Density, Transit, Domesticity: Lessons from Tokyo’s Commercial Architectures of the Home Away from Home for the Future of Domestic Space in the Metropolis
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation examined the spatial composition of Tokyo’s home away from home (HAFH) businesses and their capability to mitigate the city’s limited domestic space. At the building and urban scale, this involved several instances of classifications, as well as literature reviews and GIS-based analytical mappings. A total of twelve key commercial types were identified and analyzed through the use of data obtained from industry-specific search engines, sample building observations, case studies and previous studies. These commercial types include karaoke boxes, love hotels, manga cafés, leisure baths, public baths, coin laundries, convenience stores, vending machines and several gastronomic establishments. The findings present a typology of commercial spaces based on a classification of their domestic functions and concepts of domesticity. This typology was ordered from multifunctional, seclusion- and privacy-focused spaces to monofunctional, circulation- and convenience-focused spaces with comfort-focused businesses in between. Accordingly, the sum of these business types is able to compensate all domestic functions of small residences and may even provide a functional surplus through a high specialization in certain everyday spaces and services. A review of the development history of each type revealed important evolutionary drivers for the HAFH, including urban growth, the socio-economic disruption following the 1990s recession, as well as short building lifespans and loose building and zoning regulations. At the urban scale, the acquired business data was geocoded and integrated with official GIS-based data on census, built structure and traffic infrastructure. The findings indicate a correlation between HAFH business agglomerations, Tokyo’s railway stations, as well as daily commuter volumes. The heterogenous composition and density of these businesses near stations, as well as their location within the railway network mark different types of urban agglomeration of the HAFH. These agglomerations fulfill distinctive roles in providing domestic functions outside the home in various daily situations. A high degree of walkability, a dense and heterogenous mixture of small to medium-scale buildings, and a proximity to residential zones were identified as key factors in attracting a diverse and dense array of HAFH businesses. This dissertation’s final discussion highlighted the beneficial synergy of high building and population densities, transit-oriented development and domesticity away from home. Collectively these elements provide an accessible spatial and functional surplus to Tokyo’s limited residential space. This knowledge of the qualities and challenges of Tokyo’s HAFH venues and their mode of development provides a foundation for future research on this topic or a conscious modification through planning and policy. This may assist in addressing the constraints on residential space and livability by high-density urban areas in Tokyo and potentially other regions.
Author: Liedtke, Florian
Language: English
Subfield: Architecture
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7104378998
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