The best parts of any city are the places where cars aren't allowed or are minimized/not the primary method of getting around. The most economically productive,

The best parts of any city are the places where cars aren't allowed or are minimized/not the primary method of getting around. The most economically productive, high-demand areas of any city are the ones at walking scale where humans enjoy spending their time. A lot of infrastructure planners work to optimize traffic flow without much consideration to the actual humans existing in an area. Tokyo doesn't have this problem in its most iconic places, as it largely relies on rail and subway for mass transit. Of course, that's not to say that Japan isn't car-oriented. It is in a lot of places, it's more car-oriented than most people assume. Still, Japan is a place where you rarely hear of any foreign tourist renting a car. A fun way to visualize how bad cars are for a city is comparing train bridge and tunnel productivity to car lanes. You would need 24 Manhattan-bound traffic lanes to match the throughput of the Manhattan Bridge, [1] and then you'd need a whole bunch of other unproductive, human-hostile space to fit all the off-ramps and road junctions needed to make that concept functional. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbZXtSnabWc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbZXtSnabWc