Tokyo's seemingly endless sea of buildings has grown incrementally over the past centuries
leading to an urban condition that is both coherent and contradictory at the same time. The
understanding of Tokyo as a continuous and interdependent urban complex is a much-neglected
perspective in previous readings of the city. An attachment to the land strong civic
commitment and a deep appreciation of the immaterial has produced a nested megastructure of
smaller communities. These places have all evolved in a related way briefly and temporarily
disrupted by earthquakes and a devastating war. Over time a set of distinct urban patterns
emerged through centralization processes the manshon urbanization the relocation of various
types of manufacturing and other developments. What might appear homogeneous in composition
and rhythm is in fact a configuration of distinctly different spaces created by the routines
of everyday life that make the district of Shinjuku different from Shimokitazawa or Kitamoto.
This book not only provides the first comprehensive reading of the many urbanization processes
shaping Tokyo today but also seeks an entirely new approach for looking at megacity regions:
through their differences and the way those differences are are produced in the course of
everyday life.
