Dear colleagues,

I would like to draw your attention to a new book publication:

Creativity in Tokyo, Revitalizing a Mature City, Palgrave 2020, Authors: Imai, Heide, Ursic, Matjaz,

available here : https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9789811566868 and via the usual online sellers worldwide
This book focuses on overlooked contextual factors that constitute the urban creative climate or innovative urban milieu in contemporary cities. Filled with reflections based on interviews with a diverse range of creative actors in various local neighborhoods in Tokyo, it offers a rare glimpse into the complex set of elements that provide long-term, physical, and sociocultural support to urban creativity. Ursic and Imai highlight the interplay between physical and soft (social) factors in the process of place-making and explore how a city's creativity is influenced by financial support and accessible infrastructure, as well as the sets of informal networks, services, and tacit, locally embedded knowledge that provide the basic layers of stimuli needed for creativity to fully develop. The authors show how the future development of creativity and the overall development of a city depend not only on the (top-down) planning strategies of formal authorities, but also on the appropriate (bottom-up) inclusion of heterogeneous elements that are provided and embedded within the small, hidden context of city spaces.

Table of content: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-15-6687-5#toc
Dr. Heide Imai is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Intercultural Communication, Senshu University, Tokyo.
Dr. Matjaz Ursic is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana.

Endorsements

"Matjaz Ursic and Heide Imai's book plunges deep into the fabric of everyday neighbourhood life in the world's biggest city. Turning a sceptical eye on the glittering projects of large‐scale urban development, chasing an elusive global creative class, they show how getting a feel for the intricate texture of the city's soft infrastructure is the only viable starting point for the long term, sustainable creative development of this twenty‐first century metropolis". --Justin O'Connor, Professor of Cultural Economy, University of South Australia

"Creativity in Tokyo provides a critical and grass‐roots view to Tokyo's urban policies and planning, aimed to enhance city's creative economies. Still today the largest urban agglomeration in the world, Tokyo is facing urban shrinkage. Exploring the global city at a turning point, Matjaz Ursic and Heide Imai make a strong case for small urban actors and ordinary neighbourhood places as vital elements for success, sustainability and renewal. Based on extensive fieldwork, the authors give new insights about soft cultural and socio‐spatial factors that any policy and plan for urban creativity should take seriously. They claim that Tokyo should use its maturity to build on experience, instead of copying urban redevelopment strategies from elsewhere. This advice applies to many cities and city‐regions in Asia, Europe and the Americas that face similar challenges. Creativity in Tokyo is carefully researched and sharply argued. It is highly recommended reading for urban scholars, students, planners and policy makers". --Panu Lehtovuori, Professor of Planning Theory, Tampere University, Finland

"Since the dawn of the twenty‐first century, urban regeneration has been the subject of critical scrutiny due to the preference for the common practice of economically successful model application even at the expense of the context. This book is a timely response to this practice. It offers a theoretical framework and empirical data, comprehensively synthesised to establish the unique relationships between creativity and space, using Tokyo as the spatial‐laboratory ground, and argues that urban regeneration must balance these relationships.This book will be essential reading for all who seek to understand and strategically apply the spatial process of urban creativity". --Apiradee Kasemsook, Faculty of Architecture, Silpakorn University

"Creativity in Tokyo is a fascinating study of neighborhood‐level transformations in urban life. Across a variety of case studies, we see how entrepreneurs, artists, and producers of culture have worked alongside local civic leaders to revitalize neighborhoods and navigate new forms of locality in an ever more globally‐oriented megacity. The successes (and sometime failures) of these projects offer a compelling perspective for thinking about the future of post‐growth urban life in Japan and beyond". --Nathaniel M. Smith, Assistant Professor, East Asian Studies, The University of Arizona
many thanks and if you look for discount codes or free samples for a review
please do get in touch
best regards,
Heide Imai

Dr. Heide Imai, PhD, MA, Dipl.Ing Architect
Associate Professor, Senshu University, Faculty of Intercultural Communcation
Research Associate, Keio University,
https://heideimai.com/

Books
Tokyo Roji (2017, Routledge)
Just out:
Creativity in Tokyo: Revitalizing a Mature City, Heide Imai, Matjaz Ursic, Palgrave, 2020
Asian Alleyways: An Urban Vernacular in Times of Globalization, Marie Gibert-Flutre, Heide Imai (eds), Amsterdam University Press, 2020)