Global Tokyo

This book unlocks the global city Tokyo shedding light on heritage-led urban regeneration and its decision-making processes in two urban centres - Nihonbashi and Marunouchi. Detailing some of Tokyo's most prominent and recent redevelopment projects, it takes the empirical approach to identify institutions and actors; their collective actions as place-makers; and how they project the authenticity of urban places in planning processes. The author argues that heritage-led regeneration tends to monopolize authenticity by debilitating the visibility of other cultural and historic qualities in urban places. In consequence, authenticity turns into a singular entity leading to the homogenization of urban places. In the urban age, cities unprecedently crave authenticity and therefore it is constituted and reproduced in the centre of global city making. On top of that, the nation-state is behind these processes and makes it possible. This power interlaces nationalism and national narrative into placemaking to achieve a leading global city. In this fashion, the book challenges the existing scholarship in urban conservation, global city and the notion of authenticity.