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“the highly developed urban system, urban traditions and material culture of the pre-modern period, which remained influential until well after the Pacific War. A second key influence has been the dominance of central government in urban affairs, and its consistent prioritisation of economic growth over the public welfare or urban quality of life. This bias is seen both in the preference for large-scale infrastructure projects over local parks or roads, and in the reluctance to regulate private urban land development activity.”
― André Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the Twenty First Century

“Perhaps the most significant of these are two related aspects characteristic of Japanese urbanisation: the intense intermixture of differing land uses, and the extensive areas of unplanned, haphazard urban development. Mixed land use is so prevalent in Japanese cities that it may be hard to believe the government Figure 0.1 The “busy place” (sakariba) of Ueno is one Japan’s most enduring central city entertainment and shopping districts, and was already famous in the Tokugawa period for its theatres and nightlife.”
― André Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the Twenty First Century

“More important in aggregate population were about two hundred castle towns (Jōkamachi), distributed throughout the breadth of the archipelago, which ranged in population from one or two thousand to over a hundred thousand (Hall 1968; Rozman 1986). There was also a range of other urban settlements, most of which were smaller than the castle towns, such as the post towns (shukubamachi) along the main trunk highways, port towns (minato), market towns (ichibamachi), and religious centres (monzenmachi).”
― André Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the Twenty First Century

“Modernism defined itself through the exclusion of mass culture, and postmodernism renegotiates high and popular forms of culture. Modernism is characterized by a utopian desire and commitment to radical change, and postmodernism–which questions the presumptions of modernism–by critique, demystification and the significance of difference.”
― Jane Tormey, Cities and Photography