Tokyo park sold to Nike, homeless kicked out

[ilbonito]

Here is a 5 minute documentary on the transformation of a Shibuya park and homeless encampment into "Nike park"; a commercial skating park:

[gertie]

just wow


Are there other parks with tent communities?

It's amazing how many places protests against Nike are going on. In Jakarta workers protest because they cancel contracts and refuse to pay the remaining money, leaving workers with no severance. In California it is Nike's contract with the guy that was running dog fights. On college campuses, it is contracts to give shoes and equipment to the sports departments in return for advertising rights while failing to pay decent wages to most of their employees.

[fumobici]

It's a swooshtika world. The Nike business model changed everything- and not always for the better.

[ilbonito]

Yeah, lots of the parks in central Tokyo have semi-permanent "tent villages" of homeless, Yoyogi Park (although they seem to be less visible lately) and Ueno Park especially. The most shocking experience I had in Tokyo was taking the super-long escalator down to the Oedo subway line (the city's deepest) in Winter, at Shinjuku station. By the escalator was a broad staircase and it was filled, covered, chock-a-block with homeless men sleeping in the relative warmth. I felt like I was descending into Hell.

[Deleted]

Thanks for that clip, ilbonito. It is shocking to know that whole communities are living in parks like that, and in such a wealthy neighboured. And now Nike are buying the park off? What will become of all those people?

[ilbonito]

Like homeless people everywhere, I guess they'll just be kicked along to the next place nobody else wants...

[bjd]

The narrator mentions a lack of public interest. Don't the city's inhabitants care that the municipal government is selling off public places?

[fumobici]

If they are like people in most places, those most affected- the park's immediate neighbors- will probably be glad to have the homeless displaced from under their noses. Everyone is against homelessness but damn few want them housed in their immediate vicinities.

[bixaorellana]

Wow, this really is a "Saving the World" subject, as there are so many ways to look at it.

Admittedly, I found the video quite irritating, with the ominous music, the funereal tones of the narrator, and the very obvious slant to the presentation.

However, consider this -- regardless of any reprehensible business practices on Nike's part, the real villain is the municipal government, without whose greedy participation this would be a non-issue. I know nothing about how that government is set up, but it seems likely that there would be some mechanism in place that would allow for citizen input before the park was sold.

In terms of protecting public interest, the city was already derelict in allowing private use (the tents) of a public area. So, profiting from selling that public area, strictly speaking, could be seen as being in the public interest as the money gained theoretically would be used for the betterment of the city in general. Okay, the city government's silence rather suggests that they are not in fact busily confabbing over using the money to create housing and services for the homeless, but again, extra money for the city supposedly benefits everyone.

And returning to the homeless encampment as private use of a public space -- I would imagine that every ambulatory vendor or newspaper kiosk in Tokyo needs a license in order to use their patch of public sidewalk, and is expected to conform to certain standards of hygiene. The homeless in that park are not being held to either of those standards.

As Fumobici points out, no one wants the homeless in their immediate vicinity and frankly, with good reason. This brings us right back to the municipal government's role in all this. Not only are they monetarily profiting from the sale, but they now have a "solution" to the homeless problem in the park, with their legal and moral imperative to forcibly remove the encampment from private property. It's rather a massive joke that the putative victims of this sale are so aggressively involved in turning Nike into the red herring that diverts the blame away from where it belongs -- squarely on the city government of Tokyo.

Legally, the entity responsible for dealing with the civic problem of homeless people is the city government, not the commercial enterprise which purchased a piece of property that was for sale.

[Deleted]

The homeless settle in just about any dark corner in Paris. There is a whole little village under the elevated metro near my apartment. One day, without warning, it will be kicked out. That is sort of what "homeless" means.

[fumobici]

I wonder what prompts the decision of when to break up homeless encampments? I can imagine there is an unwritten rule that they will become too settled into a place after a certain amount of time and will begin to feel some- too much- attachment to it, perhaps even feelings of entitlement or nascent ownership. Maybe political pressures build as neighborhood NIMBYs complaints accrete into a critical political mass. The constant uprooting might be designed to prevent any sense of comfort of entitlement that could evolve into political consciousness and collective will- to keep them on their back foot, on the defensive and in fear so they are more docile and compliant to authority.

[Deleted]

It is very much a question of NIMBY agitation.

[bixaorellana]

May 4, 2010 14:54:46 GMT fumobici said:

I wonder what prompts the decision of when to break up homeless encampments? I can imagine there is an unwritten rule that they will become too settled into a place after a certain amount of time and will begin to feel some- too much- attachment to it, perhaps even feelings of entitlement or nascent ownership.

Um, did anyone read anything I wrote in #8? Or if not, is anyone considering the what the responsibilities of the city and national governments might be?

I felt NO sympathy for the two spokespersons interviewed. Blaming Nike is just plain stupid. Also, if they have time to make posters and sit around drawing childish pictures with magic marker, maybe they could use that time visiting social service agencies, storming city hall, or even getting a job.

[hwinpp]

Blaming Nike is just plain stupid.

Especially in a wealthy country like Japan.

[Deleted]

May 4, 2010 13:46:37 GMT kerouac2 said:

The homeless settle in just about any dark corner in Paris. There is a whole little village under the elevated metro near my apartment. One day, without warning, it will be kicked out. That is sort of what "homeless" means.

The area was cleaned out this week. Frankly, it is a relief.