Tracing the lost streets: a spatial mapping of Tokyo at the turn of the eighteenth century

Purpose City streets, which bear a history of identity, may be transformed, demolished or lost due to human-made causes or natural disasters. This study aims to hypothesize on the long-lost streets of Edo, now named Tokyo, by modeling the sensory reality of the past and analyzing the translations of morphological patterns into spatial mobility and experience. Design/methodology/approach While archival sources are of the utmost importance in revealing the spatiality of the past, digital technologies play an essential role in making sense of archival data. This study adopts an interdisciplinary approach using cross-examined archival evidence about the streets of Edo/Tokyo that no longer exist, coupling them with comparative secondary literature providing evidence on the city’s street morphology. It offers an empirical approach when examining them through digital methods—in particular, by mapping and space syntax. Findings This study provides a fine-grained visual interpretation of the vanished historic city streets of Edo/Tokyo. It “depicts” the lost past by mapping urban mobility, social interaction, boundaries, hotspots and seclusions within the city, and by doing so, it interconnects the city streets to social life. This elucidates the impact of morphological language and material culture on human interactions. Research limitations/implications Although the same methodology could be repeated for other scenarios in the same study area for different time frames of the day and year, such as day and night or festival days and in other lost/historic cities worldwide for a comparative study, this study did not extend its experiments to any other location in Edo/Tokyo. Further research may enrich historians' and urban researchers' knowledge of past architectural spaces. Originality/value This study offers a paradigm shift when looking at lost city streets by investigating the interface of human agency and urban morphology in Edo/Tokyo. It also provides a creative and applicable method aligning the space syntax method when exploring lost historic city streets and urban spaces or comparing examples around the globe.