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EXCLUSIVE ONLINE REPORT
Inviting Totoro to Tokyo
Jared Braiterman

Inviting Totoro to Tokyo disrupts conventional ideas about daily urban life and offers fresh inspiration for cities’ extraordinary possibilities. Habitat creation for a fictional character dissolves the borders between science and magic, city and country, pragmatism and aesthetics.
Tokyo presents the ultimate edge case: the world’s biggest city, poorly planned, fully built-out with insufficient open space, and increasing in population despite Japan’s rural population collapse.
Biodiversity campaigns often focus on preserving rain forests, coral reefs, and wilderness areas far from human habitation. But more than half of the world’s population already lives in cities, and millions more are arriving every month. Maintaining the divide between human life and the natural world often relegates biodiversity to a place outside of daily life and experience.
To read entire article, download as PDF file (140KB)
Jared Braiterman is the founder of Tokyo Green Space and Research Fellow at Tokyo University of Agriculture
tokyogreenspace.com/
Tokyo DIY garden interactive map
Sensing Nature at Mori Art Museum
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