Jedd’s Reviews > Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City > Status Update

Key common theme among Zakkyo, Yokocho, Ankyo streets, underfills, and the low rise neighborhoods: "inexpensive, transformable, and adaptable" architecture stock that's neighborhood facing and accessible

Lessons from low-rise neighborhood "village Tokyo":
1. Use gap spaces to encourage permeability and adaptability ("shared extra courtyard/backyard")
2. Encourage dispersed small greenery (in these spaces)
3. Use distinct street types to create gradations in landscape
4. Foster collective safety via street-side doors and windows ("neighborhood CCTV")
5. Allow for variety of building types/use even in residential areas

Learnings from the low-rise "village Tokyo" neighborhoods:
1. Adaptable urban fabric
2. Transit convenience (people can get their daily needs done within station vicinities along their commute — the MRT could never)
3. Vibrant community life (due to an embrace of intimacy on one hand, and a necessary need to share common spaces because of small subdivided plots on the other).

Policy + history shapes design.

Takeaways from ankyos:
1. Ok to be ambiguous and not as "zoned"
2. Invest in greenways (not everything has to be a commercial space — esp. not residential corridors)
3. Always have "design breaks" i.e. break up monotony
4. Redundancy is okay — it provides extra "common living space"

I like the concept of "open-air intergenerational living rooms"

Final notes from the underfill part — accessibility is still the primary driver of the "design sense" of these spaces + high demand for leisure

Common with these narrow alleyways is they're VERY connected to either prime train station/transport hubs, parks, and/or clustered & maintained residential neighborhoods. Inspiring, but definitely need qualifiers.

Explains the F&B and retail bias in tenant occupancy.

Pursue intimacy — connections between street + store-front (open "permeation") allows for increased attraction/brightness in otherwise vacant/dreary spaces.

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However, how much of this is also possible due to Japan's strong basic infra? How about in places more "poorly layouted" like Manila — who also suffers from year-long bad weather?