City Center Regeneration as a Humanistic Urbanism

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  • 人文学的アーバニズムとしての中心市街地再生
  • ジンブンガクテキ アーバニズム ト シテ ノ チュウシン シガイチ サイセイ

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Abstract

<p>    The regeneration of city centers in local cities has long been an issue in Japan's postwar city planning. The reality is, however, the core parts of most local cities are dysfunctional. On the other hand, simultaneous and frequent movements of “unscheduled regeneration” have recently been underway to upgrade cities incrementally on a small scale. This study aims to interpret these urban planning changes as a shift from “engineering urbanism” to “humanistic urbanism.” <BR>    Engineering urbanism refers to the idea and method of promoting standardized nationwide plans and projects through a centralized administrative system under the engineering recognition that cities are controllable. It became possible against the historical background of the modern city image's social sharing and urbanization. Due to engineering urbanism, the city center's postwar rehabilitation has been promoted policywise under the three themes of modernization, revitalization, and consolidation. <BR>    However, engineering urbanism had the problem of assuming a simplistic model in which attractive spaces were naturally born from combined elements, such as commercial facilities, houses, streets, and parks. Actual urban regeneration is not achieved by merely adding functions and infrastructures. Such an attempt resulted in the over-development of facilities and infrastructures. To avoid such a mess, we need to understand the mechanism of urban center regeneration as a complicated story rather than a direct causal relationship. In other words, it is essential to clarify the logic of how the actors living in the city think and behave, eventually leading to changes in the city. This study calls such a way of recognition humanistic urbanism. <BR>    Planned development and control are invisible in some local cities, as in the Zenkoji gate zone in Nagano and the old city neighborhoods in Onomichi. In some cases, the entire city's individuality takes shape as its actors, connected like a rhizome, influence each other and share lifestyles by trial and error in line with the regional context. This way, we hope to get a more profound insight into the “urban sponge” phenomenon facing contemporary local cities than we can with mere urban morphological explanations. It will also lead to the conception of “humanities for the regeneration of city centers.”</p>

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