Overall planning and layer designing

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Design a new city from scratch is almost impossible even for the most talented urban designers and city planners. A city is a complex and dynamic entity which has many layers, including its ecosystem, water and energy supply, sewage network, supply chain, multiple type of transportation, and culture. They interact with each other constantly. Each layer sometimes covers different size of areas overlapping and integrating with each other and grow and decline constantly.  

Those layers are the mixture of hardware and some are software. A city hardware can be designed relatively with logic such as its unique transportation and energy systems to cope with globalization. But, design of software is not easy. It depends on the spontaneity of many people's activities. The cultural element of a city is especially important. It is the source of unique character and attractiveness of a city. For example, living in New York City and Tokyo is very different because they have different cultures. But in general, they are two very successful international metropolises. It is important to recognize and design a city through its layers.

Zhou Muzhi: Building a master plan before designing its layers is even more important.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Yes. It is necessary for us to discuss how the master plan works for urban development. But, master plan by integrating many layers activities is getting extremely difficult. It should not focus too much only on the physical design of facilities and city scape, but on the core ideas and philosophies to embody and strategies to achieve that .

Zhou Muzhi: Only this kind of master plan can truly guide the layers designing.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: We can design a city's drainage, energy supply and transportation systems because these are all visible facilities. But it is hard to plan for a city's invisible elements like its culture.

Zhou Muzhi: Many elements in the cultural layer are decided by the unique characteristics of a region's cultural orientations. Some may turn to nationalism and some may choose regionalism. The former confronts globalization through its own culture while the latter aims to demonstrate its own regional and cultural features in globalization. Each successful international metropolis has its own choice in cultural orientations.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: A city's cultural layer needs constant fine-tuning. Any culture has two elements. There are elements which change over time and elements which does not and should not change. This is a difficult issue when you deal with renovation and renewal. 

Zhou Muzhi: Right. For example, China has built a lot of new cities and zones in recent years with very good facilities and infrastructures, but their cultural vibe is something that needs constant nurturing. I invited many foreign friends to visit Shenzhen. The city boasts a lot of skyscrapers, but they find it not interesting at all. The city of Guangzhou made them excited because they can easily experience the typical Cantonese history and culture while walking down the streets.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: This is also the case with Nishi-Shinjuku, a Tokyo's urban sub-center. You cannot feel its charm because it has over control of open space use in the context of discouraging the student revolt which was common all over the world in the late 1960’s. Unfortunately, this kind of control orientation not nurture spontaneous and self-evolving in culture of urban areas. Many buildings have  squares and open spaces but no street food venders which are common at night market.

Zhou Muzhi: The cultural element and the ecosystem of a city are constantly evolving in itself. Urban designing and management should promote their cultural and ecological development. A city’s tradition, culture and ecology develop through time and form its own characteristics that its residents take pride in.

The great Italian designer Mario Bellini once told me: A city is not built, destroyed or changed at your disposal. A city is where a community with the same cultural identity live and grow.

Service industries and interaction economy

Zhou Muzhi: Unlike Mr. Yokoyama's view that the labor productivity ratio in Japan's service sector is lower than the US level, my understanding is that this is exactly what makes Japan's service sector so charming. Service industries in the country, such as catering and retail, emphasize on interactions with customers, which can hardly be standardized but help engage customers in enjoyable conversations and help improve the overall service quality of the industries in a steady manner.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: This is like dining in a fancy sushi restaurant. The quality of the dishes themselves is important for the customers, but at the same time, the interactions with the sushi chefs are also an important element of enjoyment. Naturally, you can accommodate a small number of custmers.

Zhou Muzhi: Therefore, when it comes to evaluating different commercial areas these days, we should compare the number of locally owned catering and retail businesses with that of chain brands in the areas. Only those with more locally owned brands can obtain high praises, because businesses doing well in customer interactions are mostly locally owned ones offering customized services.

For example, Kichijoji, the neighborhood where I live, is the most popular block in Japan and is rated the No.1 commercial area in the country. Shops in Kichijoji are mostly operated by self-employed individuals, with an average area much smaller than Tokyo's average. However, per square meter sales volume in Kichijoji shops is very high, much higher than that of the Disneyland.

Therefore, the standardized approach is not necessarily the only way to take when service businesses aim at pursuing high added value. The interaction economy approach deserves more attention.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Tokyo has more Michelin star restaurants than any other city in the world.

Zhou Muzhi: In the 2018 ranking of Chinese cities on hotel and restaurant radiating capability released by the Cloud River Urban Research Institute, the top 10 cities were Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Sanya, Xi'an, and Xiamen, which are home to 36% of China's five-star hotels and 77% of the country's top international restaurants.

A close look at the radiating capability of IT industry and that of hotel and restaurant has demonstrated a "perfect correlation" between them, with the correlation coefficient reaching 0.9. This indicates that, working in a typical industry of the interaction economy, the high-income IT professionals are keen on quality dining experience, and that restaurants are important venues for these professionals to "interact". Top cities with strong radiating capability of IT industry are all famous for their food. Today, the ability to offer great food has become a major boost to a city’s endeavor in developing its interaction economy.

By contrast, the correlation coefficient of manufacturing radiating capability and hotel and restaurant radiating capability registered only 0.68. Clearly, compared to IT professionals, manufacturing professionals are much less sensitive to delicious food.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Certainly, there is connection between Tokyo's advanced IT industry and its food. The higher people’s income and the intellectual levels of their work are, the higher the need for interactions will be. The COVID-19 pandemic will not put an end to globalization.

Zhou Muzhi: In that sense, as the hubs for globalization and interaction economy, international metropolises are not likely to suffer irretrievable economic declines. They are bound to recover from the setback and embrace a new era of economic boom.

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