Who we are
We are a project team whose members are mainly from the Laboratory of Dr. Masato Dohi, the Department of Social Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology. Our academic background is urban design, community design and landscape architecture, and thus we take a view that homelessness and rough sleeping are issues of urban design and public open space and need to be tackled through spatial as well as social approaches.
In the past six years, we have developed a database system of rough sleepers in the City of Kawasaki, Japan, and have conducted research trips to six cities in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Also, we have recently started seeking to actively engage in advocacy work towards the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
In the context of addressing homelessness and rough sleeping in Japan, we are a unique team having our own root in urban design since homelessness is almost always treated as an issue of human services/social care in Japan.