-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Shrinking Cities x fibercity @ akihabara-------------------------------------------------------------------------------January 28 (Sun) – February 18, 2007 (Sun)
AKIBA SQUARE, Akihabara UDX, 2F
Mon-Thurs 11 am – 8 pm
Fri 11 am – 9 pm, Sat, Sun, + Hol. 11 am – 7 pm
www.akiba-square.jp
Entry freeThe exhibition Shrinking Cities x fibercity @ akihabara unites two expositions– “Shrinking Cities”, which was received with great interest in Europe and theUSA, and “Fibercity”, in which Hidetoshi OHNO presents a vision of the futureof shrinking metropoles, using the example of Tokyo. Models, films, animations,plans, diagrams, photographs, and texts will be shown. But the project is not
limited to a presentation of exhibits; rather, a site for discussions is created at the same time. “Talk ins” will be carried out in the exhibition; there,architects and urban builders, students and representatives from administration,companies, and communities can bring their own ideas and present them to a broadaudience.

International Symposium: Is there a future beyond shrinking?
February 11, 2007 (Sun), 1:30 – 6:30 pm
Philipp Oswalt, Curator of the exhibition “Shrinking Cities”, and city ­planner
Hidetoshi Ohno, with his vision of the future of the capital region Tokyo,
discuss the phenomenon of “shrinkage” with city planner Kei Minohara and Prof.
­Riichi Miyake.
The University of Tokyo, Hongo Campus
New Faculty of Engineering Bldg. 2
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo
Participation fee: 1,000 Yen---  ---Talk Ins
On the weekends, nine rounds of talks on the future of shrinking cities will beheld at the exhibition:
January 28 (Sun)“Designing Time”
Jin HIDAKA & Satoru YAMASHIRO (The University of Tokyo)
February 2 (Fri)“Ideas of the Future of the Cities”
Takeru KITAZAWA (The University of Tokyo)
February 3 (Sat)“Long-Lasting Architecture”
Masataka BABA (Architect)
February 4 (Sun)“Residence and Community”
Youko KINOSHITA (Nihon University)
February 9 (Fri)“Information design and its communal roots”
Yasushi WATANABE (Collaborative Knowledge Laboratory)
February 10 (Sat)“Forest and Water”
Toru MITANI (Chiba University)
February 16 (Fri)“Residents and Urban Renewal”
Masami KOBAYASHI (Meiji University)
February 17 (Sat)“Mobilizing regional Energies”
Motomu UNO (Chiba University
February 18 (Sun)“Service for a pleasant city”
Hiroshi OHTA (The University of Tokyo)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------All Talk Ins:
Fri 5 – 8:30 pm, Sat, Sun 2 – 5:30 pm
AKIBA QUARE, Akihabara UDX, 2F
Single ticket 1,000 Yen, Pass (for any number of events*) 3,000 Yen*registration nonetheless necessary
Registration for all events:
S x F @ A Organization office
E-Mail: info@sfa-exhibition.com
Fax: +81 (3) 5467-2646
www.akiba-square.jp-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------  ---

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Introduction--------------------------------------------------------------------------------For two centuries global urbanization has progressed at a rapid pace. Around
1800, 2% of a billion people worldwide lived in cities. In 2000 it was justunder 50% of approximately 6.5 billion people. It is estimated that by 2050 it­
will be about 75% of some 8.5 billion people. But not all cities are growing.
Between 1950 and 2000 more than 350 large cities experienced, at least temporarily, significant declines in population. In the 1990s more than a quarter oflarge cities worldwide shrank. The number of shrinking cities is continuallyincreasing, even though urban growth will continue to dominate in coming dec­
ades. An end is in sight, however: around 2070–2100, the world population willreach its zenith and the process of urbanization will largely come to an end.
Then processes of growth and shrinkage will reach a balance, and urban shrinkage
will be a process as common as it was before industrialization began.
This is difficult to imagine from the perspective of people in developed
industrialized nations, because for generations they have experienced all but­
continuous growth in many areas of society. From a global perspective, growth
processes have dominated thus far. Nevertheless, this growth is increasingly
unevenly distributed geographically, and many places are already experiencing
serious shrinkage. In a series of countries, moreover, the urban population asa whole is declining. Drastically increasing prices for oil and raw materials
and ­climatic warming caused by human activities demonstrate economic limits ongrowth.
Thus urban development makes it possible to perceive and experience fundamental,epochal change. The modern period of growth is a very brief span relative tohuman history as a whole: not even three centuries. Hints of the end of this era­
have been around for decades, and the first signs of it are unmistakable in theolder industrialized nations of both West and East.
Shrinkage leads, as expansion once did, to fundamental shocks, which with theensuing changes in models, modes of action, and methods result in societal
reorientation. The phenomenon of urban shrinkage is based on several processes­of transformation. Within the context of established developed countries, whichin past decades have experienced the brunt of shrinkage processes, the essential
causes have been suburbanization, deindustrialization, demographic shrinkage,and postsocialist change. For the Shrinking Cities project, an exemplary urban
region was selected for each of these processes in order to facilitate analysis
and documentation. Detroit, the “Motor City,” is an example of shrinkage dueto the process of sub¬urbanization, the textile region of Ivanovo (RussianFederation) is an example of shrinkage as part of postsocialist change, and the­former industrial region of Manchester/Liverpool (Great Britain) is an exampleof shrinkage through deindustrialization. All three of these processes are reflected in the fourth example: the Halle/Leipzig region (Germany). The Japanesecity of Hakodate was recently added to the project as an example of demographicchange.

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Shrinking Cities Project
Shrinking Cities is a project of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal
Cultural Foundation) in cooperation with the Project Office Philipp Oswalt,
the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, and themagazine archplus.
The first phase of the research and exhibition project directed by PhilippOswalt focused on the international investigation of processes of shrinkage.
­For more than four years, more than a hundred artists, architects, urban
planners, journalists, and scientists worked together to analyze and document the­urban regions of Detroit (USA), Manchester/Liverpool (Great Britain), Ivanovo(Russian Federation), and Halle/Leipzig (Germany). In the second phase of theproject, which focused on the search for possible interventions, an international
competition was held and grants and direct commissions were awarded. The resulting 34 projects by artists, architects, scientists, and local initiatives fromten countries range from artistic interventions and self-empowerment projects
to architectural, landscape, and media interventions, all the way to new legal
regulations and utopian designs. The majority of the projects were developed inclose cooperation with citizens, local groups, and institutions.
Between the fall of 2006 and the summer of 2008, the Shrinking Cities project ispresenting its work in Bulgaria, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Russia, and USA
with a traveling exhibition.
The exhibition Shrinking Cities x fibercity @ akihabara in Tokyo is a joint
venture of the Shrinking Cities Project, Germany and Ohno Laboratory, Tokyo.
Fiber City is a project developed by Ohno Laboratory 2003 – 2006, which is
proposing a concept for smart shrinkage taking the city of Tokyo as an example.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------PUBLICATIONS
Shrinking Cities, Volume 1: International Research
Ed. Philipp Oswalt, 736 pages,Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2005
ISBN-13 978-3-7757-1682-6, $ 55
Citing concrete examples from Manchester and Liverpool in Great Britain, Detroit
in the United States, Ivanovo in Russia, and Halle and Leipzig in Germany, thisvolume compares living conditions and cultural change in shrinking urban regions. Artistic intercessions help sensitize the public to a global phenomenon
that poses a new social challenge.
Photos by Stan Douglas, John Ganis, Ken Grant, Bas Princen, Yuji Saiga, TomWood, and many more.

Shrinking Cities, Volume 2: Interventions
Ed. Philipp Oswalt, 864 pages,
Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2006
ISBN-13 978-3-7757-1711-3, $ 55
In dealing with shrinking cities, urban design and classical city planning reach
their limits. In the face of this new challenge, new paths are taken: the “hard”
tools of construction and deconstruction are joined with the “soft” tools ofpolitical, social, cultural, and communicative interventions. This book provides
an international overview and critical discussion of concepts and strategies
for shrinking cities from the fields of architecture, landscape design, urban---  ---

planning, the media, performance, and art. The approaches discussed range fromartistic responses and self-empowerment projects to architectural and landscapeinterventions, strategies of media communication, and city marketing, to newlegal regulations and utopian designs. A series of essays critically discusses
current projects in North America, Europe, and Japan, as well as importanthistorical positions in architecture and art.
With Projects by Will Alsop, Ruedi Baur, Florian Beigel, Chaos Computer Club,Crimson, Jeremy Deller, M. J. Ginzburg, Gordon Matta-Clark, muf, Hidetoshi Ohno,OMA, Cedric Price, Andreas Siekmann, Robert Smithson, Superflex, Oswald Mathias
Ungers, and many more.

Atlas of Shrinking Cities
Ed. Philipp Oswalt and Tim Rieniets, 160 pages
Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2006
ISBN-13 978-3-7757-1714-4, $ 55
Which cities shrink? Where are these cities? What processes lie behind shrinkage? Atlas of Shrinking Cities has approximately 30 world maps, 50 diagrams, 40
city portraits, 15 lexical essays, and an index of cities to document this global phenomenon and make it comprehensible visually by means of an innovativegraphic presentation.
An English Edition of the Exhibition Newspaper is available at the Exhibition
Space Akihabara Square.
The digital publication “Shrinking Cities: Japan” (English/ Japanese), Berlin/
Tokyo 2007 presenting the projects investigation of Japan can be downloaded fromwww.shrinkingcities.com

For Fiber City following publications are available:
Hidetoshi Ohno: Towards the Fiber City. An Investigation of Sustainable City
Form, Tokyo 2004 (English/ Japanese), MPF Press, ISBN -0-9725752-1-9 (not for sale)Ohno laboratory, The University of Tokyo: FIBER CITY Tokyo 2050, Urban Design
Strategies for the Shrinking Cities (Japanese), Shinkenchiku June, 2006, 2000 yen
Hidetoshi Ohno: Tokyo 2050 Fibercity (English/Japanese), Japan Architect, No 63,
Autumn 2006 Yen 2500
Website: www.fibercity2050.net (English/Japanese)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Press ContactShrinking Cities
Dr. Astrid Herbold
Eisenacher Straße 74
D-10823 Berlin
Tel: +49 (30) 81 82 19-06
Fax: +49 (30) 81 82 19-11
press@shrinkingcities.com
http://www.shrinkingcities.com
Shrinking Cities is an initiative project of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) in cooperation with the Project Office PhilippOswalt, the Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundationand the magazine archplus.

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