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For those saying that the density of college campuses simply isn't suitable when many different types of lifestyle converge, I urge you to look at Japan or Euro

For those saying that the density of college campuses simply isn't suitable when many different types of lifestyle converge, I urge you to look at Japan or Europe for an example of density working at scale. Density doesn't mean everyone is forced to live in a studio apartment either. I live in Tokyo in a 3-story house paying less in rent than I ever did in Atlanta, Seattle, or Ann Arbor. The biggest difference is the expansive train systems, allowing for clusters of shops and restaurants that are accessible without a car. And not a parking lot in sight (good riddance)!

jdcaron 6y ago
Unused cars & parking lots take a lot of space in cities.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  As well as the huge danger of street side parking with drivers swerving in/out and opening doors without looking. In my city there is a single city block which has no roads (special vehicle access only) and consists of a bunch of high rise apts buildings with restaurants on the bottom level. I stumbled on this area by accident and I was blown away, it was like I had walked in to an alternate universe. There were a group of kids playing in what looks like your typical suburb parkland except this is right in the middle of the city which would normally be packed out with cars and concrete. Makes me wish more of the city was like this.
someperson 6y ago
> expensive train systems I think you meant "expansive"?
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  Or extensive.
- benrbray 6y ago
  Haha typed on mobile, my bad. The trains are pretty cheap compared to the cost of car ownership in America. From another comment I wrote: > I live pretty far from central Tokyo and for between 200-350yen one way I can get to Shinjuku / Shibuya / Ikebukuro / Ueno and everywhere in between. So that's 400-700yen round trip for a night out. > In Seattle or Atlanta? You'd be extremely lucky if your destination within a 15min walk of a bus stop or train station. In Atlanta good luck not getting mugged while waiting for the bus at night. Uber typically costs $10-15 one way (although to be fair you can split the cost between friends if you're travelling together). > Or if you own a car in the US, you can reliably get from A to B, but you're paying between $5-10/day for insurance (whether you use the car that day or not) and $10-20 to park if you're in a city.
ardit33 6y ago
just look at Brooklyn yo.... while it has some tall building, near Manhattan, it is mostly 2-3 story buildings (brownstones) or 4 / 5 smaller apartment buildings, and further down it has single family homes. It has higher density than SF, Yet is provides lots of public space and it is not car hostile either. Not everything has to look like either Manhattan, or Surburbian Sprawl like most other cities. Boston is unique in that area as well, especially around Brookline, Allston, South End, and Cambridge/Sommerville areas as they were built pre-car era. It think Brooklyn and Boston (especially Cambridge) are the most 'human' scale it gets in the States, and they are fine places to live. SF is not there yet. The density (is pretty low if you go off downtown) and hills make it a bit hard to create the european feel.
- tacomonstrous 6y ago
  Boston is not affordable in any reasonable sense, speaking as a professional in the Boston area.
  - 0_____0 6y ago
    can you give a little more detail into this? what makes it unaffordable, and what's your context and experience? [edit: this isn't a snip, i'm considering moving there and legit want to know]
    - chadash 6y ago
      A reasonable but not too fancy two bedroom apartment might run you high hundred thousands or low million. If you are coming from SF it doesn’t sound crazy but at least got tech, salaries are far lower.
    - vineyardmike 6y ago
      To add, food and such can also be more expensive. General CostOfLiving type stuff.
    - Dumblydorr 6y ago
      The area is colonial in age, but has thousands of college students and thousands of highly paid professional workers. This means both the apartment and the housing markets have huge demand, and people simply pay, because the alternative is to commute through terrible traffic and extra 60 min daily.
yunesj 6y ago
> The biggest difference is the expansive train systems Railways are allowed to grow organically in Tokyo and Japan: > Outlying and suburban areas are served by seven private railway companies, whose lines intersect at major stations with the subway system. More than sixty additional kilometers of subway were under construction in 1990 by the two companies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Japan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Japan
spike021 6y ago
>And not a parking lot in sight (good riddance)! Interesting. While I haven't lived in Japan, I have spent a month there. Obviously there aren't nearly the number of parking lots as in America, by far. But you can totally find large garages in some areas (parked in a large 7 or so story garage in Yokohama once), malls with large parking lots out in areas like Gunma, and even "hidden" garages in Tokyo (or other cities like Takasaki, even) where you pull into a little open garage area, and then there's an attendant who helps you drive the car onto a lift which is basically in the center of the building, which then "automatically" (or manually by the operator) stashes cars in a multi-level car park hidden inside the building. Plus tons of teeny 2-car or whatever lots do exist, they're just scattered. I realize in terms of scale that's still quite less than in America, which makes sense. But there are definitely parking lots and garages in Japan. :)
- tkgally 6y ago
  Yes. I've lived for several decades in densely populated parts of Tokyo and Yokohama. While many people do have cars in these areas, most walk, bike, or use public transportation for most purposes. I myself have never had a car and cannot even remember the last time I rode in a private automobile in Japan—probably more than ten years ago. But a few years ago, I started traveling around Japan more than I had before, using only trains, buses, and occasionally taxis. Once one leaves the major urban areas, I discovered, life is nearly as car-centric as in the suburban United States: almost everyone drives, the main roads are lined with big-box commercial businesses surrounded by parking lots, and a lot of people live in places that are unaccessible except by car. Even if a place is served by trains or buses, they might run at only one- or two-hour intervals, making a trip to the grocery store a half-day errand. An interesting business I learned about recently is individually owned parking spaces that are leased out in fifteen-minute increments to people who reserve them through a smartphone app [1]. My own house in Yokohama has a small parking space that we never use, and my daughter has suggested that we sign up to lease it out through that service. Some of our neighbors have done so already. The business is feasible because there is no free parking anywhere nearby. I know someone who works for a company that runs a similar business for bicycle parking spots [2]. In Japanese only: [1] https://www.akippa.com/ https://www.akippa.com/ [2] https://www.min-chu.jp/ https://www.min-chu.jp/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
eloisant 6y ago
What you're saying isn't true for Europe, actually. It's true that in Tokyo you can live far from the center of Tokyo and still have a lively neighborhood around the station, and reliable train to commute to the inner-Yamanote area. You still suffer if you need to commute because the trains are packed at peak time (station staff literally pushing people in so the doors can close). In Paris however, you either live in Paris itself (roughly the size of the Yamanote line) but it's crazy expensive especially if you have kids and need a bigger appartment, or you live in the suburbs that are mostly just housing and train (RER & Transilien) is unreliable. If you want to live in the "15-minutes neighborhood" with everything, but can't afford to live inside Paris or down town of a big metropolis, you need to move to a middle-size city but then getting a job in your area is more difficult.
- pimterry 6y ago
  It may not be for Paris, but in my experience it is for most Spanish cities - there's usually a clear centre of course, but also many small self-contained walkable neighbourhoods distributed throughout the city. It'd be interesting to find a good metric to be able to compare cities and explore this.
  - ganzsz 6y ago
    Same here in most Dutch cities, I myself don't live near the city centre but still have a self contained neighbourhood with a ton of schools shops and other facilities. And the public transport is good enough to be able to reach the entire metropolitan area for a job. Would be a nice research if someone could test different cities and neighbourhoods indeed.
  - jsinai 6y ago
    Would say London is a very good example of this as well, provided you're within the M25 (still a massive area though)
- wasdfff 6y ago
  This is why its so ironic to me that people celebrate europe, nyc, etc as some dense model for the world, when they too arent building to meet supply and refusing to upzone while local leaders benefit from their property assets exponentially rising in price, same as a suburban US city with the only high rises being offices.
atom-morgan 6y ago
Is the cost of housing just much cheaper than people expect it to be or what? I'm surprised to hear it's lower than Atlanta which is where I currently live.
- hajile 6y ago
  A quick google shows that software engineers in Tokyo can expect to only make 6.6M yen on average (going as low as 2.2M yen or as high as 8.8M yen). That's around $65k on average with the highest being around $85k. I can find those same jobs for 2x the salary in Atlanta any day of the week.
  - benrbray 6y ago
    You're right that software engineering is currently much more profitable in the US, but as far as careers go SWE is a bit of an anomaly. Most other careers don't have nearly the same pay disparity, if any. That said, many companies that hire American SWEs tend to pay better, especially if you have experience working at a big Silicon Valley tech company. Pre-covid there were quite a few job postings for senior developers above the $100k usd mark, which will get you quite far in Tokyo.
    - hajile 6y ago
      Salaries in Japan are very flat compared to the US with high-paying jobs often only paying 30-50% more than low-skill jobs. I'd also note that US minimum wage is $7.25 while Japan minimum wage is $8.67. Things are also different because relatively few married women are in the work force. From that, you could say that the average pay in Japan is much higher. In the US, wages stagnated for a couple decades and cost of living skyrocketed in the US as women entered the work force until it now takes 2 salaries to stay afloat vs only one in Japan (we'll exclude the unofficially high poverty rates). At the same time, US workers put in 41.3 hours per week for men and 36.3 hours per week for women (working 14% less time accounts for an enormous part of the earning difference between the sexes). In contrast, while the law officially puts the work day at 8 hours with statutory paid leave going up to about 3 weeks, most workers take little to no vacation and "voluntarily" work many more days and 30-50% longer hours per day than the US worker (though at the same time, productivity per hour may not always be high).

jdcaron 6y ago

Unused cars & parking lots take a lot of space in cities.

SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
As well as the huge danger of street side parking with drivers swerving in/out and opening doors without looking. In my city there is a single city block which has no roads (special vehicle access only) and consists of a bunch of high rise apts buildings with restaurants on the bottom level. I stumbled on this area by accident and I was blown away, it was like I had walked in to an alternate universe. There were a group of kids playing in what looks like your typical suburb parkland except this is right in the middle of the city which would normally be packed out with cars and concrete. Makes me wish more of the city was like this.

someperson 6y ago

> expensive train systems I think you meant "expansive"?

SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
Or extensive.
benrbray 6y ago
Haha typed on mobile, my bad. The trains are pretty cheap compared to the cost of car ownership in America. From another comment I wrote: > I live pretty far from central Tokyo and for between 200-350yen one way I can get to Shinjuku / Shibuya / Ikebukuro / Ueno and everywhere in between. So that's 400-700yen round trip for a night out. > In Seattle or Atlanta? You'd be extremely lucky if your destination within a 15min walk of a bus stop or train station. In Atlanta good luck not getting mugged while waiting for the bus at night. Uber typically costs $10-15 one way (although to be fair you can split the cost between friends if you're travelling together). > Or if you own a car in the US, you can reliably get from A to B, but you're paying between $5-10/day for insurance (whether you use the car that day or not) and $10-20 to park if you're in a city.

ardit33 6y ago

just look at Brooklyn yo.... while it has some tall building, near Manhattan, it is mostly 2-3 story buildings (brownstones) or 4 / 5 smaller apartment buildings, and further down it has single family homes. It has higher density than SF, Yet is provides lots of public space and it is not car hostile either. Not everything has to look like either Manhattan, or Surburbian Sprawl like most other cities. Boston is unique in that area as well, especially around Brookline, Allston, South End, and Cambridge/Sommerville areas as they were built pre-car era. It think Brooklyn and Boston (especially Cambridge) are the most 'human' scale it gets in the States, and they are fine places to live. SF is not there yet. The density (is pretty low if you go off downtown) and hills make it a bit hard to create the european feel.

tacomonstrous 6y ago
Boston is not affordable in any reasonable sense, speaking as a professional in the Boston area.
- 0_____0 6y ago
  can you give a little more detail into this? what makes it unaffordable, and what's your context and experience? [edit: this isn't a snip, i'm considering moving there and legit want to know]
  - chadash 6y ago
    A reasonable but not too fancy two bedroom apartment might run you high hundred thousands or low million. If you are coming from SF it doesn’t sound crazy but at least got tech, salaries are far lower.
  - vineyardmike 6y ago
    To add, food and such can also be more expensive. General CostOfLiving type stuff.
  - Dumblydorr 6y ago
    The area is colonial in age, but has thousands of college students and thousands of highly paid professional workers. This means both the apartment and the housing markets have huge demand, and people simply pay, because the alternative is to commute through terrible traffic and extra 60 min daily.

yunesj 6y ago

> The biggest difference is the expansive train systems Railways are allowed to grow organically in Tokyo and Japan: > Outlying and suburban areas are served by seven private railway companies, whose lines intersect at major stations with the subway system. More than sixty additional kilometers of subway were under construction in 1990 by the two companies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Japan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Japan

spike021 6y ago

>And not a parking lot in sight (good riddance)! Interesting. While I haven't lived in Japan, I have spent a month there. Obviously there aren't nearly the number of parking lots as in America, by far. But you can totally find large garages in some areas (parked in a large 7 or so story garage in Yokohama once), malls with large parking lots out in areas like Gunma, and even "hidden" garages in Tokyo (or other cities like Takasaki, even) where you pull into a little open garage area, and then there's an attendant who helps you drive the car onto a lift which is basically in the center of the building, which then "automatically" (or manually by the operator) stashes cars in a multi-level car park hidden inside the building. Plus tons of teeny 2-car or whatever lots do exist, they're just scattered. I realize in terms of scale that's still quite less than in America, which makes sense. But there are definitely parking lots and garages in Japan. :)

tkgally 6y ago
Yes. I've lived for several decades in densely populated parts of Tokyo and Yokohama. While many people do have cars in these areas, most walk, bike, or use public transportation for most purposes. I myself have never had a car and cannot even remember the last time I rode in a private automobile in Japan—probably more than ten years ago. But a few years ago, I started traveling around Japan more than I had before, using only trains, buses, and occasionally taxis. Once one leaves the major urban areas, I discovered, life is nearly as car-centric as in the suburban United States: almost everyone drives, the main roads are lined with big-box commercial businesses surrounded by parking lots, and a lot of people live in places that are unaccessible except by car. Even if a place is served by trains or buses, they might run at only one- or two-hour intervals, making a trip to the grocery store a half-day errand. An interesting business I learned about recently is individually owned parking spaces that are leased out in fifteen-minute increments to people who reserve them through a smartphone app [1]. My own house in Yokohama has a small parking space that we never use, and my daughter has suggested that we sign up to lease it out through that service. Some of our neighbors have done so already. The business is feasible because there is no free parking anywhere nearby. I know someone who works for a company that runs a similar business for bicycle parking spots [2]. In Japanese only: [1] https://www.akippa.com/ https://www.akippa.com/ [2] https://www.min-chu.jp/ https://www.min-chu.jp/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

eloisant 6y ago

What you're saying isn't true for Europe, actually. It's true that in Tokyo you can live far from the center of Tokyo and still have a lively neighborhood around the station, and reliable train to commute to the inner-Yamanote area. You still suffer if you need to commute because the trains are packed at peak time (station staff literally pushing people in so the doors can close). In Paris however, you either live in Paris itself (roughly the size of the Yamanote line) but it's crazy expensive especially if you have kids and need a bigger appartment, or you live in the suburbs that are mostly just housing and train (RER & Transilien) is unreliable. If you want to live in the "15-minutes neighborhood" with everything, but can't afford to live inside Paris or down town of a big metropolis, you need to move to a middle-size city but then getting a job in your area is more difficult.

pimterry 6y ago
It may not be for Paris, but in my experience it is for most Spanish cities - there's usually a clear centre of course, but also many small self-contained walkable neighbourhoods distributed throughout the city. It'd be interesting to find a good metric to be able to compare cities and explore this.
- ganzsz 6y ago
  Same here in most Dutch cities, I myself don't live near the city centre but still have a self contained neighbourhood with a ton of schools shops and other facilities. And the public transport is good enough to be able to reach the entire metropolitan area for a job. Would be a nice research if someone could test different cities and neighbourhoods indeed.
- jsinai 6y ago
  Would say London is a very good example of this as well, provided you're within the M25 (still a massive area though)
wasdfff 6y ago
This is why its so ironic to me that people celebrate europe, nyc, etc as some dense model for the world, when they too arent building to meet supply and refusing to upzone while local leaders benefit from their property assets exponentially rising in price, same as a suburban US city with the only high rises being offices.

atom-morgan 6y ago

Is the cost of housing just much cheaper than people expect it to be or what? I'm surprised to hear it's lower than Atlanta which is where I currently live.

hajile 6y ago
A quick google shows that software engineers in Tokyo can expect to only make 6.6M yen on average (going as low as 2.2M yen or as high as 8.8M yen). That's around $65k on average with the highest being around $85k. I can find those same jobs for 2x the salary in Atlanta any day of the week.
- benrbray 6y ago
  You're right that software engineering is currently much more profitable in the US, but as far as careers go SWE is a bit of an anomaly. Most other careers don't have nearly the same pay disparity, if any. That said, many companies that hire American SWEs tend to pay better, especially if you have experience working at a big Silicon Valley tech company. Pre-covid there were quite a few job postings for senior developers above the $100k usd mark, which will get you quite far in Tokyo.
  - hajile 6y ago
    Salaries in Japan are very flat compared to the US with high-paying jobs often only paying 30-50% more than low-skill jobs. I'd also note that US minimum wage is $7.25 while Japan minimum wage is $8.67. Things are also different because relatively few married women are in the work force. From that, you could say that the average pay in Japan is much higher. In the US, wages stagnated for a couple decades and cost of living skyrocketed in the US as women entered the work force until it now takes 2 salaries to stay afloat vs only one in Japan (we'll exclude the unofficially high poverty rates). At the same time, US workers put in 41.3 hours per week for men and 36.3 hours per week for women (working 14% less time accounts for an enormous part of the earning difference between the sexes). In contrast, while the law officially puts the work day at 8 hours with statutory paid leave going up to about 3 weeks, most workers take little to no vacation and "voluntarily" work many more days and 30-50% longer hours per day than the US worker (though at the same time, productivity per hour may not always be high).