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I 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 exp
by rr808 4y ago
I 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.