this restructuring process, contemporary art plays an essential role in the formation of these re-invented localities. Contemporary Art itself has also undergone some fundamental changes over the last three decades, with cultural projects playing an increasingly important role in urban regeneration projects from the mid-80s. Minoru Mori, the founder of the Mori Art Museum and developer behind Roppongi Hills, which opened in 2003, is a property developer whose interest is not primarily art but town planning and revitalising urban areas. The success of his 1986 Ark Hills which comprises a concert hall, exhibition spaces and eating areas, led to it becoming a nationwide model copied by municipalities and encouraged Mori’s vision and creation of the Roppongi Hills area. An hardware and software approach to arts and culture. On the other handprojects such as the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial, amongst others in Japan, appear more focused on utilising the capacity of arts activity to support community-led renewal. This particular festival seems reasonably successful in attracting tourism to the region, and, according to one of the initiators, plays a role in ‘revitalising elderly people who have lost their hope, identity and vision of the future. Similarly projects such as the recent Beppu Project NPO, aim to renew a sense of citizenship through cultural activity, art with a social purpose working with people as their principle ‘asset’. MK: First of all, I want to separate the act of art making by the artists from that which people like entrepreneurs or the public governments, cooperate entities are involved in