4 ms·

Tokyo may have found the solution to soaring housing costs

26 points by g4k 10y ago

danbolt 10y ago
The reasons for Japan's lower housing prices make a lot of sense to me and I think their solutions are a good idea for developed nations. I'll admit I'm not particularly educated on this sort of issue, so I'd love to hear from someone who thinks this sort of central planning isn't as good of an idea.
- jstalin 10y ago
  It's the opposite of central planning. According to the article, there is a uniform set of rules. Follow the rules, build your condo building. In the US there is central planning on the local level, usually the city level. Planning commissions determine if your project meets the "character of the neighborhood" and neighbors bitch and complain that your project will "create more traffic" and the (central) planning commission denies your permit.
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    I agree with what you observe, but I'd characterize Japan's solution as massively and strictly central planning, whereas the US has loosely adhered to local planning.
    - erikpukinskis 10y ago
      You're confusing strictness with centralization. The rules are strict, but there is no centralized control. The way you get decentralization is by having rules. Consider Bitcoin for example. The rules are incredibly strict. You basically have no choice but to obey all of the rules in order to participate. They will not budge, and they were devised by one person, which calls to mind "central" and "control" but is just the opposite. Those rules are carefully constructed to allow the system to be completely decentralized. No permission is needed to participate. No one has the power to veto or alter your contributions. Simply obey the rules and no one else can have power over you. The distinction you are making about federal vs municipal control isn't about centralization vs decentralization, it's just about the scale of centralization. Municipalities are small, but they still have a single bottleneck at the mayor/city council. The reason this matters is that a rule-based decentralized system provides a structure that you can rely on. You can make a plan for compliance, and be reasonably assured that it will work. With centralized planning, even at if the central office is only governing something as small as an HOA, then there is no plan you can make which has an assurance of success. You are at the whim of the planners who have veto power. This turns planning into a stochastic game where your plans need to have redundancy at every level in order to have high probability of success, which increases cost and slows the pace of development substantially.
      - danbolt 10y ago
        I appreciate the distinctions! I feel like I should research them more, but I must be conflating the the terms in my mind.
- ceras 10y ago
  To add some more context: Japan defines a zoning "scaffold" at the national level, but it's extremely simple (8 pages with colorful diagrams) and highly permissive [1]. It defines a handful of zones cities can use across their neighborhood, allowing roughly "low, medium, high, or ultra high" density, and not much else. Your low-density neighborhoods still allow about as much density as much of Brooklyn, irregular plot sizes, homes that use 100% of the plot next to homes that 20% of the plot but are correspondingly much taller, and homes that double as a neighborhood restaurant. And the zoning is applied to large neighborhoods, not to individual plots of land. There's also no minimum parking requirements, and cities often forego street-side parking: parking lots are privately built to meet demand. In contrast, American zones can be hyper micro-managed: NYC defines hundreds of zones, and designates "zone" at the individual building level instead of neighborhood--the complexity spans 3500 pages[2]--not including a list of landmarked buildings and neighborhoods and their specific rules, which is a sizable list itself. Even if you adhere to the zoning laws for your plot of land, your new building proposal may still be rejected for not fitting in with "neighborhood character." (This concept doesn't exist in Japan: you can build a restaurant shaped like a boat next to an ancient temple for all anyone cares, or a corner store shaped like a tomato[3]). Beyond that, NYC has an unfortunate habit of retroactively changing the zoning under parcels of land to become more restrictive, ensuring (1) old buildings are never torn down and upgraded for fear of being forced to rebuild it smaller, resulting in very old housing stock, and (2) it's a political rent-seeking game of rich land owners to fight for upzoning or rezoning of their individual plots, boosting their land value (see the controversy with NYU; nobody interested in just building middle class housing would ever go through this legal battle). In comparison to highly restrictive and micro-managed US zoning laws, the national zoning scaffolds in Japan almost resemble a bill of rights more than a centrally planned system: city governments are allowed to plan densities to help with infrastructure planning, but they may not restrict what you can do with your plot of land, what buildings on that plot may look like, etc. anywhere near to the extent practiced in the US. They also don't, as far as I know, retroactively restrict your land rights like has happened in over 40% of Manhattan [4]. US zones are far more "centrally planned," just at the city/county level rather than national. [1] http://www.mlit.go.jp/common/000234477.pdf http://www.mlit.go.jp/common/000234477.pdf [2] http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/zoning/zoning-text/allarticles.pdf?r=080216 http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/zoning/zoni... [3] https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQKl1g6fRPghCqWhtwEACjbdGaER15RwLLclQ6d8FAyn8AmpjaEUg https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQKl1g6... [4] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-percent-of-manhattans-buildings-could-not-be-built-today.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-p...
kqr2 10y ago
A good article on Japan's national zoning laws and how it differs from the US: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
mywittyname 10y ago
It also helps that Japan has a culture of tearing down "used" houses after 15 or so years, and rebuilding them [1]. This means that neighborhoods are constantly being reconstructed to meet the needs of the current population. That attitude seems to clash pretty dramatically with those of San Franciscans or Londoners, who prefer to maintain the heritage and culture of a neighborhood. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/disposable-homes-japan-environment-lifespan-sustainability https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/disposable-...

26 points by g4k 10y ago

The reasons for Japan's lower housing prices make a lot of sense to me and I think their solutions are a good idea for developed nations. I'll admit I'm not particularly educated on this sort of issue, so I'd love to hear from someone who thinks this sort of central planning isn't as good of an idea.

jstalin 10y ago
It's the opposite of central planning. According to the article, there is a uniform set of rules. Follow the rules, build your condo building. In the US there is central planning on the local level, usually the city level. Planning commissions determine if your project meets the "character of the neighborhood" and neighbors bitch and complain that your project will "create more traffic" and the (central) planning commission denies your permit.
- sokoloff 10y ago
  I agree with what you observe, but I'd characterize Japan's solution as massively and strictly central planning, whereas the US has loosely adhered to local planning.
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    You're confusing strictness with centralization. The rules are strict, but there is no centralized control. The way you get decentralization is by having rules. Consider Bitcoin for example. The rules are incredibly strict. You basically have no choice but to obey all of the rules in order to participate. They will not budge, and they were devised by one person, which calls to mind "central" and "control" but is just the opposite. Those rules are carefully constructed to allow the system to be completely decentralized. No permission is needed to participate. No one has the power to veto or alter your contributions. Simply obey the rules and no one else can have power over you. The distinction you are making about federal vs municipal control isn't about centralization vs decentralization, it's just about the scale of centralization. Municipalities are small, but they still have a single bottleneck at the mayor/city council. The reason this matters is that a rule-based decentralized system provides a structure that you can rely on. You can make a plan for compliance, and be reasonably assured that it will work. With centralized planning, even at if the central office is only governing something as small as an HOA, then there is no plan you can make which has an assurance of success. You are at the whim of the planners who have veto power. This turns planning into a stochastic game where your plans need to have redundancy at every level in order to have high probability of success, which increases cost and slows the pace of development substantially.
    - danbolt 10y ago
      I appreciate the distinctions! I feel like I should research them more, but I must be conflating the the terms in my mind.
ceras 10y ago
To add some more context: Japan defines a zoning "scaffold" at the national level, but it's extremely simple (8 pages with colorful diagrams) and highly permissive [1]. It defines a handful of zones cities can use across their neighborhood, allowing roughly "low, medium, high, or ultra high" density, and not much else. Your low-density neighborhoods still allow about as much density as much of Brooklyn, irregular plot sizes, homes that use 100% of the plot next to homes that 20% of the plot but are correspondingly much taller, and homes that double as a neighborhood restaurant. And the zoning is applied to large neighborhoods, not to individual plots of land. There's also no minimum parking requirements, and cities often forego street-side parking: parking lots are privately built to meet demand. In contrast, American zones can be hyper micro-managed: NYC defines hundreds of zones, and designates "zone" at the individual building level instead of neighborhood--the complexity spans 3500 pages[2]--not including a list of landmarked buildings and neighborhoods and their specific rules, which is a sizable list itself. Even if you adhere to the zoning laws for your plot of land, your new building proposal may still be rejected for not fitting in with "neighborhood character." (This concept doesn't exist in Japan: you can build a restaurant shaped like a boat next to an ancient temple for all anyone cares, or a corner store shaped like a tomato[3]). Beyond that, NYC has an unfortunate habit of retroactively changing the zoning under parcels of land to become more restrictive, ensuring (1) old buildings are never torn down and upgraded for fear of being forced to rebuild it smaller, resulting in very old housing stock, and (2) it's a political rent-seeking game of rich land owners to fight for upzoning or rezoning of their individual plots, boosting their land value (see the controversy with NYU; nobody interested in just building middle class housing would ever go through this legal battle). In comparison to highly restrictive and micro-managed US zoning laws, the national zoning scaffolds in Japan almost resemble a bill of rights more than a centrally planned system: city governments are allowed to plan densities to help with infrastructure planning, but they may not restrict what you can do with your plot of land, what buildings on that plot may look like, etc. anywhere near to the extent practiced in the US. They also don't, as far as I know, retroactively restrict your land rights like has happened in over 40% of Manhattan [4]. US zones are far more "centrally planned," just at the city/county level rather than national. [1] http://www.mlit.go.jp/common/000234477.pdf http://www.mlit.go.jp/common/000234477.pdf [2] http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/zoning/zoning-text/allarticles.pdf?r=080216 http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/zoning/zoni... [3] https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQKl1g6fRPghCqWhtwEACjbdGaER15RwLLclQ6d8FAyn8AmpjaEUg https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQKl1g6... [4] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-percent-of-manhattans-buildings-could-not-be-built-today.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-p...

kqr2 10y ago

A good article on Japan's national zoning laws and how it differs from the US: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

mywittyname 10y ago

It also helps that Japan has a culture of tearing down "used" houses after 15 or so years, and rebuilding them [1]. This means that neighborhoods are constantly being reconstructed to meet the needs of the current population. That attitude seems to clash pretty dramatically with those of San Franciscans or Londoners, who prefer to maintain the heritage and culture of a neighborhood. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/disposable-homes-japan-environment-lifespan-sustainability https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/disposable-...