added new layers of depth to the otaku culture.  Armed with phones equipped with navigation systems, these hunter and gatherers of the new (be it otaku or more traditional afficionados) confirm that today’s society is increasingly fragmented, individualized but also that subcultures are becoming more mainstream. (Otaku artist Takeshi Murakami recent work with Louis Vuitton or his sculpture that sold  for U$1.5million are a case in point.)  During the presentation I will show other examples of “the visualization of networks”.
While tracing the networks of various subcultures (office workers, otaku, children as well as housewives) that move restlessly throughout the city, we will see that these urban nomads, not the planners nor architects or other urban specialists are the driving forces within the city and define its configuration.  We will also see that this urban behaviour is not restricted to Japan as I believe we are all becoming otaku.Â
