Stephen David Smith from Tokyo Story describes how this way of dealing with stuff is pretty normal in Tokyo. Whereas trusting people to return a borrowed book would be very hard in most cities in the rest of the world, in Tokyo people have a natural sense of civic duty to do so, says Smith. Frequent readers of this blog must have noticed that we have featured many urban library concepts that street interventionists have installed in the city over the last year. These concepts try to use trees, phone booths and other urban objects to stimulate people to share books and trust each other and be fair. In the context of these efforts in other cities this installation in Tokyo is interesting. Apparently societal values are different in Tokyo, which opens up many chances for concepts in public urban life.
Garbage collectors in Ankara have turned an abandoned brick factory into a community library full of discarded books.
Amsterdam's Southeast district is isolated from the rest of the city at night because the metros don't run after 1 AM. To discuss and draw attention to this problem, metro line 54 was transformed into a mobile podcast studio.
Torafu Architects have transformed a five-storey building in Tokyo into an office and co-living space for the business travellers coming to the city each day.