For instance, "the system [in yokochos] allows owners and managers to customise their spaces, invest in them as a long term project, and get involved in decision-making affecting the yokocho as a whole. Tokyo at its best offers a new vision for a human-scale urban ecosystem, where ordinary residents can shape their own environment in ways large and small, and communities take on a life of their own beyond government master planning and corporate profit-seeking.

It is interesting to see the evolution of the many districts and how they have morphed into their various, current states. This book demystifies Tokyo's emergent urbanism for an international audience, explaining its origins, its place in today's Tokyo, and its role in the Tokyo of tomorrow. In progressive cities we are maybe too critical of private initiative,” said Christian Dimmer, an urban studies professor at Waseda University and a longtime Tokyo resident. We also see the vast differences between corporate-led Tokyo and Emergent Tokyo and how they each play out and their influence on the people and places around them.

Joe McReynolds is an urban studies scholar affiliated with Keio University, where he studies Tokyo’s approach to urban development and how public policy shapes its urban fabric and communities, particularly Tokyo’s myriad subcultures.

The alleys and unplanned common areas those give rise to result in a true "neighborhood" feel, unbroken by large car-oriented roads or high-rise apartments. A lot of unplanned neighborhoods do have shaky property rights hence the incentive is just to possess the land and built a cheap building.It seems fitting that on these streets you can see greenery growing as a result of the water still flowing underneath.