The market of ruins, or the destruction of the cultural city.

Shibuya in the 1970s became the scene for the emergence of a postmodern culture, wherein urban space was differentiated, staged and mediatised, so as to become an integrated advertising environment. This was enabled by and produced a particular geography, but was the result most directly of a conscious strategy on the part of Parco, its dominant retailer. The segmented area could therefore be consumed by its visitors, as women's magazines at the time were being consumed by their readers, with the reader and visitor simultaneously seeing and being seen within the new urban/media space. This article traces this process, emphasising the new kind of agency that was acquired by women in the process, but also the rapid disappearance of this new sense of possibility, constrained not only by the limits of consumerism and by a mid-1980s decline in consumption, but also from the more general uncertainty that became apparent towards the end of the decade. By the turn of the century, postmodern culture had disappeared in Tokyo. Inasmuch as Shibuya's earlier self can still be discovered in Taipei, Seoul and beyond, however, its lessons continue to resonate today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]