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Emergent Tokyo: Designing the spontaneous city
- prottog 4y agoSounds like the biggest factor is the lack of onerous American-style zoning regulations, which permits interesting uses of real estate to emerge intermingled with each other; as opposed to the suburban American standard of "everyone must live here in this zone, drive to this other zone to work, then drive to this other zone to grocery shop".
- chazeon 4y agoI think Jane Jacobs’s the Life and Death of Great American Cities is a major piece against these zoning laws. Tokyo seems to serve as a great example although it is not an American city.
- davidw 4y ago"Arbitrary Lines" is a succinct modern take on why we should eliminate zoning in the US and what we should replace it with https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines
- lazyant 4y agoTexas has less zoning regulations and it resulted in more roads, parking lots and dependency of the car.
- ch4s3 4y agoTexas is almost twice the size of Japan and mostly flat. It’s also not full of medieval cities with their own vernacular architecture.
- tjr225 4y ago[dead]
- natrius 4y agoHouston is the only major Texas city without zoning, and Houston still has plenty of parking requirements. As a result, both housing for people and housing for cars is really cheap. At this rate, Houston is going to figure out how to fix its planning mistakes of the past much faster than more regulated cities are going to decide to build enough housing for the people who want to live there. I'd never bet against Houston, or Texas in general. How about we ease up on both zoning restrictions and parking requirements?
- s5300 4y agoI’d bet against Texas in the idea that their working class/average citizen population is going to be quite oppressed until women have meaningful rights there. Hard to have a functioning society when a near literal half of your population is seen at best as second class citizens.
- Cyberdog 4y agoThis is a discussion about zoning and property values.
- s5300 4y agoThe parent I’m replying to is partially discussing betting against Texas, especially regarding property values - if you think half the populace within a state being viewed as second class citizens doesn’t affect property values, I think you should reconsider. How many rich tech people from SV/Cali who paid top dollar for Texas property are now quickly fleeing after the recent political happenings that stripped the rights of half the voting population? I’ve seen quite a few personal anecdotes on HN & also a general trendline across publicly accessible real estate data that point to them ditching their Texas properties quite quickly. This most definitely affects property values, & at least touches on zoning issues in the grand scheme of things.
- prottog 4y ago> How many rich tech people from SV/Cali who paid top dollar for Texas property are now quickly fleeing after the recent political happenings that stripped the rights of half the voting population? Not very many at all, in my estimation. Those "rich tech people from SV/Cali" moved to Texas in the first place for their bottom lines, not because they thought Texas was the vanguard of progressive politics. I doubt a socially conservative state becoming more socially conservative is going to trigger many reverse moves. If I had to guess, the extremely restrictive abortion laws (prohibited after six weeks of gestation with very few exceptions) that you're obliquely referring to are not going to stand for very long, either.
- Schiendelman 4y agoKeep in mind that zoning has almost nothing to do with road placement - those decisions are made by different levels of government, especially for major roads and highways. And as another commenter mentioned, only Houston has "no zoning", and they have most of the regulations that are normally in zoning code in other cities anyway.
- criddell 4y agoI think part of that is due to climate. Houston in the summer is not a place where I’m going to bike or walk much in the summer. Cars make that city work.
- prottog 4y agoI certainly take your point, living in a city that has a similar climate. But in a truly walkable neighborhood, where your place of residence, place of work, and other supporting places in life (grocery store, gym, bars and restaurants, etc.) are all within walking distance, and where said distance is actually walkable -- that is, you're not walking next to eight lanes of traffic, and you're walking past shops and restaurants and all the vibrancy of a neighborhood -- the weather won't play nearly as big a role.
- bmitc 4y agoThere’s a very quirky and quietly hilarious book called Made in Tokyo that covers a sort of dual use or spliced architecture one readily finds in Tokyo. Places like a shopping mall under a highway or tennis courts on top of a warehouse. (The book is both in Japanese and English.) https://www.amazon.com/Made-Tokyo-Guide-Junzo-Kuroda/dp/4306044211 https://www.amazon.com/Made-Tokyo-Guide-Junzo-Kuroda/dp/4306... From the introduction: > The buildings we were attracted to were ones giving a priority to stubborn honesty in response to their surroundings and programmatic requirements, without insisting on architectural aesthetic and form. We decided to call them “Da-me Architecture” (no-good architecture), with all our love and disdain.
- milkytron 4y ago> When it comes to, politically, how do we make Tokyo-esque urbanism feasible in America, the key is building a coalition of folks who are more interested in the dynamism of their cities than they are in the value of their particular property. I think younger people are beginning to feel this way, as property ownership in cities becomes increasingly out of reach. But also, the amount of financial power that the property owning class has and the financial incentives to continue to develop our cities (more like metros) in the way that we have makes changing this exceptionally difficult.
- esyir 4y agoIt's interesting you put it this way, since one of the reasons for Tokyo's public transport success has been exactly this "property owning".
- Aeolun 4y ago> property ownership in cities becomes increasingly out of reach Ironically maybe least true in Tokyo, where interest rates are extremely low, and houses are still sort of affordable as long as you can adjust your expectations (e.g. no 200sqm mansions).
- twblalock 4y agoTokyo is a cheaper place to live than most people think -- in fact, it is probably cheaper than any major city in California. But most people in California would not be willing to sacrifice the standard of living they have, even in apartments. Many studio apartments in America are quite a lot larger and better equipped than a one or two-bedroom apartment in Tokyo.
- bmitc 4y agoHow is it cheaper then? I’ve seen those shows and YouTube channels that show to rent basically a closet in Tokyo costs like $15,000 upfront. The monthly rent prices I have seen are insane.
- _Wintermute 4y agoAnother thing is pedestrianised streets and lack of on-street parking. It makes it so much more pleasant to walk around and sit outside.
- Schiendelman 4y agoA lot of the streets that seem pedestrianized are not! They're just so small, and have so little reason for a driver to use them, that drivers don't.
- reustle 4y agoThose streets also instigate walking anywhere on the street (no sidewalk), slowing down drivers even more. A beautiful cycle. I drive in Tokyo regularly and love this system.
- 1270018080 4y agoCar infrastructure and draconian zoning laws destroying civilization. A tale as old as... the early 1900s.
- Schiendelman 4y agoOverturning zoning wholesale in the US would probably lead to the most improvement in societal outcomes possible from one law. You'd get higher population density in every city. A tiny list of likely outcomes: - Lower per capita infrastructure costs - Lower BMI (more walking as things are closer together) - Lower per capita energy usage and CO2 emissions - Fewer school shootings (they decrease as neighborhood density increases) - Lower rents in cities ...the list goes on.
- Insanity 4y agoI agree with most but don’t see how it would lower school shootings (source for your statement?). Also there are definitely other ways to prevent that.
- Schiendelman 4y agoThe entire movie Bowling for Columbine was about my statement. :) What other ways (better ways?) are there to prevent school shootings?
- neonate 4y agohttps://archive.ph/itpRl https://archive.ph/itpRl
- decafninja 4y agoI’ll preface this by saying I still prefer the diversity of somewhere like NYC over the monoculture of many East Asian cities including Tokyo. But there are certain cultural and demographic factors in play in such East Asian cities, which are often considered a bit taboo to mention. However these factors are also responsible directly or indirectly, for some of the most praised aspects of these cities. And why it would be virtually impossible to replicate some of these successes in somewhere like NYC.
- twblalock 4y ago> But there are certain cultural and demographic factors in play in such East Asian cities, which are often considered a bit taboo to mention. If you aren't going to mention those factors, why hint at them? Just to annoy people and puff yourself up by insinuating you know something special that others aren't willing to hear? Just say what you mean -- or don't even bring it up.
- quadrifoliate 4y ago> certain cultural and demographic factors...considered a bit taboo to mention I doubt that these factors (presumably the more heterogenous racial and cultural makeup of Japan as compared to the US) have anything to do with the contrasts for operating small businesses that are specifically mentioned in TFA: - For any two-story rowhouse in Tokyo, the owner can by right operate a bar, a restaurant, a boutique, a small workshop on the ground floor — even in the most residential zoned sections of the city. - Liquor licenses are extremely cheap and easy. A liquor license in an American city can sometimes run up to $500,000. - (In the US) Usually for retirement, people are counting on their property values going up so they have a strong incentive to resist changes that might threaten them. A lot of the dynamism we see in the emergent urbanism of Tokyo are things that reduce predictability, which reduce property values. Are there cases in the US where similar liberal regulations for operating businesses have been established, and shown to fail due to demographic or cultural factors? I suspect not. But as things stand now even in small US cities, there is a ton of red tape that stands in the way of small businesses. That has little to nothing to do with cultural and demographic factors; and happens to be largely the focus of the article.
- marsantwo 4y agoIf you are interested in why the Japanese/Tokyo urban design works then look at these 2 links from the "Life where I am from" Youtube channel Why Japan Looks the Way it Does: Zoning https://youtu.be/wfm2xCKOCNk https://youtu.be/wfm2xCKOCNk What a Typical Tokyo Neighbourhood is Like https://youtu.be/TheOkz8oF_I https://youtu.be/TheOkz8oF_I
- rr808 4y agoI dont think Tokyo has any valuable lessons for Western cities. People talk about how its affordable but its only a few decades since it was by far the most expensive real estate in the world.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoTokyo (and Japanese culture in general) may be so different from Western (specifically U.S.) cities that I suspect you are right. But I don't think the decline in Japanese real-estate value is the problem. I've got a sort of mixed-message about Tokyo real-estate prices anyway. Sometimes the impression I have is that it still is expensive but only if you are comparing the cost per square feet with Western cities and not the cost of dwellings — I guess the salient point being that the Tokyo-ite will live in a smaller "flat" than their Western counterpart and so may in fact have a smaller rent.
- ajmurmann 4y agoAnd these small units would be illegal in most modern US cities. Alain Bertaud who wrote Order Without Design described how his family lived in a tiny apartment in NYC when they first moved to the US. The unit would now be illegal and they wouldn't have an option. It's over of the many cases where we don't like the options that poverty forces people to choose, so we make the options illegal instead of doing something about poverty.