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This was the thing that I loved most about living in a semi-rural town in Japan. Everything I needed on a day-to-day basis was 20 minutes away by bike or train.

This was the thing that I loved most about living in a semi-rural town in Japan. Everything I needed on a day-to-day basis was 20 minutes away by bike or train. I could be in the center of a major city in an hour if I hit the trains right, but 30 minutes in the opposite direction took me to landscape that looked almost exactly My Neighbor Totoro. It was awesome.

bmd3991 6y ago
This is my favorite thing about Japan. The layout and transportation perfectly matches my ideal, I’d love to live there for some amount of time.
01100011 6y ago
Japan is a paradise as far as I'm concerned. I generally hate US cities but would be happy to spend the rest of my life in any Japanese city I've visited, large or small. I don't think we will ever see that level of efficiency, cleanliness and safety in established US cities. The culture is different. More importantly, I think, is that US cities have a skeleton which is generally not conducive to the transportation network seen in Japan. I think that the current push in the US to add ADUs('granny flats') in suburban neighborhoods will show us the limitations of our current layouts. Cramming more density into an infrastructure limited area will likely result in lower quality of life. The solution, IMHO, is to undertake larger projects where entire neighborhoods are bought out at fair price(at huge public expense) and redeveloped according to modern urban design patterns. That will likely never happen due to the obsession with the past and unwillingness to allow change.
- bluGill 6y ago
  ADUs help though because they are a step to more density in areas that don't have enough. Most suburbs have enough population to support good transit - but there is a big chicken-egg problem: without good transit nobody will ride, and without a lot of riders you can get enough money to support good transit. You can't prove this on small scale though, good transit is about the places you can get to: the jobs, stores, churches, restaurants, friends, and whatever else you might want to do in your city. A fast bus (not to be confused with the typical slow meandering buses most people are used to) every 5 minutes that doesn't connect to any other buses is useless. A bus every 10 minutes that via affordable transfers to anywhere can get you anywhere can get good use. Plumbers and the like still need to drive, so private autos will still be 30% of all trips, but a good transit system can be useful in the suburbs if you can just get there. Did you note I stuck affordable in there? The ideal transit system should have the majority of the riders on a monthly unlimited rides family pass.
- burlesona 6y ago
  Supposing you have enough population - an older and more developed suburban area - you actually don't need to buy out entire neighborhoods, in many cases you could get pretty far by just buying out a few homes or strip malls and connecting small scale streets through the gaps - even ped/bike only streets if you want. The main problem with that is that it's still not worth it in most cases. For most neighborhoods there's nothing to walk to because the population density is too low to support businesses or services. There's too much fragmented farmland separating out all the little pods of cookie cutter houses and strip malls, so the only configuration that works is to have a little pod of commercial at some highway intersection while all the residential to support that is sprinkled around a 10 mile radius of fragmented development.
- gamegoblin 6y ago
  A big part of this has to do with zoning laws. In Japan, zoning is largely done by gauging the externalities produced (e.g. noise, pollution, foot traffic, building height, etc), whereas in the US, zoning is largely done by function (housing, commercial, industrial, etc). So in Japan, you have many neighborhoods that have a house beside a tea shop beside a tailor beside house. In the US, it is very rare to find such mixes.

bmd3991 6y ago

This is my favorite thing about Japan. The layout and transportation perfectly matches my ideal, I’d love to live there for some amount of time.

01100011 6y ago

Japan is a paradise as far as I'm concerned. I generally hate US cities but would be happy to spend the rest of my life in any Japanese city I've visited, large or small. I don't think we will ever see that level of efficiency, cleanliness and safety in established US cities. The culture is different. More importantly, I think, is that US cities have a skeleton which is generally not conducive to the transportation network seen in Japan. I think that the current push in the US to add ADUs('granny flats') in suburban neighborhoods will show us the limitations of our current layouts. Cramming more density into an infrastructure limited area will likely result in lower quality of life. The solution, IMHO, is to undertake larger projects where entire neighborhoods are bought out at fair price(at huge public expense) and redeveloped according to modern urban design patterns. That will likely never happen due to the obsession with the past and unwillingness to allow change.

bluGill 6y ago
ADUs help though because they are a step to more density in areas that don't have enough. Most suburbs have enough population to support good transit - but there is a big chicken-egg problem: without good transit nobody will ride, and without a lot of riders you can get enough money to support good transit. You can't prove this on small scale though, good transit is about the places you can get to: the jobs, stores, churches, restaurants, friends, and whatever else you might want to do in your city. A fast bus (not to be confused with the typical slow meandering buses most people are used to) every 5 minutes that doesn't connect to any other buses is useless. A bus every 10 minutes that via affordable transfers to anywhere can get you anywhere can get good use. Plumbers and the like still need to drive, so private autos will still be 30% of all trips, but a good transit system can be useful in the suburbs if you can just get there. Did you note I stuck affordable in there? The ideal transit system should have the majority of the riders on a monthly unlimited rides family pass.
burlesona 6y ago
Supposing you have enough population - an older and more developed suburban area - you actually don't need to buy out entire neighborhoods, in many cases you could get pretty far by just buying out a few homes or strip malls and connecting small scale streets through the gaps - even ped/bike only streets if you want. The main problem with that is that it's still not worth it in most cases. For most neighborhoods there's nothing to walk to because the population density is too low to support businesses or services. There's too much fragmented farmland separating out all the little pods of cookie cutter houses and strip malls, so the only configuration that works is to have a little pod of commercial at some highway intersection while all the residential to support that is sprinkled around a 10 mile radius of fragmented development.
gamegoblin 6y ago
A big part of this has to do with zoning laws. In Japan, zoning is largely done by gauging the externalities produced (e.g. noise, pollution, foot traffic, building height, etc), whereas in the US, zoning is largely done by function (housing, commercial, industrial, etc). So in Japan, you have many neighborhoods that have a house beside a tea shop beside a tailor beside house. In the US, it is very rare to find such mixes.