Urban design resources

A working list of resources and institutions related to Tokyo’s urban design. Please comment below to add your suggestions.

New:

• Japan Society of Civil Engineers: https://www.jsce.or.jp/library/archives/
• DOBOHAKU ドボ博 online museum

DOBOHAKU ドボ博: online museum by the Japan Society of Civil Engineers

Current exhibit features 88 topographic or infrastructures works described as analogous to parts of a human body (e.g. Digestive or Circulatory System, etc)

Example: 上野台地の崖線https://t.co/rrnQXAP723 pic.twitter.com/TUGdZobXyz

— the tokyo files (@thetokyofiles) September 15, 2018

Academics, Websites, and Blogs:

• Urban Design Lab | The University of Tokyo
• Urban Design Center Kashiwa (UDCK) Kashiwa-no-ha
• Tokyo Green Space
• a-small-lab (see “Some Project Logs” section at right of page)
• Christian Dimmer @Remmid: Urban Studies Professor, Waseda University
• architokyo: urbanism and architecture: online journal by  Shabbar Raza, an architect and urbanist from Toronto, Canada; includes documentation of his architectural and urban history research
• archinect (Keio University)
• History of the Shinjuku area: 落合道人 ochiai-dojin

Government:

• Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism 国土交通省
• 国土交通省近畿地方整備局
• Bureau of Urban Development (Tokyo Metropolitan Government)
• Urban Land Use Planning System in Japan (2007) (PDF; published by JICA – Japan International Cooperation Agency 独立行政法人国際協力機構)
• Yokohama Urban Design page (Japanese) (English)
• Urban Design Vision Yokohama (PDF)
• Urban Design Yokohama – overview (PDF)

Papers:

• Features of a Suburban Town in Tokyo Developed by a Taiwan Company in the 1920s – Kamikitazawa as a case for Suburban Residential Legacy, by Hiroaki Ishii (Journal of International City Planning) (PDF)
• Transformation Tokyo 1950s and 1960s City Planning and Urban Utopia, by Raffaele Pernice (PDF)
• Tokyo as an Idea: An Exploration of Japanese Urban Thought until 1945 (PDF)
• VISUALIZING THE LANDSCAPE OF OLD-TIME TOKYO (EDO CITY) (PDF)

Posts and articles:

• The Evolving Urban Form: Tokyo, by Wendell Cox 06/20/2012 (New Geography)
• When Tokyo Was a Slum (Next City)
• The Tokyo Model: From Post-War Slum to Superpower (Planetizen)
• Japan Shows the Way to Affordable Megacities (Next City, 2014)
• “How Japan Built a City“, Lewiston Evening Journal, April 24, 1930
• Elements of Urbanism: Tokyo | Metro Jacksonville
• The Re-Making of Tokyo : lessons for Asian Megacities
• Scrap and build: Alternatives to the corporate redevelopment of Tokyo, by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Jorge Almazán (PDF)
• Nice maps: GIS-Based Visualization of Tokyo’s Urban History (PDF)
• Shaping Tokyo: Land Development and Planning Practice in the Early Modern Japanese Metropolis (PDF)

Books:

• The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the Twenty First Century
• Tokyo : urban growth and planning 1968-1988
• Tokyo, a Spatial Anthropology, by Hidenobu Jinnai

Architecture firms:

• Front Office

Japan resources (not Tokyo-specific):

• janejacobsjapan
• Subject: Appendix 1. Framework of Japan’s Urban Planning

Non Japan-specific resources:

• “Missing Middle Housing, Responding to the Demand for Walkable Urban Living” by Daniel Parolek