Fantastic Tuesday: Yummy Flower

On the Tuesdays of the once-monthly seminar weeks, the PhD in Practice opens its doors to the Academy, friends, and other interested people from 6pm till 10pm. Programme participants (individually or collaboratively) use the space DG 12, one of the attics at the academy, to present work in progress, and experiment with different formats of presentation. Come and join!

Maebashi City is the capitol of Gunma prefecture in Japan.
The city boasts the biggest scale of "Shōten-gai" (shopping street typically with covered with the arcade) that developed through the 60's and 70's, the period known as Japan's rapid economic growth, however, its popularity dropped rapidly in the 90's. After the millennium hit, increasing numbers of the shopping malls in the suburban area rather gained the shoppers with vehicles.
As the owners of the closed shops in the "Shōten-gai" have earned enough money back when the economy was swelling, they simply closed them down and disinterested to rent them or selling them to strangers.

The center of Maebashi now has the longest "Shuttered Shōten-gai" (closed-down shopping arcade) that looks as if it's a ghost town, or is it? What/how the people in Maebashi are working right now? How are the pre-existing structures of the city affecting or being used by the people?