[Feature: Viewing the City from Parks] "Miyashita Park" and "Park-based Community Development": On the Recent "Difficulty of Narrating" Urban Parks

Recent parks have become sociologically difficult to narrate—in this essay, I would like to consider this issue.

When speaking sociologically about parks, the normative concept of "publicness" is always present. From a sociological perspective, parks are representative urban spaces that embody publicness; conversely, the nature of the publicness embodied by a park is often used as a yardstick for the publicness of the entire urban space in which it is embedded. In such cases, an image of what an ideal public space should be is first envisioned, and actual parks are then graded and criticized based on their gap from that ideal model.

According to Junichi Saito, there are three meanings of publicness: "official" (relating to the state), "common" (relating to all people), and "open" (accessible to anyone)*1. Among these, the publicness embodied by a park is the third type, with the primary requirement being that a park is a facility accessible to anyone. Therefore, when a park is criticized from the perspective of normative publicness, it is condemned for "being closed when it should be open." Indeed, Saito also cites parks as an example in this context, stating: "To give one example, a space with water, shade, benches, and public toilets represents a final safety net for human beings, but it is well known that there are movements to take even that away and turn parks into closed spaces"*2.

The developments surrounding Miyashita Park in Shibuya Ward are likely a typical example of such criticism. "Miyashita Park," which opened in July 2020, is a complex facility integrating a shopping mall, hotel, park, and parking lot, redeveloped by Shibuya Ward in collaboration with a major developer. However, during this redevelopment process, homeless people living in Miyashita Park were excluded. There is a prior history to Shibuya Ward's exclusion of homeless people from Miyashita Park; in 2009, during the plan to transform it into "Miyashita Nike Park"—which involved renovating the park after selling the naming rights to a corporation—homeless tents and other belongings were forcibly removed, leading to a lawsuit over the response*3.

The movement to exclude homeless people while developing stylish commercial facilities housing cafes and luxury brand tenants certainly has a blatant and grotesque side. Under the name of "Park," which is supposed to encompass diverse activities, the creation of a tidy commercial space that grants access only to obedient consumers who have a certain amount of money, wear certain clothes, and follow certain codes of conduct is ironic and deserves criticism when measured against the norm of publicness that is "open" to everyone. Using common sociological concepts, this is "gentrification" that makes urban space upscale and exclusive, "privatization" of public space, and the Shibuya Ward policy driving it could be described as "neoliberal."

However, even if such criticisms are justified and one should continue to protest the injustice of exclusion in practice, these words of criticism currently seem strangely unable to reach their target, losing their original critical potential. The statement that "recent parks are sociologically difficult to narrate" relates to this "failure to reach" of criticism.

Let's consider the same problem from a different angle. In the past, there was a strong dichotomy between urban planning and Machizukuri (community development). On one side were uniform, rigid projects pushed top-down by the administration; on the other side were flexible community development movements launched bottom-up by residents based on diverse local needs. If urban planning is a system for urban environment improvement aimed at top-down control (regulation and guidance) by the administration, then Machizukuri is an activity for improving the living environment aimed at both hard and soft management by pluralistic actors such as residents and NPOs. Today, however, urban planning and Machizukuri are not in opposition; urban planning itself has begun to incorporate elements of Machizukuri*4.

Urban planning, which aimed at control, was a system for managing the expansion of urban space during phases of population growth, economic growth, and urban expansion. However, upon entering a phase of population decline, economic stagnation, and urban shrinkage, urban planning needed to respond to diverse social issues at the local level, leading it to incorporate Machizukuri—which aims at management—into its own programs.

A typical example of the results of Machizukuri is none other than the creation of unique parks for each region. In park planning through Machizukuri, numerous workshops involving residents are held, and designs are carefully refined. Facilitators with specialized knowledge participate, and games and discussions are repeated. From the overall layout down to individual furniture, unique designs are devised that utilize the history and resources of the land and community, rather than typical uniform designs. Furthermore, in the maintenance and management of the completed parks, rather than leaving it to the administration, local residents set up groups for self-management.

In this way, using park creation as a catalyst, communication among residents is revitalized, and the successful experience of solving local issues themselves leads to further collaborative efforts to solve diverse problems. In other words, through the medium of park creation, the revitalization of Machizukuri can be expected. According to Shigeru Sato's definition, "Machizukuri is a series of sustainable activities based on resources existing in the local community, where diverse actors collaborate and cooperate to incrementally improve the immediate living environment, enhance the vitality and charm of the town, and realize an 'improvement in the quality of life'*5." This definition fits "park-based community development" perfectly.

This kind of park-based community development is also difficult to criticize from a sociological perspective based on normative publicness. This is because, at first glance, these are "good things." If one were to dare to criticize them, perhaps only the following three directions would be possible. First, the direction of pointing out "exclusion from participation," where the residents who actively participate are limited and some people are excluded. Second, the direction of pointing out that resident-led design and self-management are a "dumping of work" by local governments lacking human and financial resources, representing the "mobilization of volunteerism" (where a resonance between "neoliberalism" and volunteer activities can also be noted*6). And third, the direction of pointing out that while appearing to be Machizukuri aimed at management, "control as management" is secretly at work, with the administration controlling the evaluation criteria for design and maintenance. However, all of these, like the sociological criticisms of Miyashita Park mentioned earlier, seem somewhat external and lack the power to strike the center of the target.

Currently, "Miyashita Park"-style spaces and "Park-based Community Development"-style spaces are proliferating in urban areas, and between the two, the sociological perspective is suspended, losing effective words of criticism. Criticisms of Miyashita Park such as "gentrification," "privatization," and "neoliberalism" miss the mark, and criticisms of park-based community development such as "exclusion from participation," "mobilization of volunteerism," and "control as management" deviate from the center of the target. None of them are wrong, but they do not function as radical critiques; the situation progresses steadily on a layer different from the one where such circuits are established, and urban space continues to transform. Sociological language has not caught up with the reality of such proliferating spaces and the nature of publicness within them.

If narrating the current state of publicness in parks is a litmus test for narrating the current state of publicness in urban space as a whole, then the effectiveness and potential of the sociological perspective depend on how we can (critically) narrate "Miyashita Park" and "Park-based Community Development" in a meaningful way. I intend to continue refining my thoughts on the origins of the "difficulty of narrating" the park(-like) spaces proliferating in current urban areas and how to break through it.