This thesis, which contributes to the field of architectural inquiry, examines modern Japanese urban space as a whole constituted vis-〓-vis the pathways of individuals. A pathway, in the context of this research, designates the daily creation of an individual itinerary within public space. It marks an intersection between the individual and the socio-spatial urban realities of his or her environment.

A pathway, it is argued, provides the basis for a scientific inquiry exploring the movements of urbanites and their acts of path−making within built urban space; in particular, the urban journey that takes place in the time between the departure from, and return to, the place of dwelling. The space of the pathway, in this framework, is seen as being the locus of essential knowledge regarding the encounter between people's pursuits in life and urban environments and events − the raw material that molds into what we term 'urban life'. Moreover, it allows to make objective the city, not as a series of isolated architectures but rather as a composition experienced subjectively.

Within this framework I attempt to understand the engagement of an individual's personal space with concrete urban space. The aim of this research is to seek the storied formation and practice of varied movements within the contemporary megalopolis, and to identify and code the varied narratives of individuals created on the operational platform of ordinary urban journeys. A pathway, in this context, can be read as a personal narration of the everyday.

The objectives of those engaged in everyday urban routines are generally not the same as the more esoteric goals favored by, say, the utopist. More than reflecting on the meta-narratives of human existence they are inclined to be busy organizing the completion of immediate and discrete tasks. What is of concern to them lies in the personal logic that assembles and connects frequently visited places such as the 'street', 'park', 'station', 'shop', 'school', etc.; it lies in the literacy and practices required to negotiate the social and political codes of the street; and all those similar requirements associated with developing and protecting habitual practices. Moreover, the more immediate objectives of these ordinary inhabitants lies instead in walking, climbing stairs, lining, observing, parking one's bicycles, looking outside from a moving train, standing inside that train, etc., and 'the micro-politics of what sociologist Erving Goffman [1971] famously referred to as 'the presentation of self', in public space'.

There is a complex relationship and feedback loop between cities and inhabitants which is born out of the extraordinary intricacy of a city on the one hand, and the ordinary practice of people on the other. Both terms − 'the city' and 'ordinary practice' − require definition and elaboration, which will be provided in the second and third chapters. For the purpose of this summary it will suffice to note here Michel de Certeau's definition of the city as the “most immoderate of human texts” [1984; p.92]. Responses to this immoderate space take then, through the daily practice of individuals, a moderate shape. But let us not be mistaken, moderation here is not synonym with austerity.

This thesis offers not simply an assertion of the multiplicity or complexity of the city but a recognition that urban life is, before all, a product of the daily mix of operations of its inhabitants. Put another way, the physicality of cities is powered to a significant degree by the almost intangible forces of numerous small operations. Furthermore, despite the varying permutations of the urban structure constantly introduced by architects, developers and capital in general, the city always remains at some level subject to the social activation of individuals. Existing alongside the physical environments of cities there are always the singular practitioners responsible for the generation of its spatial configuration [through operations, rejections, etc.].

These types of relations between users and the built environment have, of course, to different degrees and for different purposes, been the subject of past research across the broad spectrum of disciplinary fields concerned with urban life. For example, Robert Park wrote in 1916: “The city is a state of mind" [1969]. Louise Wirth, concerned with the social and individual aspects of urbanism wrote in 1938: “As long as we identify urbanism with the physical entity of the city, … we are not likely to arrive at any adequate conception of urbanism as a mode of life [2002]. Henri Lefebvre, later introduced a crucial notion of space as an historical production, as at once the medium and outcome of social being, and that social relations have no real existence except in and through space [1991].

Pioneering work such as Lefebvre's interrogation of 'space' has more recently generated analogous inquiries in other urban-related academic fields such as history, anthropology and geography. For example: architectural historians have critiqued to the privileged status of tangible architecture and the role of the architect, suggesting instead that architecture is continuously reproduced through use and the practices of everyday life [e.g. Rapoport 1969, 1977; King 1980, 1984]. Likewise, works in anthropology have argued that space is intimately bound up in everyday life, social activities, and personal rites [see: Bestor 1996; Hall 1966; Low and Lawrence-Z〓〓iga 2003]. Alternatively, there are cultural theory perspectives such as those offered by Michel de Certeau that distinguish space as operated by an ensemble of practices, and by moments of possibility. Similarly, Kevin Lynch [1960] and Christopher Alexander [1977] should be noted for their trust in human experience of urban environment as the only source for liable knowledge in planning and research in architecture. Finally, among more recent work on space is a body of work arguing that in an era of globalization we must conceptualize cities not simply in terms of their physicality but be equally attentive to their constitution through, and as, different kinds of flows and mobility, from people to commodity and information [Allen, et al. 1999; Amin and Thrift 2002; Appadurai 1996; Massey, et al. 1999; Smith 2001; Sudjic 1992; Urry 2000].

Taken as a whole, the abovementioned works offer a complementary understanding to the 'tangible city' by revealing how human/urban geographies are filled with flows of power, politics and ideology. Moreover, these same studies have brought to the foreground an awareness of spatiality and the usefulness of spatial analysis as an approach in cultural theory and the social sciences and, as this thesis argues, for the field of architectural studies as well.

The analysis of the spatial formation − the pathway − at the centre of this thesis is strongly informed by all the works mentioned above in that they refer to the production of spatial practices, representations, and lived experiences and at the same time attend to the dialectical configuration of the activities that bind them. Such space will not reduce the significant of life's inherent sociality and the singularities of the individual within, dim his creative and critical perspectives associated with the experience of urban environment, or eliminate his practical and theoretical understanding of the city.

This thread of inquiry across the broader urban sciences provides a departure point for my investigation. It attempts to contribute new knowledge to the analysis of urban space via its distinctive perspective: that of the pathway. Instead of providing an inquiry into a more conventional architectural issue [such as a specific architectural development, for instance] I have chosen to concentrate on questions of how urban and architectural studies might learn from knowledge produced 'outside' its own professional and disciplinary boundaries. Specifically I suggest that the daily itineraries of individuals and the spaces that they produce/practice offer a productive site of attention. This is not an explicit nor implicit argument that the physical and political aspects of urban studies are somehow of lesser importance. Rather, the thesis is arguing for a much stronger recognition of more inventive, complementary and scientifically sustained 'preliminary' investigations into how and people use the city, how is the city subject to their practices, and how does the city exert its own hold on the narratives of its residents by providing coordinates for their lived experiences.

The possibility of recognizing cities as lived narratives with all their attendant complexity provides us with a legitimate object of analysis. But how should we more practically interpret these immoderate individual practices in order to make sense of their plurality and complexity? Similarly, how should we read the pathway narrative?

My analysis throughout the thesis, both in theoretical discussion and through forty-seven individual cases, is interested in an array of questions regarding the elements that figures into contemporary pathways. For example, a central problematic in such an analysis would involve deciphering how the city [seen here as a 'system'] influences the individual pathway. As well, does that individual, accordingly and independently, through daily practice, influence the city? It should also be asked what habitually dominants the individual urban experience and how active is this person in manipulating this experience to his desire? In relation to the changing nature of the metropolis and particularly to the construction site that he guards, it is also desirable to consider the issue of routine as well as contingent events and ask how these might rupture or threaten the rationalized space of the pathway? Other questions are those which consider the influence of temporal factors and power upon his pathway, the specific rhythm of its operation. Similarly, the relative power of technology, the authorship over its objectives and determination would offer insights into the relationship between the individual and the city.

Taken as a whole, these questions are interested how, in their progression, the pathways of individuals are influenced by, and themselves might influence, the value of what our space has been consolidate into by the present urban reality.

Central to this work is the related matter of the human body as both a cultural endeavor, and a subject for self-appropriation and adaptation [e.g. Nast and Pile 1998; Pile 1996]. Each of the forty-seven participants in this research, or the thirty-three million residents of greater Tokyo, articulates in his/her daily pathway, a necessarily different form of social space dependent on social status, gender, age, interest, and pursuit. The human subject also generate space according to the vary modes of operations, psychic, artistic, or inherent. It is precisely these characteristics that the abstractions of space [such as those found in much architectural discourse] tend to erase; therefore, this work is directed towards their restoration. By tracing individual itineraries and the social space that contextualizes them, the research will demonstrate the ways in which the individual pathway “preserves and emphasizes, ensuring that the right to the city is not the right to buildings or even public space but rather the right to be different, the right not to be classified forcibly into categories determined by homogenizing powers” [Lefebvre in Borden 2001]. The urbanite human subject is then particularly useful for understanding space. It is through human spatial practices that city space comes together, that it operates, that difference is preserves within repetition, and stagnation avoided.

The pathway, then, is a number of things. Firstly, it is a tool that applies to understand city space through a number of issues that shares a focus on the relationship between man and space, and on the ways in which bodies and built environments are interlinked and enmeshed. The pathway is thus a refusal to privilege either the scientific or the poetic but to insist on both; it is a research into the daily journeys of individuals as 'paths' and 'narratives' rather than 'maps' or 'drawings'. It is as well a panorama of the contemporary urban society illustrated through its engagement of everyday life and, accordingly, an attempt to illuminate 'the urban everyday' in a manner that prises it loose from its deadening backgrounds. The pathway is an attempt to turn apprehension of movements in cities to a state where they are recognized as vital and autonomous rather than a ministration space between more valuable spaces, an attempt to reach a state where articulation and change are initiated from 'inside' the pathway rather then being byproducts born through changes accruing at the behest of the built environment. In the thesis I inquire into the nature of the contemporary experience of space in Tokyo and argue that the interaction between humans and space is most explicit on the grounds of the pathway.

Chapters

This dissertation is structured as follows. [02.], Following an introductory chapter, the second chapter − 'Orientations for a Pathway Model' − discusses significant links to the pathway in the history of urban critic as they build along 'modernity.' This chapter is divided between five sections, [a] The Fl〓neur and the pathway practice of fl〓nerie; [b] Heteronomic pathway practices in the writings of Fernando Pessoa; [c] The Situationists International as a reply to the fl〓neur and Pessoa; [d] 'resistance' and 'rhetoric of practice' in Michel de Certeau; and [e] Meaghan Morris as a reply to Benjamin and Certeau. Positioned together, the five sections of 'orientations' accumulate into the central concept in this work, to pathway − the thickness and force of urban experience as it animates by the daily movements of individuals.

[03.] The third chapter, 'Framework', situates the pathway within contemporary urban reality by discussing three terms vital to its platforms of operations − practice, everyday life and narrative. Through practice I seek to explain human actions in a particular setting, on the one hand, and the city, on the other. Here I discuss analysis focused through the ways in which people use their space, and the dialectics between their spatial practices and the urban settings organized for them by administrators and organizations. In everyday, then, the environment that mostly invokes these urban practices, I define the temporal environment from which this research experiment the contemporary city, and discuss related approaches to the everyday. I then connect the two terms with narrative as a root metaphor from which I read the pathway. Here I read the urban practices of individuals as existing in the form of a subjective narrative, and respectively, the pathway as a personal narration of the everyday.

[04.] In the fourth chapter I discuss tools and methodologies for the study. Firstly I present the methodology for three 'concrete' objects that anchor my discussion, a range of differentiated pathway practices − study cases, and their related contexts. At this stage I present the correspondence with potential and actual volunteers, guidelines, and a follow-up questionnaire for participating volunteers. I then turn to explain the methodological use of a photograph and mobile telephone not just, na〓vely, for their recording ability but as cultural mediums deeply rooted in our spatial practice, and tools of semantic/iconic acquisition capabilities.

[05.] The fifth chapter serves to collect, to present, and later to analyze the subjective registrations of personal spatial narratives in Tokyo. The chapter concentrates on thirty-eight pathways of volunteers and their related narratives as they were formed and sent in real-time during one ordinary day of urban practice. The material is useful as it harnesses the 'self' and 'object of perception,' by requiring participants to [1] encode their spatial concepts into images, [2] place it in a context so that it can serve as model for their urban experience, knowledge, judgment and actions, [3] make these models permanent. Following on from the initial results, I then present additional data from a questionnaire distributed among the volunteers. The preliminary material is juxtaposed here with closer attention to issues such as 'subjectivity', 'contingency', 'authorship', 'objectivity', 'singularity', 'encounters and interactions', and 'rhythm'.

[06.] In the sixth chapter, my examinations of the ordinary pathways take an ethnographic approach. It reports on my participation in the pathways of eleven Tokyo residents, which were each studied and documented over the course of one ordinary day in order to understand their locality and thought. I examine the diverse recurring practices of a photographer from Kamiyacho who specializes in urban settings; a driver for the JR-Yamanote line from Toda; a 'rider' − bicycle courier from Shimokitazawa; a Saga born man who migrated to Tokyo recently to save money for JAL's pilot course working as road gourd-man; and others. With this group of people I walk, cycle, sit, or drive; I participate, interview, record and employ closer investigations, covering over and trying to connect a door-to-door itinerary.

[07.] Chapter seven takes as its starting point Haruki Murakami's novel Dance, Dance, Dance [Vintage 1995; first publish in Japan in 1988]. In this third investigative model of local [Japanese] urbanity, I extend the approach from the previous chapter and rely on the ethnographic power of text. By paying particular attention to the actual itineraries of the protagonists in Tokyo as they are applied in this book, and by carefully handling its transcendental invitations, the book can be seen to articulate a porous urbanism currently seen in the practice and in the consumption of urban culture. This chapter also pursues the idea of treating text as experimental maps by investigating the current permutation of the modern urban traveler, and by treating the novel as navigation of actual urban space. It is argued that despite being fictional the book itself does productive analytic work, in that it registers social and spatial material while commenting on the state of urban reality. In taking contemporary literature as a link, and in connecting this text to contexts in a direct way, I drew the attention to the metaphoric of actual life, to the effective poetics of everyday street life. Also, I want to dislodge the prejudice that ‘the imaginary' is not itself intensely real and effective in its own way.

[08.] Chapter eight further discusses and concludes the work. It recognizes the pathway as offering productive exploration of the territory of space within the context of contemporary urban reality. At the same time, it points toward particular locations where the meeting between man and space influences this reality. For example, the chapter situates contingency against planned practices, and argues contingency to have a supplemental role to the rationalized space of the contemporary city. Similarly, it discusses the pathway as being a product of technologies of spatial manipulation and as being positioned in a network of complex narratives frequently coded in metaphorical terms that suggest active, creative inscriptions of the city. These narratives prove as well how the pathway, rather than being a technical outcome of life in the city, is an act of creative authorship with direct impact on the city's function. Additionally, it is demonstrated how on the territory of the pathway the urbanite figure utilizes the urban environment as an identity resource and a tool to negotiate between temporalities. Finally, it is stated that the pathway is yet a resource for research likely to impact on diverse of disciplines [fields of enquiry] that either directly or indirectly links with urban themes.

極度に複雑化した現代の都市空間を、建築物や交通網などのフィジカルなモノの集積や配置の観点から捉えることには限界がある。むしろ、そこに住む人々の日常生活が都市空間の中でどのように繰り広げられているのかという、活動の側面から間接的に都市を把握するという視点が有効な場合がある。都市のあらゆる物象的な側面は、そこに居住する人々の一挙一動に投象されていて、それを観察することは、都市そのものを隠喩として語ることと同義と見なす視点である。

本論文は、東京というメガロポリスに住む一般的な人々が、日常的に生活の一部として繰り返している移動行為に着目し、その経路上において出会うさまざまな都市の設えから、都市空間の特性を分析しようとする試みである。具体的には、第一段階として、37人の被験者が、ある日の朝、家を出てから夜に戻るまでの移動や出会いを、そこで体験した空間の状況として携帯電話のカメラで撮影し、メールで転送してもらうという手法で記録し、その後、簡単なアンケートに答えてもらっている。この調査に引き続き、第二段階として、11人の被験者に対し、筆者が一日中、その行動を追尾し、記録するという詳細な調査を行なっている。こうした調査により、都市での活動と、活動の場としての都市空間との対応が明らかになり、間接的に都市空間を経路（path）とそれに伴う物語（narrative）として把握することが可能になっている。

論文は8章から成り、これにAppendixが付いている。

第1章は、現代都市の空間の理解の仕方として、その内部における人々の移動の軌跡とそこでの出来事の重要性を指摘し、経路とその物語性に着眼した理由について述べている。

第2章は、Fernando Pessoaなどの論考に現れる、移動し、体験する都市居住者について考察し、経路モデルの作成に向けての論点を明らかにしている。

第3章は、行為、日常生活、物語性というキーワードから都市を読み解く方法について論及し、経路と出来事、都市施設との出会いに都市空間の本質が隠されていることを指摘している。

第4章は、第一段階の調査方法に関する記述で、携帯電話の写真と、それに関連するメッセージを記録する方法等について述べている。

第5章は、第一段階の調査の結果のまとめで、37人の被験者の日常行動の経路とそこでの出会いについての物語が語られている。被験者が携帯電話で撮影した写真とそれに対するコメントがまとめられている。

第6章は、第二段階の調査の結果のまとめで、11人の被験者の一日の行動の詳細な記録（筆者による写真とその物語）が語られている。筆者が被験者を追尾する過程で撮影した写真とそこでの物語がまとめられている。

第7章は、村上春樹の小説『ダンス・ダンス・ダンス』の主人公の経路に着目し、現実と非現実との狭間で体験される都市空間をトレースすることによりに、都市をメタファーとして把握する方法論について言及している。

第8章は、これまでの調査と論考を、1）計画された行為と偶発性、2）空間的な連結性、3）空間表記の技法、4）複合化した物語性、5）自己同一性の源の観点からまとめて、結論としている。

以上要するに、本論文は、現代都市において人々が日常的に体験する、出来事と空間との対応を、経路における物語性という観点から語ることにより、それを可能としている空間的な場の在り方を間接的に表現しようとするもので、直喩的な都市空間の記述とは異なる都市の記述方法を提示するものである。これは新たな切り口からの都市論の成立を予感させるものである。極めて複雑な事象である都市に対して、直接的な設計の意図や計画の効用から空間を語るのではなく、間接的な影響を観察して、都市の様相としてその本質を捉えようとするこの手法は、筆者にオリジナルなもので、日常生活と都市空間との対比を鮮やかに表現したものである。これは都市・建築の計画学の分野に新たな方法論を提示したもので、その意義は大きいものと判断される。

よって、本論文は博士（工学）の学位請求論文として合格と認められる。