Abstract: Cities like Tokyo face recently new, complex urban challenges. However, responses to the changing urban space are often reflected in the emergence of new cultural revivals or the forging of unknown, hybrid subcultures, which can be understood when studying the diverse ways people (re-) interpret small urban places in relationship to their changing lifestyles. This paper will discuss the development of hybrid lifestyles of young artists and creatives, families and elderly found and studied in two local neighbourhoods in central Tokyo, asking how are these creative practices and small urban places shape Tokyo's changing urban landscape? The paper will discuss specific examples of urban practices which take place within the dynamic urban landscape of contemporary Tokyo and can - when analysed and understood - offer new approaches for hybrid and multi-generation living.
Keywords: Hybrid Lifestyles, Growth and De-growth in Tokyo, Small Urban Niches

This media entry was a contribution to the special session "Less is more (space) - changing regions in Japan and Germany" at the 4th International Degrowth Conference in Leipzig in 2014.