Bryn Mawr College Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College Growth and Structure of Cities Faculty Research Growth and Structure of Cities and Scholarship 2008 Machi: Neighborhood and Small Town—The Foundation for Urban Transformation in Japan Carola Hein Bryn Mawr College,
[email protected] Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy . Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.brynmawr.edu/cities_pubs Part of the Architecture Commons, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Custom Citation Hein, Carola. "Machi: Neighborhood and Small Town—The oundF ation for Urban Transformation in Japan." Journal of Urban History 35 (2008): 75-107. This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. http://repository.brynmawr.edu/cities_pubs/22 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Machi: Neighborhood and Small Town. The foundation for Urban Transformation in Japan Carola Hein In 1854, American navy ships under Commodore Matthew Perry appeared off the shores of Japan and pressured the formerly secluded nation into accepting a treaty that included opening some ports to American ships and the beginning of trading. i With this opening to outside influences, Japanese professionals began to study—among other subjects— modernizing European and American cities in search of models to implement at home. ii When they applied new principles, Japanese practitioners tweaked the original ideas to make them fit their own changing cultural backgrounds, local needs, experiences, and practice. I argue that one element in their particular reading of foreign form was and continues to be their understanding of urban space in terms of neighborhoods and small towns, both of which are called machi in Japanese.