One of the most striking things about the Tokyo skyline, at leastfor me, is how striking it isn`t. Viewed from afar — e.g., from itsvery-expensive-to-use elevated expressways {Narita Airport is too farfrom the city center to afford a decent panorama from the air} — thecity, with few exceptions {such as Tokyo Tower}, looks boxy andvisually uninteresting.This may be partly because much of Tokyo`s skyline was rebuilt aftera terrible earthquake in 1923 and bombing in World War II. Yet theskylines of San Francisco {after the 1905 earthquake} and London {alsothe target of bombing during the war} are more interesting today thanTokyo`s.The contrast between street-level and bird`s-eye views, on whichJane Jacobs based her opposition to modernist urban planning, is trueto some extent of nearly all great cities, but in Tokyo`s case it`sespecially stark. When I visualize New York or London, for example, inaddition to the busy street life I also imagine their iconic landmarks,like the Wall Street and Midtown skylines or the Tower Bridge andParliament. When I try to visualize Tokyo, only the street life comesto mind. Its almost insane busyness squeezed among impossibly compactcity blocks can cause sensory overload.I recently read an essay by the architect Ken-Ichi Sasaki that helpsto explain this. Mr. Sasaki argues in "For whom is city design?Tactility versus visuality," in "The City Cultures Reader," that the aesthetics {and I would argue also the epistemics} of a city aren`t visual but tactile.The most important factor in the aesthetics of the city isnot visuality but tactility. I consider visuality as the viewpoint ofthe visitor to a city, and tactility as that of its inhabitants."Tactileknowledge" is what we feel in the presence of an object: the smells ofa street, the texture of a building, the grade of a hill. It is theknowledge gained though contact or direct experience with an event orenvironment, and is closely related to Jacobs`s concept of "localityknowledge" as well as to F.A. Hayek`s "local knowledge." While Mr.Sasaki focuses on one`s perception of physical objects rather than thesocial relations with which Jacobs and especially Hayek are primarilyconcerned, the significance he attaches to the knowledge of "theparticular circumstances of time and place" {to quote Hayek} is, Ithink, the same.If indeed the tactile aesthetic dominates the visual for theJapanese, or at least for Tokyo-ites, this may help to account for thevisual drabness of such a great and lively city.But Mr. Sasaki argues that in recent history, and outside of Tokyoat least, there has been a shift from the tactile to the visual inurban planners` notion of what makes a city beautiful. I would imaginethis has a lot to do with the transition, especially in the 20thcentury, from a pedestrian- to a vehicular-based urban perspective.Today we are more likely to experience most cities from the seat of acar than from a sidewalk, and contemporary designs for public spacesseem to reflect that.Le Corbusier, for example, writing in 1929, famously describes anideal modern city from the perspective of a "fast car" in the essay "Acontemporary city" from his "City of Tomorrow," in which he declares, "a city made for speed is made for success" and other non sequiturs.The bias in urban policy toward the car and away from the pedestrianhas profoundly changed our experience of the city center, making itless interesting. This in turn has discouraged the formation of socialcapital, which is the foundation for tactile/local knowledge and itsutilization.Mr. Sasaki concludes:City design should take the view point not of the visitorbut of the inhabitant, and should not pursue a `good` form on theplanning sheet, but a good feeling of tactility recognized byinhabitants, and even visitors.Feels right to me!
www.nysun.com/blogs/culture-of-congestion/2008/07/ken-ichi-sasaki-on-urban-tactility.html