Thread by @wrathofgnon

The famous Harmonica Yokocho in Tokyo's Kichijo neighborhood is an interesting study in bottom-up urbanism. On an area of 30,829 ft² or 2,864 m² there are exactly 100 stores, shops, restaurants, and bars, providing the livelihoods of between one and three hundred people. How? -->

In 1944 the area around Kichijoji station was cleared of buildings to protect it from bombing damage. The open ground was quickly turned into an open air black market where local children would ride the trains into undamaged rural areas and buy food from farmers to sell.

The black markets existed around every train station for years after the war ended. In 1958 the local vendors heard rumors of a development on their traditional patch of land. A plan was formed: large quantities of corrugated iron, mortar, tinder blocks and lumber was purchased.

The stockpile was hidden until the summer Obon holiday, when city employees and building inspectors took a week off from work. As dusk fell feverish building started, within a couple of days a whole neighborhood with five streets, five water wells and electricity had sprung up.

When city officials returned from the summer vacation out of town, there wasn't anything they could do. The squatters had even named the streets and started five official merchant associations, each one representing one street. They were not to be moved.

In the beginning the shops sold everything from underwear to salt and iron ware, but by 1969 competition that had air conditioning and heating took most of their business away. However, the drinkers who came for the cozy bars didn't mind the uncomfortable weather.

So the whole neighborhood changed tack and marketed themselves as a nightlife spot: more bars and eateries, fewer dry good merchants. One fishmonger's habit of drying fish on the roof attracted hundreds of stray cats: the media was not long in sniffing out a good story.

These days Harmonica Yokocho (named as such because the row of buildings looked a bit like a harmonica) is wildly popular with local kids and white collar workers. If you look closely you can even spot the old original contraband building materials still in use: corrugated steel.