Tomomi Mita: 'The Current Status of Urban/Street & Fashion'

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One of the landscapes that is visibly transforming right now is the fashion street. Until now, those sensitive to urban fashion have visited the streets according to their own tastes/interests. However, there's a clear difference between the fashion streets of the past and the current state after the rise of e-commerce and the spread of the coronavirus.

Why do fashion streets gather various shops and formulate their own style? And with the widespread use of e-commerce sites, the advancement of technology, and the changing social conditions, how will the streets transform? We spoke to Associate Professor Tomomi Mita of the Faculty of General Management at the Prefectural University of Kumamoto, who specializes in urban sociology and studies cultural production and urban growth, about the present/future of the streets.

PROFILE

Tomomi Mita

Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1978. Associate Professor of Sociology, Faculty of General Management, Prefectural University of Kumamoto.
Researcher at the Rikkyo University Institute for Global Urban Studies.
Doctor of Sociology, Master of Urban Science. In 2002, she graduated from the Department of Sociology, Rikkyo University. In 2005, she completed her Master's degree at the Graduate School of Urban Studies, Tokyo Metropolitan University. In 2012, she completed the Doctoral Program in Sociology at Rikkyo University. Her field of expertise is urban sociology. Her current research theme centers around fashion culture production and real estate investment in the urban back roads of 'Urahara', focusing on the Jingumae area in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo. She has been studying the factors and processes that have allowed for the coexistence of residential areas and fashionable commercial districts.

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First, could you tell us about your research interests, Professor Mita?

Summing up my research so far, it divides broadly into two parts. The first is the cultural transformation of 'Urahara' (Ura-Harajuku), the urban backstreets in Jingumae, Shibuya. 'Urahara' transformed from a residential street into a fashion street lined with low-rise buildings housing clothing designers and select shops due to the rise and fall of the real estate bubble from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. At the same time, I studied how 'Urahara' functions as a global hub for high-end fashion design, supported by the local residents, from the perspectives of cultural production and urban sociology.

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