Restructuring urban space and local communities in Tokyo: On the applicability of the theories of Castells and Harvey

Abstract

This paper attempts to review the theoretical framework of the urbn restructuring Process proposed by M. Castells and D. Harvey, and to examine of the effectiveness of their western theories through field survey restructuring urban spase and local communities in Tokyo. M. Castellells and Harvery have explained the resturcturing process of urban of spaces focusing on the mechanism of capital accumulation, but their analytical concepts are different. Castells uses the concept of the Dual City. This concept means that residential segregation and segmentation of spaces do exist among classes according to whether they heve access to a high level of education and culture or not. Harvey uses the concept of Flexible Accumulation, which means almost all new societal systems have the aim of capital accumulation. Castells puts stress on a change of the social structure in the global cities, while on the other hand Harvey examines the urban space, focusing on the relationship between global cities and local communities. For research purposes, I picked two case study areas in downtown Tokyo. One is Misaki-chō where many residents own their own land and buildings, and the other is Kanda-Tsukasa-chō where almost all residents live on leased land. These two local communities are located near the heart of Tokyo, and they contain many small scale businesses. But the pattern of landownership and community history are completely different. The conclusions are as follows : 1) The residential space in Tokyo has became more segregated and segmented by the occupation and income of the residents. So the concept of the Dual City is applicable to Tokyo to some extent. Also rapid increase of offices and big changes of land use in Tokyo have been a part of the urban process of Flexible Accumulation at the global level. During the 1980's, Tokyo was affected by the global changes in more or less the same way as New York and London. 2) At the local community level, landowners in Misaki-chō rebuilt their own buildings before the bubble economy, so they could cope with the structural economic changes during the 1980's individually. On the contrary, in Kanda-Tsukasa-chō, rapid increase of land prices did force changes in the residential land use to offices. So, we may conclude that the global changes did not directly affect local changes, but the history, socio-economic characteristics and social relationship of the local communities was an influence upon the restructuring and transformation process of urban space. In the next stage of my research, I will try to make it clear how the local community responds to the huge global economic pressure and resists capital accumulation. This is none other than building a new theoretical framework to bridge the macro-global changes and micro-local changes of urban spaces.