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The affordable housing is not in Tokyo but outside the city with a decent commute. Also, Japanese national debt is 258% of GDP. I don't know how much incentive

The affordable housing is not in Tokyo but outside the city with a decent commute. Also, Japanese national debt is 258% of GDP. I don't know how much incentives are put into housing but I got to imagine the government is spending it everywhere. The housing is also built poorly and houses are rebuilt every few decades.

bleepblorp 6y ago
Do you know to what extent the short life of Japanese housing is a cultural or geographic issue? I've read that the Japanese simply don't like living in older buildings, so their housing stock is built with the understanding that it will be torn down and rebuilt on fairly short timescales. I've also read that the frequency of small earthquakes in Japan makes building for the long term very difficult (earthquake damage to structures is cumulative) so it's easier to build housing with a short design life. However, I don't read a word of Japanese so I have no idea if either of these stories are accurate.
- presentation 6y ago
  It is accurate - I live in Japan, it’s a city that’s been destroyed pretty much every few decades either by war or natural calamity - houses beyond 30 years are generally worthless beyond their land value, probably negative since the next tenant will just demolish them. People feel unsafe about earthquake safety of buildings built before the earthquake code changed around 40 years ago and generally wary of older houses in general. Plus people just want creature comforts of better soundproofing, climate control and so on.
- fomine3 6y ago
  +Typhoon for disaster. And higher humidity makes buildings aging faster.
presentation 6y ago
For a data point my wife and I live in a 1 bedroom apartment 4 and 8 minutes from 2 train lines by foot respectively, around 10 minutes from Shinjuku (central Tokyo) for about $650 - part of the trick is that unlike any place I’ve seen in US cities, my apartment is only 25m2, a size I’m perfectly OK with but would probably be impossible to find in most US cities. The density of my neighborhood is probably like 10x of my old neighborhood in SF and yet all the buildings are 1-3 stories and aside from the large number of pedestrians and proximity to several city centers, it feels smaller town than anywhere in SF. Housing here isn’t built for the super long term, this is true - but it is built to much stricter codes than the US with respect to earthquake safety, and I wouldn’t say the typical modern American home is built to stand the test of time either. Here they just build a lot more smaller units in much closer proximity here, and roads are much smaller which in itself probably doubles the buildable land in the city. They also have a strong transit network which means the available land to reasonably commute from is vast; you can get considerably cheaper than my rent or live in a bigger home if you lived say a 15 min walk from a train station a bit further from the center instead (similar properties to mine that are say a 45min-1hr commute to central Tokyo via bus/cycle + train can go for $350 or so, and you’d literally be living in proximity to farms (Tokyo contains a significant amount of rural countryside contrary to most people’s imagination). I really think the American built environment is totally dysfunctional and prioritizes land speculators and motor vehicles over the people who actually live there. People here actually intend to live in their homes instead of being investment vehicles, to be a part of their neighborhoods, and to not risk their lives every time they enter public spaces. That makes it possible for working class people to afford to buy a home and for children to walk to school on their own.
- blueblisters 6y ago
  > The density of my neighborhood is probably like 10x of my old neighborhood in SF How are the utilities built to sustain such densities? Curious because in most cases, density is limited by the capacity of utilities in that area.

bleepblorp 6y ago

Do you know to what extent the short life of Japanese housing is a cultural or geographic issue? I've read that the Japanese simply don't like living in older buildings, so their housing stock is built with the understanding that it will be torn down and rebuilt on fairly short timescales. I've also read that the frequency of small earthquakes in Japan makes building for the long term very difficult (earthquake damage to structures is cumulative) so it's easier to build housing with a short design life. However, I don't read a word of Japanese so I have no idea if either of these stories are accurate.

presentation 6y ago
It is accurate - I live in Japan, it’s a city that’s been destroyed pretty much every few decades either by war or natural calamity - houses beyond 30 years are generally worthless beyond their land value, probably negative since the next tenant will just demolish them. People feel unsafe about earthquake safety of buildings built before the earthquake code changed around 40 years ago and generally wary of older houses in general. Plus people just want creature comforts of better soundproofing, climate control and so on.
fomine3 6y ago
+Typhoon for disaster. And higher humidity makes buildings aging faster.

presentation 6y ago

For a data point my wife and I live in a 1 bedroom apartment 4 and 8 minutes from 2 train lines by foot respectively, around 10 minutes from Shinjuku (central Tokyo) for about $650 - part of the trick is that unlike any place I’ve seen in US cities, my apartment is only 25m2, a size I’m perfectly OK with but would probably be impossible to find in most US cities. The density of my neighborhood is probably like 10x of my old neighborhood in SF and yet all the buildings are 1-3 stories and aside from the large number of pedestrians and proximity to several city centers, it feels smaller town than anywhere in SF. Housing here isn’t built for the super long term, this is true - but it is built to much stricter codes than the US with respect to earthquake safety, and I wouldn’t say the typical modern American home is built to stand the test of time either. Here they just build a lot more smaller units in much closer proximity here, and roads are much smaller which in itself probably doubles the buildable land in the city. They also have a strong transit network which means the available land to reasonably commute from is vast; you can get considerably cheaper than my rent or live in a bigger home if you lived say a 15 min walk from a train station a bit further from the center instead (similar properties to mine that are say a 45min-1hr commute to central Tokyo via bus/cycle + train can go for $350 or so, and you’d literally be living in proximity to farms (Tokyo contains a significant amount of rural countryside contrary to most people’s imagination). I really think the American built environment is totally dysfunctional and prioritizes land speculators and motor vehicles over the people who actually live there. People here actually intend to live in their homes instead of being investment vehicles, to be a part of their neighborhoods, and to not risk their lives every time they enter public spaces. That makes it possible for working class people to afford to buy a home and for children to walk to school on their own.

blueblisters 6y ago
> The density of my neighborhood is probably like 10x of my old neighborhood in SF How are the utilities built to sustain such densities? Curious because in most cases, density is limited by the capacity of utilities in that area.