Tokyo is awash with “redevelopment” (saikaihatsu) projects. The abundance of recently completed, ongoing, and proposed projects also brings substantial attention and praise to Tokyo for fostering an attractively cosmopolitan, future-oriented city. Yet these projects share a revealing characteristic: collectively they advance a city riven with expanding segregationist intent, eager to bring forth more intrusive levels of control, exclusion, and surveillance. 

Sleek new office towers and an abundance of attractive retail spaces define a growing number of Tokyo neighborhoods. Arguably this trend is most visible in Shibuya, where a now decades-long collection of construction endeavors has comprehensively transformed the area. The scale of change in Shibuya has also made it a template for “redevelopment,” as the various projects are held up as indicative of the future direction Tokyo and Japan aspire to. That appears to be a future where consumerist desires find endless outlets for satiation and work is of a technical nature, oriented toward ill-defined notions of entrepreneurial innovation and sustainable growth. All in a nation where persistent, anxious discussion of the aging and shrinking population, alongside the enduring consequences of an “

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