Development of workshop framework empowering local stakeholders for “place strategy” in a district: An implementation at Omotesando, Tokyo

Abstract

This research aims to structure the workshop framework ‘empowering local stakeholders to create a “place strategy”’, a spatial planning and management strategy for enhancing place function in a district. This strategy primarily focuses on the team-up phase for stakeholders with human and financial resources, whose mission is to bridge a backcasting vision to the next step involving others and users of the streets. Referring to the ‘link and place’ theory, originally developed in England and adapted to fit the alternative plans suggested by municipal officials at the community level, the paper establishes a toolkit and sessions for the conduct of a community-led workshop in Japan. The prototype workshop was implemented for the place strategy of Omotesando, a mixed land-use district with a famous shopping avenue in Tokyo. The validity of the workshop was examined based on opinion changes and the feedback of participants at each session. The results show that the prototype can draw the participant's consciousness on both the link and place functions, including a perspective on effective bus service. The policy option guides affected the participants' choice of flexible tactics by illustrating the relationship of link and place, which is not necessarily a trade-off.