I have come across with this news today, which reports on the IOC’s consideration of postponing the Tokyo 2020. Such spectacles as Olympic Games entail a sense of ‘state of emergency’, leading to the suspension of normal planing processes and diversion of investment in necessary social and physical infrastructure for the poor and the marginalised. […]
On 23 and 24 March 2018, I had the pleasure of visiting Tokyo to give two invited talks. On 23 March, the talk was at the Association of Japanese Geographers 2018 Spring Conference and was entitled “Unequal Cities of Spectacle in the Global East”. It was great to interact with urban geographers in Japan. On […]
My last trip to Tokyo was in late December 2010, about three months before the earthquake and the leakage of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plants. I haven’t been able to return since then, and if I do, it would be interesting to compare the atmosphere of the city with what I felt during […]