Santiago, Chile. Photo: Flickr user Luis Iturra

The 8.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Chile two days ago has resulted in over 700 confirmed deaths thus far and infrastructure damage throughout the country.

Tsunami warnings spread across the Pacific, as far away as Japan and Alaska. Chilean coastal towns and off-shore islands experienced tsunamis from the quake. Rescue efforts are underway and the military has been called in to fend off looters.

Blogs and social media sites have been addressing the disaster and the impact of the quake around the world.

Foreign Policy Blogs writer Richard Basas discusses the immediate impact of Chile’s earthquake, concerns in the coming days and the differences between Chile’s and Haiti’s ability to handle natural disasters:

The actual quake was felt as far as Buenos Aires, but the main concern now for non-Chileans has been a Tsunami effect that has already hit Chile and islands near the mainland of Chile and South America. So far the damage from Tsunami has been limited, but warning about possible Tsunamis have been issued as far as Mexico and Hawaii, and even as far as Asia. Some reports have come out about Tsunamis landing in Mexico and Central America, and countries closer to Chile’s quake like Peru and Colombia but information is limited at this point.

Chile was hit by the largest recorded earthquake in history at 9.0 in the same area of the country in 1960. Unlike Haiti, whose quake was unexpected as one had not occurred for over 200 years before 2010, Chile and its structures have been designed and built to withstand quakes, and emergency plans and sophisticated Search and Rescue equipment exists in Chile to deal with quakes that are well known in Chile. Aid efforts in Concepcion, a city of 670,000 people and the town very close to the quake zone, Talca, are underway as few structures, even those earthquake resistant one can withstand an 8.8 magnitude earthquake. People trapped under collapsed structures often were inside their homes as the earthquake occurred in the middle of the night while most were asleep in their homes.

While Chile’s earthquake was 500 times stronger than the earthquake that rocked Haiti just over a month ago, Chile’s death toll was much smaller. Global Voices blogger Silvia Viñas writes about the praise that Chile is receiving for its disaster preparedness:

Quakes are commonplace in Chile; since 1906 and counting this most recent earthquake, Chile has experienced 28 earthquakes [es]—without counting the smaller in magnitude but still frequent seismic activity that is often felt around the country. The three biggest earthquakes that many Chileans can still remember left 30,000 dead in 1939, 3,000 in 1960, and 177 in 1985.

The international community, together with Chileans living abroad, have praised Chile’s preparedness in front of this devastating situation, which could have had an even higher casualty total.

Chile is the world’s leading supplier of copper, but the country’s copper mines and seaports are struggling to get back to full capacity, after suffering damages and power outages from the quake. The price of copper rose over 5 percent when the markets opened on Monday, and over a fifth of the copper mine capacity was shut down, according to Reuters.

Gwen Robinson, of the Financial Times blog Alphaville, discusses the damage done to Chile’s infrastructure and its impact on global copper prices:

A crucial factor for Chile is its identity as one of the most quake-prone countries on the Pacific Rim. This, as the FT explains, has ensured the country is well prepared for big shocks, with building codes that require shake-resistant construction and a rapid emergency response system.

Chile’s top copper mines also managed to escape much damage because of such factors — though commodities markets still reacted to the earthquake with precautionary buying of the metal.

In an effort to calm commodities markets, Santiago Gónzalez, Chile’s mining minister, said on Sunday that the country would honor all export commitments, citing its ample copper stocks.

But that hasn’t stopped copper prices soaring by the biggest amount in nearly a year on Monday. amid fears of supply interruptions and infrastructure damage to Chile’s copper facilities.

Social media such as Twitter and Facebook have been used in Chile to get information and locate loved ones. Mashable’s Matt Silverman writes about one woman’s use of Twitter to track down her family member:

A woman was able to track down her missing sister-in-law today thanks to the help of a fellow Twitter user.

Earlier we posted some of the Chile earthquake pictures that Chileans have been sharing on Twitter of the devastation caused by this morning’s magnitude-8.8 earthquake. Many of our readers were moved, as we were, to see some of the destruction first-hand. But one reader, Sheryl Breuker, shared a personal story with us in the comments about the true power of social media in crisis situations.

Also on Mashable, CEO and founder Pete Cashmore, discusses the launch of Google’s new person finder:

The simple interface lets you choose between two options — “I’m looking for someone” and “I have information about someone,” then either query the database or enter new information. At the time of writing, the Person Finder app has 3,100 records.

Here are some Twitter posts about Chile today, some sharing information and others trying to locate people:

LisaTw RT @Baybe_Doll: #Chile #need help Building collapse - 52 families affected #loc Edificio Diego Portales

lluviafina RT @microsiervos: Google ofrece un servicio para la localización de víctimas del terremoto de Chile (@la_informacion) http://bit.ly/ccaD10 (citing Google’s new Person Finder service)

LaConqui #terremotochile SE BUSCA a Fernando Hormazabal y Lidia Concha de #Pellehue #chile Info al fono 02 - 3301412 (favor RT) #chileayuda (seeking info about missing persons)

Photo: Flickr user 0neiros

In response to Europe’s economic woes, protests have erupted in Greece and spread across the continent.

The Economist blog, Charlemagne’s notebook, writes about the protests spreading across Europe, and notes that these strikes have been made up of people of privilege and not solely the underclass.

In Greece, the strikers have included customs officers and tax collectors: workers who not only enjoy special tax free allowances and early retirement on big pensions, but also include in their ranks some of the most notoriously corrupt officials in Greece, known for their willingness to take bribes in order to allow the wealthy to avoid paying their taxes (a big reason why Greece is broke). The public sector workers were striking, among other things, against plans to increase their retirement age from 61 to 63 (when many European countries are talking about raising it from 65 to 67). Greek taxi drivers are due to strike against plans to open their closed profession. It is symptomatic of the unhealthy power of the trade unions that the Greek deputy prime minister, Theodoros Pangalos, was forced to “clarify” what he meant when he said that in the future civil servants could not expect a job for life.

Global Voices blogger, Asteris Masouras, takes a look at the fierce response from Greek bloggers on the financial crisis there and offers this translation from political  blogger Panos Zervas.

I really don’t think this was our only alternative. What made it the only alternative was the incredible inadequacy of our civilian leadership. Two parties swapping power, headed by two blatantly inadequate princely heirs, burdened by an incredible gang of graft “ideologues”. An entire army of bootlickers, mediocrities and common crooks. With the capable and selfless having been exiled from politics decades ago, because there simply isn’t any room for them.
The wretched vultures of power weren’t and aren’t capable of plotting and executing policies to steer the country out of the crisis without turning it into shambles. Fearful, incompetent, and finally shameless, they will do what the “outsiders” dictate.

Foreign Policy Blogs writer Elison Elliott discusses the impact that a Greek default would have on the 16-nation eurozone.

The paucity of detail underlines how delicate a matter aid to Greece is. The euro zone is built around the idea that each nation manages its own fiscal affairs, subject to monitoring by the EU’s executive arm. A bailout of Greece would imply that a badly behaving nation—Greece for years violated rules against overspending—can be saved from the consequences.

Neither are the saviors happy. Germany, which as the bloc’s biggest and most stable economy would have to take the brunt of any bailout, has been wary. Helping its profligate peer is unpopular in thrifty Germany. But letting Greece default has risks, too—mostly for the stability of the euro—and EU leaders are deeply reluctant to let the International Monetary Fund extend help. Many in Brussels believe that would be an embarrassing sign of weakness.

Social Europe Journal contributor, Steven Hill, however, has a surprisingly optimistic analysis.

With some $25 billion worth of loan payments coming due for which Greece will need to refinance, the bond markets became skittish that a Greek default may lead to a wave of other national defaults in Portugal and Spain, and drag down the euro itself (much like Lehman Brothers initiated the global financial industry’s collapse).

But that seems unlikely. Greece’s economy comprises only 2% of the overall European economy – about the same magnitude as Indiana’s in the United States. Greece’s deficit to GDP ratio, while high at about 12.5%, is not that much higher than that of both the US and Japan, around 10.5%. True, Greece has a sizable accumulated debt over many years, estimated at about 110 percent of its GDP, but even the US has a debt to GDP estimated at 94 percent and projected to break 100 percent by 2012.

Mostly living in the northern island of Hokkaido, Ainu are believed to descend from people who lived in Japan as early as 13,000 years ago. Their culture is distinct from mainstream Japanese society.

In the 19th century, Japan banned the Ainu language, seized their land, and outlawed their hunting and religious practices. Today the Ainu language is almost completely extinct.

Just under 24,000 people identified themselves as Ainu, in a 2006 study by the Hokkaido prefectural government. However, many of those included were of mixed blood. Also, it is not known how many Ainu live outside Hokkaido.

In June 2008, Japan’s parliament passed a resolution that formally recognized the Ainu as an indigenous people with a distinct language, religion and culture. Today, the Ainu have their own cultural institutions and are working with the Japanese government to maintain their unique heritage.

Harry Fawcett of Al Jazeera English reports from Hokkaido on the struggle to save their way of life.

Global Voices blogger Scilla Alecci writes about the extinction of indigenous languages in Japan, including the Ainu language:

In February UNESCO presented the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, giving an accurate and worrying description of the languages considered endangered (about 2,500). Among these eight belong to the Japanese archipelago. Not a big surprise if we think about the severe policies of linguistic and cultural assimilation carried out by the Japanese government until the end of the WW2, after completing the annexation during the 19th century of the Ryukyu reign (now Okinawa) and the island of Hokkaido inhabited by the Ainu people.

Scienceblogs.com contributor Razib Khan writes about the relationship between language and genes of near extinct people’s around the world:

This is a case where the preponderance of evidence seems to be that the Yayoi rice-culture bearers arrived from the continent and predominantly replaced the indigenous post-Jomon culture. The Ainu may be a residue of the Jomon natives, and a non-trivial, though minority, component of the Japanese ancestry can be traced back to the Jomon.

The Ainu Museum in Hokkaido explores the history of the Ainu people:

“Ainu” means “human.” The Ainu people regard things useful to them or beyond their control as “kamuy” (gods). In daily life, they prayed to and performed various ceremonies for the gods. These gods include: “nature” gods, such as of fire, water, wind and thunder; “animal” gods, such as of bears, foxes, spotted owls and grampuses; “plant” gods, such as of aconite, mushroom and mugwort; “object” gods, such as of boats and pots; and gods which protect houses, gods of mountains and gods of lakes. The word “Ainu” refers to the opposite of these gods.

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History held an exhibition dedicated to exploring the ancient origin of the Ainu, their evolving relations with the Japanese, and the 20th century Ainu cultural renaissance.

Photo: Flickr user lepiaf.geo

Prior to entering office, President Barack Obama spoke of the need for a new approach to U.S.-Cuba relations and a sea change from the past.

As reported by The New York Times, in a speech May 2008, Obama said:

John McCain’s been going around the country talking about how much I want to meet with Raúl Castro, as if I’m looking for a social gathering or I’m going to invite him over and have some tea. That’s not what I said, and John McCain knows it. After eight years of the disastrous policies of George Bush, it is time to pursue direct diplomacy, with friend and foe alike, without preconditions.

Last April, the Obama administration lifted some restrictions on Cuban-Americans, including regulations on travel and on sending money back to Cuba.

However, the nearly fifty-year-old embargo on Cuban trade and travel with the United States remains intact. Moreover, President Obama renewed the embargo for another year this past fall.

The relationship between Cuba and the United States has received little attention lately.

Let’s look at what bloggers are saying about life in Cuba and the state of U.S.-Cuba relations today.

U.S. Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s (R-FL) is staunchly opposed to the Communist government in Cuba and an advocate for Cuban-Americans. Susannah Vila of Global Voices discusses Diaz-Balart’s decision to not run for reelection:

As is the case with many of the Obama administration’s accomplishments during its first year, advancements in relations between the US and Cuba have been subtle.  Yet small changes in policy may mean bigger shifts in behavior, especially when it comes to Cuban-Americans and the voting booth.

Bloggers in Miami and Cuba are buzzing over the news that US Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart will not run for reelection in the fall. Diaz-Balart, a Republican, is a staunch supporter of the trade embargo against Cuba, and he took this as an opportunity to highlight his role in codifying the blockade. As a senior member of the House Rules Committee, the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process, and the Co-Chairman of the Florida Congressional Delegation, Diaz-Balart’s absence will definitely be felt.

Melissa Lockhart of Foreign Policy Blogs writes how 2010 could be the year that change is realized, even after a slow down in the political will to open relations with Cuba:

The Congressional push to open up Cuba for travel by U.S. citizens was buried at the end of last year in the urgency (at the time) of the health care reform debate. The bill’s sponsors—including Representatives Bill Delahunt (Democrat) and Jeff Flake (Republican)—intend to dig it out and press forward, starting now. The problem at the moment is the Democrats’ reluctance to actually bring the bill to the floor for a vote. The votes may be there (across party lines), but the issue isn’t at the top of their agenda and is one that splits the caucus.

Unfortunately, the momentum that came from Obama’s lifting of travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans last year is now slowed, and the issue has faded from the ever-shifting public attention. Meanwhile, there is bipartisan opposition to the bill as well, and funds channel to members of both parties from opposition, pro-embargo (often Cuban-American) groups. So bipartisanship is not necessarily a relevant asset at all for the backers of this bill.

In her blog Generation Y, well-known Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez discusses the difficulties Cubans face because of their own government’s travel restrictions:

I know how it feels. I know how hard it is to go to the Cuban consulate in any country and be asked to sign your name in support of freedom for the Interior Ministry’s five agents – prisoners in the United States – while they do not even ask you if there’s anything they can do to help you. I have listened to a young man cry at an embassy in Europe while a bureaucrat repeats that he cannot return to his own country because he exceeded the eleven months he is allowed to be away. I have also witnessed it from the other side, the denial received by many here who apply for the White Card needed to board a plane and leave this Island. The travel restrictions have become routine and some have come to believe it should be this way, because to know other places is a perk that they give us, a prerogative that they award us.

Read Sanchez’ interview with President Obama.

In her blog KubaSepia, another Cuban blogger, Katia Sonia, writes about Cuban President Raul Castro and her desire for change:

The new president was surprised by several labor leaders who led an entourage to his ailing brother.  These ideas were conceived to disrupt the roots of the Castros’ base, and strip them of absolute power.  This was an opportunity for the state to fulfill its role of channeling and ensuring the full and total development that the individual needs. Nothing changed. Raúl Castro made two or three stuttering interventions that plunged the nation into the expectation of CHANGE — the possibility of increasing diplomatic relations with the United States; ignoring reality he declared that the world financial crisis would not reach the islanders or their currency exchanges — all designed to buy time.

For more on Cuba, visit our Worldfocus extended coverage page: Cuba after Fidel.

Reid, who recently apologized, is quoted in a new book as saying Obama was electable because he is “light-skinned…with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

Racial discrimination takes on many forms around the world.

In Iraq, some estimate that 10 percent of the country’s 29 million people are of African origin.

Much of the black population feel marginalized and are increasingly frustrated about not having a legally mandated share of parliamentary seats — unlike many of Iraq’s other minorities, including Kurds and Christians.

Watch a report by Omar Saleh of Al Jazeera English here:

In Australia, 21-year-old Indian student Nitin Garg was stabbed to death in Melbourne recently. And another Indian man was set on fire outside of his Melbourne home.

Australian police are still looking for the attackers but say they don’t think either crime was racially motivated.

This has upset many Indians — both in Australia and India. A series of violent attacks against Indians in Australia last year had already strained diplomatic relations.

Applications by Indians for Australian student visas have dropped by half, and at least one protest has taken place outside the Australian High Commission in New Delhi.

Watch a recent report by Ashima Thomas of Al Jazeera English on the violence in Australia:

Global Voices blogger Kevin Rennie, a former secondary school teacher and resident of Melbourne, offers a wrap-up from Australian bloggers.

The murder of an Indian man in Melbourne has reignited the debate about racism in Australia and the safety of overseas students. It has also severely strained relations between Australia and India.

And lastly, in our Worldfocus broadcast tonight, we discuss the discrimination faced by Afro-Peruvians.

For the first time, the government of Peru has apologized to the African-Peruvian population for centuries of abuse, exclusion and discrimination.

The government said it hoped the apology would help promote the “true integration” of Peru’s multi-cultural population.

Africans first arrived in Peru in the 16th century as slaves of Spanish conquerors. Today Afro-Peruvians account for 5 to 10 percent of Peru’s 29 million people.

On the blog “Living in Peru,” Andres Flores writes about the history of Africans in Peru:

“According to the anthropologist Humberto Rodriguez, traces of the African culture are strongly marked in the capital. “There are streets in Lima called Malambo, inhabited by large numbers of African descendants. Their roots are not confined only to music and food, they are also seen in their lifestyle, their creolism, language and customs of the city.”

- Geneva Sands-Sadowitz

The structure is named for Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates. About $1.5 billion was invested in the Burj Khalifa, with an additional $20 billion invested in the surrounding neighborhood.

At 162 floors, the Burj Khalifa is expected to accommodate 25,000 people at a time: 160 Armani hotel rooms, 1,100 apartments and hundreds of corporate office suites. The building’s 57 elevators rise and fall at 33 feet per second.

Watch this video from Al Jazeera English to see how this modern marvel was birthed:

Ben Macintyre of The Times of London draws an interesting correlation between “super-scrapers” and financial crises in Towering ambition always comes before a fall:

The Burj Dubai, the physical expression of Dubai’s towering ambition, a modern Tower of Babel. It is a beautiful object, a remarkable testament to human ingenuity, engineering and megalomania. As Dubai’s economy totters and sways, it may turn out to be a monumental folly, the latest example of Man’s need to build ever upwards regardless of cost, need or sense.

There is a striking correlation between projects to build the world’s tallest building, and financial crises. The construction of the Empire State Building (381m) was conceived in the run-up to the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression; the Sears Tower in Chicago (442m), built in 1974, came with the oil crisis and stagflation in the US; the Petronas Towers (452m) in Kuala Lumpur in 1997 coincided with the Asian financial crisis.

The correlation between the highest buildings and the lowest economic moments would be eerie were its reasons not so obvious — excessive credit, overconfidence and the culture of ostentation in an overheated economy.

Burj Dubai may become a symbol of Dubai’s economic resilience. Or it may end up as a monumental morality tale about overweening ambition. Either way, the new city of Masdar, now being built in Abu Dhabi as a carbon-neutral eco-city (call it the green suburb of Babel), will stand as an architectural rebuke to the great tower of hubris next door.

Khaleej Times published an opinion piece by Lanny J. Davis that depicts the construction of the Burj Khalifa in a more positive light. Davis analogizes between architecture’s role in a successful global economy with peaceful international relationships of the 21st century.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton saw the connection between today’s dedication of the Burj Dubai and tomorrow’s launch of The Dubai Forum, and the core prerequisites for a stable and peaceful world when she sent her greetings and salutations to His Highness Shaikh Mohammed, and wrote: “Your efforts to create international cooperation in the global economy is an important goal, and I wish you, my friend, the very best in this endeavour.”

Secretary Clinton’s reference to “international cooperation” is of course, metaphorically speaking, no different than the brilliantly conceived mutual dependence and relationships within the Burj Dubai that keeps it stable and enduring: a “triple-lobed footprint, an abstraction of the Hymenocallis flower, composed of three elements arranged around a central core. The modular, Y-shaped structure, with setbacks along each of its three wings, provides an inherently stable configuration for the 160-story structure….Twenty-six helical levels decrease the cross section of the tower incrementally as it spirals skyward.”

We can learn important lessons from real architecture — and from the Burj Dubai. With planning and international cooperation, mutual respect among nations with different cultures, histories, religions, and traditions, we can achieve stability and security and a victory for civil society — no matter how mammoth and complex and different are the country-by-country economic infrastructures.

Global Voices culled a number of tweets that praised Dubai’s brand new marvel. AbeerMK writes:

#BurjKhalifa RT @FingerPrint10: Perfectly done and perfectly timed.. The opening of #BurjDubai will be something people won’t forget

RT @mzaher: There were indian kids next to me at #burjdubai #burjkhalifa singing the UAE national anthem in arabic. How cute.

Other netizens were disappointed in the cost of the building’s opening fireworks. Vrthejas tweets:

Looks like Dubai spent all of Abu Dhabi’s bail-out money on the opening ceremony of Burj Dubai.

Blogger Sher Ali is disappointed in the Burj Khalifa investment:

Sheikh of Dubai is mimicking the West, but does he know that West first built up Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale and then they went about having Sears tower, Empire State Building? Buildings come and go or if they stay they become just routine after sometime just like Taipei tower.

But world class universities like Oxford remain always, and they are the real secret of Western power. How many universities of that caliber are present in the whole UAE?

For a better perspective on the height of the Burj Khalifa, watch this next video recorded by two contractors peering down from the spire of the building:

Lastly, this video shows footage from ground level of the Burj Khalifa and its surroundings.

- Michael Ramirez

The Arroyo administration claims to have implemented martial law to subdue violence by the Ampatuan warlord clan suspected of carrying out the attack.

Many Filipinos recall the island’s prior experience with martial law during the Marcos dictatorship in 1972. This ITN video from December 10th shows the protests in Manila over President Arroyo’s actions:

Global Voices contributor Karlo Mikhail Mongaya elaborates on the uneasiness over the present situation, quoting attorneys Solomon Lumba and Nepomuceno Malaluan from The Daily PCIJ about the administration’s justification of martial law:

Proclamation No. 1959 will be the first time that the structures and mechanisms that we have placed in the 1987 Constitution to check the president’s discretion to declare martial law will be tested.

Congress, the Supreme Court, and we as a people should not be bound by the standards of the past under the 1935 and 1973 Constitution.

How we act today will determine how tyrants will act tomorrow. If we respond out of habit, those very habits could be the rope that will hang us all.

Arkibong Bayan, a news site which focuses on Asia, has released a thorough analysis that criticizes the Arroyo administration’s imposition of martial law in Maguindanao. The article quotes a statement by the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers:

[Arroyo's justification of martial law is] clearly bereft of any sufficient factual basis for such declaration and suspension. This is an unequivocal and brazen abuse of the president’s powers under the Constitution, plain and simple…

The president is testing the outer limits of the Constitution; the president is playing fire with fundamental freedoms by placing the military above civilian authorities.

Malayapinas, a citizen journalist at World Pulse Media whose husband was killed twenty years ago, laments the recent Massacre in Maguindanao, which took the lives of two of her friends, Concepcion “Connie” Brizuela  and Cynthia Oquendo.

Like Malayapinas, they were devoted human rights defenders. Malayapinas provides a detailed account of human rights abuses and her own perilous fight for change in the Philippines:

Under the Arroyo government, violence has worsened, as more military forces have become involved in the lawlessness and culture of impunity that reigns all over the island. At least sixty-seven journalists, not including the Maguindanao massacre, and more than thousand activists have been killed, disappeared and tortured during her reign.

Activists in my country are often labeled “Enemies of the State.” Usually, they were shot to death or forcibly taken, even in broad day light by believed military agents wearing bonnets, brought into safe houses, tortured, interrogated and silenced forever.

- Michael Ramirez

Tokyo’s neighborhoods straddle between the need for modern development and the desire to maintain historical buildings and structures.

For instance, Fujiizaka, affectionately named “the slope for seeing Mount Fuji,” in the Nippori neighborhood, has been increasingly blocked by tall buildings that obstruct its view. Residents have banded together to push for preservation. The neighborhood cause is slowly gaining support as a growing desire to preserve historical places takes hold in Tokyo, reported the New York Times.

The city of Tokyo is geographically complex, with 8.5 million people living in 23 districts that span 620 kilometers.  The history of the city’s development is characterized by a continual process of restructuring and growth. It is a city that is renewed on average every twenty years, with few buildings surviving from the past.

This is due in part because as the capital of Japan since 1868, it has been used as a showcase for the Japanese modern age. It has also seen major development because of the need for new construction after World War II, earthquakes and the Olympics, according to the Goethe-Institut.

Chris Salzberg, a writer/translator living in Tokyo, Japan discusses the reaction to the recent development plan for the neighborhood of Shimokitazawa for Global Voices Online.

Tokyo has no lack of small, winding streets. Shibuya has its maze of criss-crossing shōtengai, Roppongi its club-lined back alleyways, Ueno its open-air street markets. But no neighborhood in Tokyo packs more complexity per square foot than Shimokitazawa, a neighborhood whose layout bears closer resemblance to a ball of thread than to anything an urban planner would come up with.

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Shimokitazawa’s spaghetti-like mess of streets and train lines evoke passion among some, frustration among others. The area has earned a name for itself as a breeding ground for creative young artists with its dozens of small theaters, art galleries and music venues. While eccentric characters like Rikimaru Toho fit perfectly into this urban environment, others see the maze of narrow streets as a dangerous fire hazard and a giant urban congestion knot in need of unwinding.

The entire area happens to lie in the path of a would-be thoroughfare running through Shimokitazawa to Shibuya, originally set forth in a “War damage revival plan” drafted all the way back in 1946. After several changes, that plan was brought back to life in 2003 and demolition and construction work has been slated to start in 2010. Should it be executed, the plan will split Shimokitazawa apart with a 26-meter wide expressway, Subsidiary Route 54 (補助54号線).

While the basic shape of those redevelopment plans had been known for some time, it was only a few weeks ago that the first glimpses of the new design finally emerged on the blog of Kuniyoshi Yoshida, a local landowner and head of the Shimokitazawa South [ja] shopowners’ union. Comments which began to appear on the blog, blasting the new design for its failure to respect the Shimokitazawa atmosphere, were swiftly deleted, but hostility against the plans only grew.

See this video of the streets of Shimokitazawa neighborhood below: