Well, usually those are for parking either in quite dense (>3 story) business/commercial or residential. It's "only $13/day". Even Tokyo, NY, Paris parking spac

Well, usually those are for parking either in quite dense (>3 story) business/commercial or residential. It's "only $13/day". Even Tokyo, NY, Paris parking spaces don't get cheaper. So the exception is for rural/suburban environments where parking spaces are cheap/free because space is cheap. Guess what, if you want to live cheaply, it's not going to be where everyone else wants to live and work. Cheap Tokyo apartments are far from transit and on the outskirts or even outside Yamanote. People commute daily over an hour by train each way. Shanghai and Beijing built huge amounts of dense housing (also Shezhen, Chongqing, Hefei, Ordos) and what happened to property prices? They spiraled out of control since they were considered investments (that only go up) with many of them vacant. What happened to prices in Tokyo (notably after the '89 bust and not before)? Housing became relatively affordable since it's not considered an investment (even with near 0% interest rates).