Several classes at the beginning of the Metropolitan Tokyo course I teach at TUJ are dedicated to establishing a context for analyzing the Japanese capital. I comment on these lectures after the jump.
Category Archives: Tokyo
Metropolitan Tokyo: intro lecture
This is the first post in a series of summaries of and notes on my lectures for “Metropolitan Tokyo”, a class that I teach at Temple University Japan. I have written more about it here.
Metropolitan Tokyo
I have been teaching at Temple University’s Japan campus for more than a year now and still haven’t written anything on this blog here to reflect on this amazing experience. This shall now change with some thoughts on the most recent course I teach called “Metropolitan Tokyo”.
TUJ’s Azabu Campus
Income inequality Tokyo 2013
I wanted to share and briefly discuss a great graph on income inequalities in Tokyo and Osaka that I found. It has been compiled by the NLI Research Institute and shows interesting variations across the 23 wards.
Click for original Continue reading
Tokyo as a slum, continued
A few weeks ago I discussed the concept of “Tokyo as a slum” and how apt it is to describe living conditions in the postwar period. This is important if we are to glean how useful Tokyo’s experience is to today’s emerging megacities. A more fitting description, I found, may be that of “shared space poverty”. I took a good look at the 1963 Housing Survey for data to support that line of thinking.
1963 construction on the Metropolitan Expressway (photo source)
Tokyo public finance
I have been wading through historical budget data for the 23 wards here in Tokyo. To many, nothing could be more dry. However, I think that understanding public finance in the first megacity holds an important key in explaining the city’s success.
Tokyo as seen from Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building
Tokyo as a slum
I re-read Matias’s and Rahul’s article on “When Tokyo Was A Slum” on Next City. It makes a good qualitative case as to why the city’s incremental, unplanned growth post-WWII may hold lessons for today’s developing cities. I looked for some quantitative substantiation of their claim that indeed Tokyo was a slum. Here is what I dug up.
Meguro-ku, seen from Town Hall
Why does Japan have so many retail stores?
…goes the title of a relatively old paper by Professor David Flath, who teaches economics at Ritsumeikan University these days. As I study Tokyo’s postwar history and, as part of that, am interested in the density of retail stores, it’s worth summing up the main points and adding a few more thoughts. The high density of retail is a phenomenon that despite several years of de-densification stays roughly intact today.
Evening conbini scene, Nakano-ku
June photos
In lieu of a proper post (it’s been quiet here for a while), herewith some recent photos. I resurrected my compact camera a few days ago, and am very happy to give the usual smartphone shots a break.
Nakano-ku
Chiyoda Life Insurance Co. HQ
Togo Murano’s extensive 1966 building complex today is Meguro’s city ward office. The Meguro Museum of Art organized a fantastic tour yesterday.
