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> It would be a shame to turn it into a concrete jungle Hi! I've lived in several coastal and Midwestern cities, and travelled many of the others. I have been

> It would be a shame to turn it into a concrete jungle Hi! I've lived in several coastal and Midwestern cities, and travelled many of the others. I have been to a number of foreign cities on three continents. I was stunned at how underdeveloped Silicon Valley is. Concrete jungles are awesome! They sound scary until you realize the modern alternative is the far more common concrete wastelands of suburbia: isolating, sterile, cultureless come to mind. Tokyo, Manhatten, downtown SF: they are the most human, inspiring places on earth. > We ... are both right Here's what kills me about arguments like this: they're conversation killers. The argument deserves to be had. Instead, you're playing the general good will against itself for some karma points. To hell karma points! Fight for what you believe in! Anything less is a vote for the status quo. I've moved 17 times. I believe in the concrete jungle.

ekianjo 14y ago
Sorry, but "Tokyo... one of the most human, inspiring place on earth". Living in Tokyo is not fun. There are way too many people. You barely have space to walk, and the trains are overcrowded. It's very noisy, and if you want to go out of the city you need to take a 2 hours ride to start seeing actual green stuff. To my mind, inspiration comes from flexibility, i.e. when you can choose to change environment as you please. A mid-size city is ideal for that, since you can have times in the city and off the city, that change your perspective. If you live in Tokyo, you just cannot do that, and you are stuck in a world that is very different from everywhere else, and out of touch with a lot of what most people consider "reality". Disclaimer: I live in Japan.
- teejae 14y ago
  I beg to differ. I live in Tokyo. I think it feels great and fun. It's New York, but nice. There are open spaces to the north/south/east/west, within 30 min (depending on which side you live).
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    Well I have lived in different parts of Japan and I find Tokyo the least inspiring place to be in this country. There's no great landmarks (except if you consider a 600m concrete/steel tower a valuable landmark...), no cool historical places, and this is not a place where I can relax, ever. Even when you reach home you have to live in the smallest apartment ever because it's what's available and affordable there. I agree Tokyo has some interesting aspects (how some quarters differ from one another), but there are too many drawbacks for me to qualify this as "inspiring". I guess it depends on your personality in the end, and what you can relate too. I need to be in a place when I can breathe, and Tokyo feels suffocating in many ways.
- delackner 14y ago
  If you live in a commuter suburb of Tokyo and ride the train at rush hour, yes you will not be happy. But why commute? I live 8 minutes' walk from Shibuya station and during the day perhaps 1 or two people walk by every few minutes. At night even fewer. Cars drive so slowly on my side-street that you cannot hear them at all. As for taking two hours to "actual green stuff" man are you ever exaggerating. Even without LEAVING the city I know of 3 different nature preserves that range from 20 to 30 minutes away DOOR TO DOOR. If you hop on a train for 30 minutes, you hit Tamagawa, a breathtaking open expanse of river and low brush. Want forest? How about Takao-san, a breathtaking natural space with tons of hiking trails and a mountain you can climb easily in an afternoon. 44 minutes west of Shinjuku. If you hate crowds, just avoid them. "Living in Tokyo is not fun" says more about your unhappiness with the rhythm of life you have created for yourself than it says about the city.
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    Well, the point is, to get to a green space, you need to get in a crowd in the first place. You cannot avoid them that easily. It's like you get double-punishment before the reward. Tokyo is simply a city that is OVER-capacity, not by a factor of 1 or 2, but 10 or maybe more. If the train is 10 minutes late for any reason, any station would be filled with people on the platforms you can cross through it anymore. That says a lot. I feel New York is way more livable, from what I can compare.
    - delackner 14y ago
      Its funny you mention the train being late, and crowds. When I lived in NYC, traveling on the train during non-peak times was so stressful I avoided it like the plague. Always late. Noisy as hell. Smells like a cesspool. During rush-hour the train might stop in the middle of a tunnel, and the lights go out, the whole time it is not even air conditioned. I visited NYC 2 months ago after a few years away, and the floating filth in the tracks was still there of course. My Japanese travel companion who had never been in NYC before took only two train rides (at non-peak hours) to declare a strong negative impression of the NYC subway. Maybe you live in another NYC where there are no trains? Or you just drive everywhere, but you don't mind that it takes an hour stuck in traffic to get out of Manhattan on a friday evening. In Tokyo it takes about the same amount of time to travel any distance whether it is 9am or 3pm, since the trains actually work.
- patio11 14y ago
  Tokyo is very much not my cup of tea, but for people who enjoy city life because it is city life and not because of non-city things they can find in the city, Tokyo can be a very nice place to be. Is it crazily overcrowded? Yes. Is it overly expensive? Yes. Is it possible to experience alienation from humanity to a level almost incomprehensible anywhere else in the world while simultaneously having no elbow room? Yes. You can also live in a shoebox apartment in a walkable neighborhood with forty-seven little restaurants at which the owner will remember your face after your third visit, well-maintained parks and orderly, efficient public services, connected via the world's hands-down-best mass transit system to a) a commercial center which has just about anything anyone could possibly want to buy (and that is not always a compliment) and b) a stupidly convenient rail network which will whisk you to anywhere on Honshu, including the parts of Japan that I rather enjoy, in less time than it takes many Americans to get to work in the morning. If New York has any appeal to you, Tokyo will probably be your kind of town. If it doesn't, Tokyo will probably not be.
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    The a) and b) do not only apply to Tokyo. The top 10 cities in Japan can offer the same degree of convenience, less the "alienation from humanity to a level almost incomprehensible anywhere else in the world", which I find a very good description of the situation, by the way. Concerning the "well maintained parks", several parts of Tokyo feel/look dirtier than many other places in the country, except maybe the southern part of Osaka.
- alinajaf 14y ago
  Tokyo is a big place. Living in Ebisu is worlds apart from living in Itabashi for example, but you'll need a bank balance to match.
pbreit 14y ago
Would you believe that the Bay Area is one of the most desirable places to live on the planet?
intended 14y ago
What? No they are not conversation killers. I used to think they were conversation killers till I realized that all it meant is that I now actually have to think harder and respond at a higher level. His last line is important: We agree that its a complex problem. So at least now we can start identifying multiple solutions which can help this. One of them, and important - is pointing out that Concrete jungles DON't have to be bad places to live. A good follow up would be examples of cities that do manage a good balance between high density places, good mass transit, and managing places which keep a good balance of greenery. Places which can be redeveloped would be another option of something to discuss. what/how good are the mass transit options in SV (I don't live there), what are the long term city plans? Do they need to be updated? Is there enough cash to follow through on the original plans? The updates? What are the time horizons for those things? All those questions can be worked on better, if people are no longer spending time fighting between themselves, and working together on getting a common solution everyone can be happier with.
delackner 14y ago
Home prices in the bay area have skyrocketed 10 to 15 times beyond the rate of inflation over the past 30 years. This has pushed the renters who used to live there further and further out, or forced their standard of living ever further downward. I disagree with the idea that existing homeowners have some right prevent developers from building tall housing nearby on PRIVATE property. You own your land, I own mine, and as long as I'm not doing anything toxic, your rights do not extend into my space. These anti-development policies force people to live far away from their workplace, turning most of the bay area into a massive wasteland of highways and parking lots. A few incredibly lucky and selfish people can deny the right of the many to have the dignity of affordable housing, but it is not just. It is shameful. As an aside, despite artificially enforced low-density, Berkeley and Palo Alto have depressingly few vibrant public spaces. Sure there's trees along the street, but most of the parks are just little tiny bits of grass and a few scraggly trees sandwiched between two or three active roads. You'd think low density might include huge open parks, but no, it is mostly just big houses with private yards and lots of parking lots to deal with how far apart everything is. Contrast: In Tokyo, since there is almost nothing preventing you from doing whatever you like with your own land, there is a wide mix of different housing to choose from, at all different price-points. I can afford to live smack in the middle of everything, near the biggest park and shopping area, also a few minutes walk from a major train station. I also have a spectacular view that goes all the way to the horizon for about 160 degress.

ekianjo 14y ago

Sorry, but "Tokyo... one of the most human, inspiring place on earth". Living in Tokyo is not fun. There are way too many people. You barely have space to walk, and the trains are overcrowded. It's very noisy, and if you want to go out of the city you need to take a 2 hours ride to start seeing actual green stuff. To my mind, inspiration comes from flexibility, i.e. when you can choose to change environment as you please. A mid-size city is ideal for that, since you can have times in the city and off the city, that change your perspective. If you live in Tokyo, you just cannot do that, and you are stuck in a world that is very different from everywhere else, and out of touch with a lot of what most people consider "reality". Disclaimer: I live in Japan.

teejae 14y ago
I beg to differ. I live in Tokyo. I think it feels great and fun. It's New York, but nice. There are open spaces to the north/south/east/west, within 30 min (depending on which side you live).
- ekianjo 14y ago
  Well I have lived in different parts of Japan and I find Tokyo the least inspiring place to be in this country. There's no great landmarks (except if you consider a 600m concrete/steel tower a valuable landmark...), no cool historical places, and this is not a place where I can relax, ever. Even when you reach home you have to live in the smallest apartment ever because it's what's available and affordable there. I agree Tokyo has some interesting aspects (how some quarters differ from one another), but there are too many drawbacks for me to qualify this as "inspiring". I guess it depends on your personality in the end, and what you can relate too. I need to be in a place when I can breathe, and Tokyo feels suffocating in many ways.
delackner 14y ago
If you live in a commuter suburb of Tokyo and ride the train at rush hour, yes you will not be happy. But why commute? I live 8 minutes' walk from Shibuya station and during the day perhaps 1 or two people walk by every few minutes. At night even fewer. Cars drive so slowly on my side-street that you cannot hear them at all. As for taking two hours to "actual green stuff" man are you ever exaggerating. Even without LEAVING the city I know of 3 different nature preserves that range from 20 to 30 minutes away DOOR TO DOOR. If you hop on a train for 30 minutes, you hit Tamagawa, a breathtaking open expanse of river and low brush. Want forest? How about Takao-san, a breathtaking natural space with tons of hiking trails and a mountain you can climb easily in an afternoon. 44 minutes west of Shinjuku. If you hate crowds, just avoid them. "Living in Tokyo is not fun" says more about your unhappiness with the rhythm of life you have created for yourself than it says about the city.
- ekianjo 14y ago
  Well, the point is, to get to a green space, you need to get in a crowd in the first place. You cannot avoid them that easily. It's like you get double-punishment before the reward. Tokyo is simply a city that is OVER-capacity, not by a factor of 1 or 2, but 10 or maybe more. If the train is 10 minutes late for any reason, any station would be filled with people on the platforms you can cross through it anymore. That says a lot. I feel New York is way more livable, from what I can compare.
  - delackner 14y ago
    Its funny you mention the train being late, and crowds. When I lived in NYC, traveling on the train during non-peak times was so stressful I avoided it like the plague. Always late. Noisy as hell. Smells like a cesspool. During rush-hour the train might stop in the middle of a tunnel, and the lights go out, the whole time it is not even air conditioned. I visited NYC 2 months ago after a few years away, and the floating filth in the tracks was still there of course. My Japanese travel companion who had never been in NYC before took only two train rides (at non-peak hours) to declare a strong negative impression of the NYC subway. Maybe you live in another NYC where there are no trains? Or you just drive everywhere, but you don't mind that it takes an hour stuck in traffic to get out of Manhattan on a friday evening. In Tokyo it takes about the same amount of time to travel any distance whether it is 9am or 3pm, since the trains actually work.
patio11 14y ago
Tokyo is very much not my cup of tea, but for people who enjoy city life because it is city life and not because of non-city things they can find in the city, Tokyo can be a very nice place to be. Is it crazily overcrowded? Yes. Is it overly expensive? Yes. Is it possible to experience alienation from humanity to a level almost incomprehensible anywhere else in the world while simultaneously having no elbow room? Yes. You can also live in a shoebox apartment in a walkable neighborhood with forty-seven little restaurants at which the owner will remember your face after your third visit, well-maintained parks and orderly, efficient public services, connected via the world's hands-down-best mass transit system to a) a commercial center which has just about anything anyone could possibly want to buy (and that is not always a compliment) and b) a stupidly convenient rail network which will whisk you to anywhere on Honshu, including the parts of Japan that I rather enjoy, in less time than it takes many Americans to get to work in the morning. If New York has any appeal to you, Tokyo will probably be your kind of town. If it doesn't, Tokyo will probably not be.
- ekianjo 14y ago
  The a) and b) do not only apply to Tokyo. The top 10 cities in Japan can offer the same degree of convenience, less the "alienation from humanity to a level almost incomprehensible anywhere else in the world", which I find a very good description of the situation, by the way. Concerning the "well maintained parks", several parts of Tokyo feel/look dirtier than many other places in the country, except maybe the southern part of Osaka.
alinajaf 14y ago
Tokyo is a big place. Living in Ebisu is worlds apart from living in Itabashi for example, but you'll need a bank balance to match.

pbreit 14y ago

Would you believe that the Bay Area is one of the most desirable places to live on the planet?

intended 14y ago

What? No they are not conversation killers. I used to think they were conversation killers till I realized that all it meant is that I now actually have to think harder and respond at a higher level. His last line is important: We agree that its a complex problem. So at least now we can start identifying multiple solutions which can help this. One of them, and important - is pointing out that Concrete jungles DON't have to be bad places to live. A good follow up would be examples of cities that do manage a good balance between high density places, good mass transit, and managing places which keep a good balance of greenery. Places which can be redeveloped would be another option of something to discuss. what/how good are the mass transit options in SV (I don't live there), what are the long term city plans? Do they need to be updated? Is there enough cash to follow through on the original plans? The updates? What are the time horizons for those things? All those questions can be worked on better, if people are no longer spending time fighting between themselves, and working together on getting a common solution everyone can be happier with.

delackner 14y ago

Home prices in the bay area have skyrocketed 10 to 15 times beyond the rate of inflation over the past 30 years. This has pushed the renters who used to live there further and further out, or forced their standard of living ever further downward. I disagree with the idea that existing homeowners have some right prevent developers from building tall housing nearby on PRIVATE property. You own your land, I own mine, and as long as I'm not doing anything toxic, your rights do not extend into my space. These anti-development policies force people to live far away from their workplace, turning most of the bay area into a massive wasteland of highways and parking lots. A few incredibly lucky and selfish people can deny the right of the many to have the dignity of affordable housing, but it is not just. It is shameful. As an aside, despite artificially enforced low-density, Berkeley and Palo Alto have depressingly few vibrant public spaces. Sure there's trees along the street, but most of the parks are just little tiny bits of grass and a few scraggly trees sandwiched between two or three active roads. You'd think low density might include huge open parks, but no, it is mostly just big houses with private yards and lots of parking lots to deal with how far apart everything is. Contrast: In Tokyo, since there is almost nothing preventing you from doing whatever you like with your own land, there is a wide mix of different housing to choose from, at all different price-points. I can afford to live smack in the middle of everything, near the biggest park and shopping area, also a few minutes walk from a major train station. I also have a spectacular view that goes all the way to the horizon for about 160 degress.