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>“Europeans understand the need to preserve buildings like this, whereas Japan is still guided by a pull-down-and-rebuild mentality,” says Maeda It's actually

>“Europeans understand the need to preserve buildings like this, whereas Japan is still guided by a pull-down-and-rebuild mentality,” says Maeda It's actually incredibly admirable that affordable, modern housing is regularly built in one of the world's largest cities. Contrast this to the biggest American and European cities, where housing supply stagnation is the norm in service of promoting "neighborhood character" to demonstrably racist ends.

alephnan 5y ago
> “Europeans understand the need to preserve buildings like this, whereas Japan is still guided by a pull-down-and-rebuild mentality,” says Maeda Mr Maeda has a direct financial incentive to the financial preservation of this building. I don’t see what’s wrong with the pull down and rebuild mentality. We can appreciate and admire something’s aesthetic qualities, but it doesn’t mean it has to last forever. Atleast to the Japanese and Buddhist nihilism, everything is impermanent anyways. Why try to preserve a fleeting cherry blossom or autumn leaves, when it’s meant to be appreciated in the moment.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  The autumn leaves or cherry blossoms come every season on their own. I guess it would probably be surprising to most Japanese people to learn they have no interest in attempting to preserve their history.
Aeolun 5y ago
> affordable That’s sort of debatable. It’s certainly possible to buy houses, but that’s mostly due to the incredibly low interest rate. Old houses that used to have a small sized garden are torn down and replaced with two or three much smaller houses filling the entire plot. It’s nice that there is enough housing available, but the character of the city is definitely changing.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  People can’t live in “character.”
athrun 5y ago
I think the issue is more subtle than this, and I would also not put European cities in the same bucket as North American ones. In North American cities, there's a clear low density issue at play. Most of the previously dense urban cores were completely hollowed out to make room for roads, highways or parking lots. One can argue that the current reluctance to the pulling down and rebuild mindset is a direct consequence of the misguided development policies of the post war era. So much damage was done—and continues to be done—that people get very cynical of large scale development/infrastructure projects. Whereas big European cities like Paris are very dense already. Maybe we could make them even denser, but I think at some point you start getting into negative return territory. I'd personally hate to see a bunch of magnificent 7 floors Parisian buildings getting torn down just to build sky scrapers. (Note: Sky scrapers are cool—but I don't think they are a scalable solution to housing, and by nature tend to require big developer involvement with political connections which then lead to perverse incentives—my personal preference would be to have a lot of smaller developers working on a lot of medium density projects, rather than very tiny number of big developers with very large pockets working on very few projects). The focus should instead be on bringing areas surrounding the old city limits to the same level of density than the city proper—which is actually starting to happen in Western Europe now that we're starting to roll back some of the car centric policies of the past.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  European cities that are not Paris do indeed have some density issues. It's nothing like the North American shit show, of course, but it still shows an issue. Fine if you want to keep your historic downtown, but you should build a modern dense "La Défense". UK fails, Anglosphere housing shortage issues too. London is not dense enough and has no strong CBD proportional to its size. Germany fails, as Berlin should be bigger than Paris if it weren't for WWII and the division. Germany is full of bad austerity and the "polycentricity" is simply a failure to catch up after development was interrupted. (Consider if they properly developed Berlin maybe there would be fewer AFD issues in the former East.) Not sure what the situation is with Milan.
  - athrun 5y ago
totetsu 5y ago
In Japan there no law stopping racial discrimination by landlords, so they don't need to hide it behind any urban planning laws. Meanwhile the lack of caring about neighborhood characteristics means the affordable housing is pretty bleak to actually inhabit.
- innocenat 5y ago
  There absolutely is a law preventing racial discrimination by landlord.
  - 3np 5y ago
    Reference? As far as I’m aware there’s nothing explicit and despite prospective tenants regularly (anecdotally, the majority of landlords) getting rejected explicitly based on nationality/ethnicity, there has been exactly 0 consequences so far. (I’d love to be proven wrong but my understanding is at the very least it’s murky and has never been tried in court)
    - innocenat 5y ago
      It has been tried in court [0], at least for discrimination against foreigners. However, nobody really want to take the landlord to court, and moreover, you don't want to live in the housing that the landlord specifically don't want you. So while everyone let it slips, it's actually illegal and there is an existing cases. 0: https://invest-online.jp/qanda/qanda-trouble-32-16916/ https://invest-online.jp/qanda/qanda-trouble-32-16916/ among other reference you can Google using the keyword in that article.
      - totetsu 5y ago
        Thanks for pointing that out. Still it doesn't actually stop anyone from discriminating.
- dr-detroit 5y ago
  Japans elites are just more classy In America they want to dominate all sectors of society and make sure everyone knows they decides who can go where and how well they live. In Japan they have elites too but they don't concern themselves with micromanaging the poors.
emodendroket 5y ago
There has to be some middle ground between building no housing and bulldozing your historical patrimony to build an aquarium for the benefit of Chinese tourists.

alephnan 5y ago

> “Europeans understand the need to preserve buildings like this, whereas Japan is still guided by a pull-down-and-rebuild mentality,” says Maeda Mr Maeda has a direct financial incentive to the financial preservation of this building. I don’t see what’s wrong with the pull down and rebuild mentality. We can appreciate and admire something’s aesthetic qualities, but it doesn’t mean it has to last forever. Atleast to the Japanese and Buddhist nihilism, everything is impermanent anyways. Why try to preserve a fleeting cherry blossom or autumn leaves, when it’s meant to be appreciated in the moment.

emodendroket 5y ago
The autumn leaves or cherry blossoms come every season on their own. I guess it would probably be surprising to most Japanese people to learn they have no interest in attempting to preserve their history.

Aeolun 5y ago

> affordable That’s sort of debatable. It’s certainly possible to buy houses, but that’s mostly due to the incredibly low interest rate. Old houses that used to have a small sized garden are torn down and replaced with two or three much smaller houses filling the entire plot. It’s nice that there is enough housing available, but the character of the city is definitely changing.

mixmastamyk 5y ago
People can’t live in “character.”

athrun 5y ago

I think the issue is more subtle than this, and I would also not put European cities in the same bucket as North American ones. In North American cities, there's a clear low density issue at play. Most of the previously dense urban cores were completely hollowed out to make room for roads, highways or parking lots. One can argue that the current reluctance to the pulling down and rebuild mindset is a direct consequence of the misguided development policies of the post war era. So much damage was done—and continues to be done—that people get very cynical of large scale development/infrastructure projects. Whereas big European cities like Paris are very dense already. Maybe we could make them even denser, but I think at some point you start getting into negative return territory. I'd personally hate to see a bunch of magnificent 7 floors Parisian buildings getting torn down just to build sky scrapers. (Note: Sky scrapers are cool—but I don't think they are a scalable solution to housing, and by nature tend to require big developer involvement with political connections which then lead to perverse incentives—my personal preference would be to have a lot of smaller developers working on a lot of medium density projects, rather than very tiny number of big developers with very large pockets working on very few projects). The focus should instead be on bringing areas surrounding the old city limits to the same level of density than the city proper—which is actually starting to happen in Western Europe now that we're starting to roll back some of the car centric policies of the past.

Ericson2314 5y ago
European cities that are not Paris do indeed have some density issues. It's nothing like the North American shit show, of course, but it still shows an issue. Fine if you want to keep your historic downtown, but you should build a modern dense "La Défense". UK fails, Anglosphere housing shortage issues too. London is not dense enough and has no strong CBD proportional to its size. Germany fails, as Berlin should be bigger than Paris if it weren't for WWII and the division. Germany is full of bad austerity and the "polycentricity" is simply a failure to catch up after development was interrupted. (Consider if they properly developed Berlin maybe there would be fewer AFD issues in the former East.) Not sure what the situation is with Milan.
- athrun 5y ago

totetsu 5y ago

In Japan there no law stopping racial discrimination by landlords, so they don't need to hide it behind any urban planning laws. Meanwhile the lack of caring about neighborhood characteristics means the affordable housing is pretty bleak to actually inhabit.

innocenat 5y ago
There absolutely is a law preventing racial discrimination by landlord.
- 3np 5y ago
  Reference? As far as I’m aware there’s nothing explicit and despite prospective tenants regularly (anecdotally, the majority of landlords) getting rejected explicitly based on nationality/ethnicity, there has been exactly 0 consequences so far. (I’d love to be proven wrong but my understanding is at the very least it’s murky and has never been tried in court)
  - innocenat 5y ago
    It has been tried in court [0], at least for discrimination against foreigners. However, nobody really want to take the landlord to court, and moreover, you don't want to live in the housing that the landlord specifically don't want you. So while everyone let it slips, it's actually illegal and there is an existing cases. 0: https://invest-online.jp/qanda/qanda-trouble-32-16916/ https://invest-online.jp/qanda/qanda-trouble-32-16916/ among other reference you can Google using the keyword in that article.
    - totetsu 5y ago
      Thanks for pointing that out. Still it doesn't actually stop anyone from discriminating.
dr-detroit 5y ago
Japans elites are just more classy In America they want to dominate all sectors of society and make sure everyone knows they decides who can go where and how well they live. In Japan they have elites too but they don't concern themselves with micromanaging the poors.

emodendroket 5y ago

There has to be some middle ground between building no housing and bulldozing your historical patrimony to build an aquarium for the benefit of Chinese tourists.