Local identity is a notion worth exploring since it is often in its name that activists and community groups come together and oppose “redevelopment plans”, such as the ones taking place in Shimokitazawa-Tokyo, Dharavi-Mumbai, Goa, Barcelonetta-Barcelone and so many other places around the world.

In Shimokitazawa for instance, local residents created various groups including Save the Shimokitazawa and Shimokitazawa Forum in response to a typical old-school top-down master plan of the government for a 26 meter-wide road cutting through the culturally vibrant pedestrian streets of that unique Tokyo neighborhood. These groups have been incredibly active and creative in their response to the government’s plans.

They organized symposiums with academics and experts, invited students from Japan, Israel, and the US to propose alternatives, organized an international design workshop, conducted population surveys, petitioned residents, raised funds, created other groups, wrote to the government and the media, designed posters, t-shirts, hats and pins, organized marches, concerts, and festivals… They have done everything imaginable.

These groups are composed of some of the most informed, organized and passionate people in Tokyo. They are also the most diverse yet united bunch ever: planners, architects, musicians, students, unemployed, professors, bar owners, retirees, editors, journalists, professional gamblers, translators, dancers, librarians, corner shop owners, enthusiastic foreigners, you name it. Spend an evening with them at their favorite meeting place, the Never Never Land bar, and they just look like childhood friends or better, like old comrades who’ve been fighting many wars together.

They are united against a common threat; fighting a common enemy. Yet sometimes one wonders if that enemy is not also their best friend. A best enemy of sorts. Think about it: if the government was to withdraw its redevelopment plan altogether, what would happen to the sacred unity connecting these people? What would then happen to that “local identity” they are defending? Would it still exist once everyone goes back home and meets only randomly in the street or occasionally in a bar?

In fact community groups such as Save the Shimokitazawa and Shimokitazawa Forum do not defend “local identity” as much as they create it. In other words, the moment of activism is more meaningful than the cause being defended. Not only that, there is nothing static about the local identity that they create in the process. It gets redefined each time a new member joins the group or each time the government alters its plans. Community groups are actually rarely in favor of the status quo. They are fighting for self-determination and control in the local development process.

Community groups are sometimes accused of being composed of nostalgic, romantic souls trying vainly to preserve a local identity that has no meaning in the context of cities like Tokyo, Mumbai or Barcelona, which are in constant evolution. But really, these groups are fighting to preserve the ever changing nature of their neighborhoods, not to keep them stuck in one point of time. They are defending a culture in movement and the movement of culture.

The redevelopment plan in Shimokitazawa, with its wide road and lanes of 10-12 storey high buildings, will clearly make any future development costly and difficult, and necessarily top-down. Metabolic evolution requires a multiplicity of actors acting at the local level. The possibility of change is what needs to be preserved. It is only when a culture or “local identity” doesn’t have the possibility to change that it dies. Change is a necessary condition of identity.

The most important function of “participatory planning” is to create venues for the “production of locality” in our cities today. And without a doubt, community activist groups are the best sources of inspiration for any policymaker or urban planner interested in participatory planning.

For all its shortcomings, participatory planning is worth a genuine try. The crowd is not always wise in the end, but it definitively gets wiser in the process.