Walking in the City
In Tsung-Yi Michelle Huang’s “Walking Between Slums & Skyscrapers” she talks about the concept “dual compression”, which is a combination of local and global compression and how the two types combine to compress the city into small tight spaces. Global influences include projects such as the plan to add in an entire Disney park within Hong Kong, a place that already has very little room within the city, another is a new British-built international airport. However, the global compression isn’t all; the local compression of the city is the other half of Huang’s dual compression. The desire to build public housing as well caused more of the already non-existent space to be taken. From these two types of compression happening in Hong Kong, we get the idea of what it means by “dual compression”.
Haung shows that the four walkers in the movie “Chungking Express” are affected by this dual compression. One of the walkers is an undercover cop called Cop 223 who is affected by the dual compression through loneliness. As he lives within a small apartment due to all the compression of buildings to force in more things with in it, to deal with this loneliness Cop 223 walks and talks to connect with those around him, though failing. All this is caused by a loss of a community due to a dual compression as the walkers begin to detach themselves from the city and see the city as more of a spectacle. The ideas from the global influences that give the idea that anything is possible leads the walkers to desire to chase what they desire but they inevitably fail due to prohibitions.
The city space in Tokyo is compressed tightly, leaving very little places for people to go. Thus, the buildings in Tokyo are built up to compensate for the lack of space, making the city a mass of skyscrapers that tower over the people. As for the people, they travel the city in massive crowds all moving to arrive at their destination. Many of these people are workers that are commuting to work from an hours-long trip from home or leaving from capsule hotels to make the trip easier to arrive to work.
In the book “Global Cities, Local Streets: Everyday Diversity from New York to Shanghai” by Sharon Zukin (2016)., it talks about Shimokitazawa Tokyo and an issue of compression caused by a plan to expand the streets with the place. While the expansion of the road would allow developers to create new high rises it would greatly affect the local community that exists there. As Shimokitazawa is described as a walking environment, the street expansion would change the environment completely for those that live there and thus affect their survival. Many of the small local business owners in Shimokitazawa struggle to deal with the threat that comes from the private global retailers.
Of course, the topics of privatization and spatial compression do not only affect the retailers and buildings but also appears in the railways of Tokyo. Tokyo’s most impressive feature is in its transportation system, or more precisely, its railway system. With space being such a massive importance to Tokyo the railway must make due with space it has, and due to this the trains, that run on these tracks often use tracks that are owned by other companies and must run perfectly. According to Japanology Plus’s video there are 62 train lines just within central Tokyo and on top of that there are 55 different companies that operate in Tokyo and Tokyo has 632 stations.
According to “Tokyo Station City: The railway station as urban place” by John Zacharias, Tokyo Station is one of the busiest in Japan in terms of trains. The station itself is primarily owned by a privatized company called East Japan Railway Company. However, the station is still split between private companies. On the Marunouchi side there are around 2000 high rise towers due to the high density. The primary owner of the real estate is the Mitsubishi company and it controls the development of underground systems, allowing for the redesign of the streets, which now host sponsored public events, public arts and luxury retailing. As for the East side or Yaesu side, it contains the everyday business and entertainment. On this side the major property owners are Mitsui real estate company, the Kajima Yaesu development company, the International Tourism company and the Shinnihon Sekiyu. Thus the railroads are affected by local and global compression.
Takashi Machimura’s article “Symbolic Use of Globalization in Urban Politics in Tokyo” is very interesting as the author explains that Tokyo is both positive towards globalization and resistant to it at the same time. Tokyo’s resistance can be seen through how they treat their immigrant workers as they rarely recognize the immigrant work’s “right to the city”, as Tokyo tries to ignore its growing use of immigrants in the city’s work force. Takashi also explains that they also have issues due to the ideology that some people within Tokyo hold, which regards foreigners as only temporary guests in the city. This greatly clashes with the ideology of a “global city”. Since a global city connects with the world, thus foreigners often move in and begin to live within the city in search of opportunity. Of course, even with this resistance the globalization still happens in Tokyo in places like Shimokitazawa where the local have to struggle to stay in business as road plans, private rail companies and global retail store all try and push them out of their homes.
