Creative Milieux of Fashion and Reuse in Tokyo, Bangkok and Singapore

ABSTRACT This paper explores bottom-up urban regeneration in Tokyo, Bangkok and Singapore. It looks at the contribution of specific local creativities which, in association with an increasingly popular practice of the reuse of existing urban artefacts, provides a critical contribution to local urban culture. These synergies between reuse and local creativities seem to be capable of generating alternatives to the dominant development trends. Those alternatives promote the local, the ordinary and the banal to the benefit of urban quality. A specific focus of the paper is on requalification of existing places by bottom-up fashion-related activities.