4 ms·

This is one key aspect, but it's more relevant in cities with high walkability - which you don't have at all in the BA. I love this aspect of Japan, though. Th

This is one key aspect, but it's more relevant in cities with high walkability - which you don't have at all in the BA. I love this aspect of Japan, though. The mixed nature of neighborhoods is magical.

pezezin 3y ago
That is only in the big cities like Tokyo or Osaka, as soon as you step out of them Japan quickly devolves into awful American-style urban sprawl and you need a car for everything. Source: 5 years living in Aomori.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  Sure, but the large majority of the population lives in those handful of big cities. 1/3 of the population lives in the greater Tokyo area alone. Ignoring the people who live in American-style suburban sprawl means you're ignoring a small fraction of the population. This is basically the reverse of the US, where a small fraction lives in walkable city areas like Manhattan, and everyone else needs a car.
  - pezezin 3y ago
    It is not "a small fraction of the population", pretty much any city other than Tokyo and Osaka suffer from ridiculous urban sprawl. Sure, Tokyo and Osaka are huge and together they hold half the population of the country, but then you have the other half...
- oblio 3y ago
  It's hard to make small, rural places walkable. Walkability and bikeability imply density and a solid public transit network (which is costly). It's fine if the places where 80% of people live are walkable and the rest maybe aren't as great.
  - cpursley 3y ago
    Rural Netherlands disagrees with you.
    - zozbot234 3y ago
      "Rural" Netherlands is still pretty dense, though. At least dense enough that the very idea of getting from one place to the next by bike is pretty sensible. You don't have that in the true rural U.S. Now suburbia could look like that (i.e. village-like mixed use communities linked by bike paths, not just vehicular traffic) and that would be a better comparison.
      - cpursley 3y ago
        That's the dream!
  - dukeyukey 3y ago
    > It's hard to make small, rural places walkable I don't know about that. My experience (in the UK) is small, rural places are by default walkable 'cause they haven't changed that much in the last coupel of centuries, when you had to be walkable since cars and bikes didn't exist.
    - oblio 3y ago
      Yeah, many old villages in Romania and everywhere around the world are like that. Unfortunately newer ones tend to be designed for cars :-(
    - bluGill 3y ago
      Here in the US those communities used to be walkable, but the small grocery store either closed, or has moved to a big box on the edge of town where you can't walk to it anymore. Most other stores have closed as all the locals just plan a monthly trip to the nearest large city (1 hour drive, each way) to use the WalMart and malls there - the prices are enough better in the large city that it is worth the fuel and making a full day of it once a month. If the town is close enough to a city the downtown stores now survive as a tourist attraction for the city, selling "art" - not the type of things you might go to town to buy for daily living. There is a high likelihood that the old town square has been taken over by local government offices. If you work there great, but otherwise not the type of place you would visit often if at all. In short they still have the walkabel guts from the 1800s, but there is nothing to walk to.
CalRobert 3y ago
It's not exactly Paris but the SF bay area is one of the best places in the US for walkability. Certainly much of SF, Berkeley, and Oakland are walkable (or at least were when I lived there in 2010!). And if not walkable, bikable - I biked to a hacker space in Dublin (Ireland, not the BA one) for a while with zero parking but most people walked or biked there. A folding bike meant even less space was necessary.

pezezin 3y ago

That is only in the big cities like Tokyo or Osaka, as soon as you step out of them Japan quickly devolves into awful American-style urban sprawl and you need a car for everything. Source: 5 years living in Aomori.

shiroiuma 3y ago
Sure, but the large majority of the population lives in those handful of big cities. 1/3 of the population lives in the greater Tokyo area alone. Ignoring the people who live in American-style suburban sprawl means you're ignoring a small fraction of the population. This is basically the reverse of the US, where a small fraction lives in walkable city areas like Manhattan, and everyone else needs a car.
- pezezin 3y ago
  It is not "a small fraction of the population", pretty much any city other than Tokyo and Osaka suffer from ridiculous urban sprawl. Sure, Tokyo and Osaka are huge and together they hold half the population of the country, but then you have the other half...
oblio 3y ago
It's hard to make small, rural places walkable. Walkability and bikeability imply density and a solid public transit network (which is costly). It's fine if the places where 80% of people live are walkable and the rest maybe aren't as great.
- cpursley 3y ago
  Rural Netherlands disagrees with you.
  - zozbot234 3y ago
    "Rural" Netherlands is still pretty dense, though. At least dense enough that the very idea of getting from one place to the next by bike is pretty sensible. You don't have that in the true rural U.S. Now suburbia could look like that (i.e. village-like mixed use communities linked by bike paths, not just vehicular traffic) and that would be a better comparison.
    - cpursley 3y ago
      That's the dream!
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  > It's hard to make small, rural places walkable I don't know about that. My experience (in the UK) is small, rural places are by default walkable 'cause they haven't changed that much in the last coupel of centuries, when you had to be walkable since cars and bikes didn't exist.
  - oblio 3y ago
    Yeah, many old villages in Romania and everywhere around the world are like that. Unfortunately newer ones tend to be designed for cars :-(
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Here in the US those communities used to be walkable, but the small grocery store either closed, or has moved to a big box on the edge of town where you can't walk to it anymore. Most other stores have closed as all the locals just plan a monthly trip to the nearest large city (1 hour drive, each way) to use the WalMart and malls there - the prices are enough better in the large city that it is worth the fuel and making a full day of it once a month. If the town is close enough to a city the downtown stores now survive as a tourist attraction for the city, selling "art" - not the type of things you might go to town to buy for daily living. There is a high likelihood that the old town square has been taken over by local government offices. If you work there great, but otherwise not the type of place you would visit often if at all. In short they still have the walkabel guts from the 1800s, but there is nothing to walk to.

CalRobert 3y ago

It's not exactly Paris but the SF bay area is one of the best places in the US for walkability. Certainly much of SF, Berkeley, and Oakland are walkable (or at least were when I lived there in 2010!). And if not walkable, bikable - I biked to a hacker space in Dublin (Ireland, not the BA one) for a while with zero parking but most people walked or biked there. A folding bike meant even less space was necessary.