Jorge Almazán: This is not only an American problem. The Modernist obsession with expansive open spaces left many European post-war recent developments with too large and too ill-located parks.

The parts of Tokyo that feel the most Tokyo-esque and beloved are not the parts of the city that were designed from the top down, for the most part, to be that way.”— @McReynoldsJoe [0:07:54 ]Joe: Yeah, so funny, you should ask that since actually, I’m working with a think tank on a major research project on what China is and is not learning from the Ukraine conflict. And that’ll hopefully be out sometime later this year, especially once we can see how the conflict ultimately plays out. So, see what China’s taking away.

Salim Furth: You and your colleagues are releasing a Japanese language edition later this year. How does the book serve Japanese and foreign audiences differently? What, then, are the salient features of Tokyo’s ‘emergent urbanism’? The authors mainly define it by what it is not, that is, corporate-led urbanism that has benefited vastly from significant deregulation and planning delegation to private actors, as evident in the ‘sleek yet generic super-high-rise towers placed on top of shopping-mall-like commercial podia, all without a hint of serendipity or idiosyncrasy’ (p. 207). In stark contrast, Tokyo’s small neighbourhoods are ‘filled with a multiplicity of independent owners and operators, economies of agglomeration, small-scale architecture, urban spaces that are physically and socially permeable, interconnected networks rather than top-down hierarchies, and bottom-up incremental growth rather than corporate development’ (p. 216).Joe: First off, you should know to call me. Like any charter cities project, I’m always someone – I describe myself as a little bit pessimistic, on charter cities to you offline, I think, but I’m still interested. And also, I’m someone who wants to be involved and my motive is not particularly financial. I have a lot of thoughts on relatively low-cost ways to make cities of the future, whether they be charter cities, or just evolutions of current cities, more dynamic and livable from what I’ve learned studying Tokyo. Joe: Sure. Though, depending on the questions, I may tell you, I can’t speak about X, Y and Z, because of my day job. But sure. He is the research editor and coauthor of our main topic of conversation today, Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City. He is also the lead editor and coauthor of China’s Evolving Military Strategy, and the forthcoming book, China’s Information Warfare. We have a wide-ranging conversation on the emergent nature of Tokyo urbanism and urbanism more generally, as well as on China’s military capabilities and the potential for conflict over Taiwan. I hope you enjoy this episode. Thank you for listening.

Salim Furth: Some of the spaces in Emergent Tokyo benefit from well-placed trees or potted plants. Those are almost always delightful in a city, but there’s a tension between providing space and sunlight for plants and allowing for narrow passages and tall buildings. In the U.S., the Garden City movement’s love of greenery has led to a lot of dead, oversized urban spaces. What can we learn from Tokyo about including trees in small spaces? Tokyo is one of the most vibrant and livable cities on the planet, a megacity that somehow remains intimate and adaptive. Compared to Western metropolises like New York or Paris, however, few outsiders understand Tokyo's inner workings. For cities around the globe mired in crisis and seeking new models for the future, Tokyo's success at balancing between massive growth and local communal life poses a challenge: can we design other cities to emulate its best qualities?Jorge Almazán: “Emergence” is a property of “complex systems,” which are distinct “chaotic systems” (See Stephen Wolfram’s work.) Roughly speaking, complex systems’ behavior is not regular, but it isn’t chaotic either. Complex systems have structure, even if it is difficult to define. In this formal sense, cities (including Tokyo) are closer to emergent complex systems than purely chaotic systems. That’s kind of a digression. But I think it’s important to note, and this is something where my weird experience with Japan really helps, because I think a lot of people, they come to Japan, and their only impression of engaging with Japanese people, if they don’t speak Japanese, their only impression of engaging Japanese people is the very sort of English speaking, globalist well to do Tokyo cohort, whether in customer service or in business, or things like that. That’s like, if you have no experience of America, and your entire understanding of what Americans are like, is you stayed with John Kerry’s extended family, and it’s all like Boston Brahmins or something like that. Joe: Yeah. Well, let me tell you another one for Tokyo that really makes a huge difference is Shintoism, not necessarily as a religion, but as a practice, I’m a non-theistic Jew, shall we say. I’m Jewish, but like I’m more cultural Jewish. I’m not on my knees praying to God. Shintoism is pretty relatable to me and how it’s often practiced in Tokyo because the Shinto, the little shrines, especially the portable shrines in different neighborhoods of Tokyo, there are all sorts of festivals where the portable shrine you got to get for usually men, not always, but usually in men with decent, semi decent muscle to them to lift this portable shrine on there four shoulders and kind of carry it around to represent the neighborhood in the local festival or things like that.