Presentations

The presentation introduces the latest efforts to address the complex issue of spatial quality, across scales. The presented methods combine the unconventional established and cutting edge approaches, ranging from the Situationist-inspired dérive and détournement sessions to application of the latest in EEG technology. The emphasis is on inclusion and valorization of commonly neglected multisensorial experiences and sensuality of the fully lived space, Lefebvrian vécu. The presentation includes demonstration of the latest EEG instruments used in this research project.

The paper offers to discussion three contentious issues: the need for cultural specificity in the times of globalisation, the need for non-reductive approaches in investigations of the urban, and the need for explicit inclusion of subjectivities and sensuality in urban research. Those are discussed within the context of radical transformations of Tokyo in the lead-up to the Olympic Games 2020, which threaten to erase fragile, autochthonous micro urbanities of the metropolis, replacing them with sterile bigness of the imported, globalised falsehood. The case studies present places and practices of cultural resistance within everyday life of the lanes and roji (露地) in three neighbourhoods of Tokyo, in which the author both lived and conducted his research, ordinary, low-rise high-density Tokyo. Special emphasis is on trialectics between spaces as conceived, perceived and lived, situations where public and private realms, and culturally nuanced commons seek their own spatial expressions, and where various manifestations of public life meet and intersect with the delicate veils of collective and individual privacies – in stark juxtaposition with an encroaching Global Tokyo.