In summer of 2008, Y-GSA, together with architect Luis Falcon of Barcelona, held a workshop "Multi_Ramblas YOKOHAMA" that had as its subject the central urban area of Yokohama.  "Multi_Ramblas" is one of the three-stage workshops that Professor Falcon's laboratory called Intellligent Coast at Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya holds with a number of universities in Barcelona.  The aim of this workshop, named after a famous street frequented by tourists in Barcelona, was to use the concept of tourism, with which Japan is not yet very familiar, as a tool of urban strategy and to develop a concept.  After nine days of concentrated effort, a proposal for tourism in Yokohama in the future, "Epsilon City", was put together.

"Why hold a work on tourism in Yokohama?" 

Tourism has been seen as something that transforms a city into a tourist site.  However, that is only one aspect of tourism.  Basically, the power of tourism is the capacity to draw people in and to activate a city.  Tourism should be seen as a new tool for improving a city.  As generations change, society is being transformed; de-industrialization will accelerate in the future.  That transformation has been changing industrial areas found in harbor districts into commercial areas.

Yokohama is now changing.  Instead of remaining a bedroom town for Tokyo, it embraced in 2007 a new urban vision called "Creative City Yokohama" and is aspiring to a new image of Yokohama focused on the potential of the waterfront.  Perhaps tourism will serve as a tool for bringing in people of talent and improving the city.

This workshop is a proposal for a future for Yokohama based on three kinds of "intelligent talent"――cultural values of a region, tourism and talent.

Workshop objectives: Luis Falcon [summary]