Tokyo Olympic Games 1964 and 2020:

A Memorandum on the Conditions of Urban (Re)development

Abstract

    In this article, I briefly investigate the difference in the conditions of urban (re)development around the two Olympic Games that was held (and will be held) in Tokyo. There are serious differences between 1964 and 2020. One is a burgeoning commercialization of the event itself, and the other is a process of profit earning related to some large-scale redevelopments of public spaces in the latter; in short, it is the very shift in the value from use value to exchange value. We can find the same situation not only in the urban center but also in the reclaimed coastal land area. On the other hand, the characteristic around the 1964 event is the massive conversion and construction of infrastructures in urban centers. However, as these public projects were forwarded according to the circumstances of rapid economic growth, many of the built environments constructed at that time come to fetters with urban growth nowadays. On the modality of representing the city or landscape, people changed their consciousness with the “clean-up campaign” and a thorough invisibilization of garbage, litter, poster, sewage, and wastewater with a sense of hygiene at the time.