Why Japan Looks the Way It Does: Zoning [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk

by enaaem • 5 years ago

143 115 5 years ago

bin_bash• 5 years ago

I'm sure living in Japan comes with its own set of problems, but whenever I learn about something like this it makes it sound like such a paradise. I can't imagine how great it would be to live in a small, affordable community where I walk my daughter to school every day and can take care of most errands without using my car.

It seems in America you can pick 2 from safe, affordable, and walkable.

bart_spoon6• 5 years ago

I lived in Japan for a few years, and it basically was paradise. There were virtually no downsides in my opinion.

pjc502• 5 years ago

It looks from the outside that the downside is "small" living spaces. They look small by UK standards so I imagine that to an American it's like living in a closet.

lozenge2• 5 years ago

Gender norms are pretty stringent especially on mothers.

In general it seems very accepting if you fit in and very hostile if you don't, which is shown in a high suicide rate in school age children.

naomeux• 5 years ago

I agree with you on this one, but except for one thing. The walls are too thin to have your own space. It's quite uncomfortable that you don't have your privacy even you're at home.

blacktriangle• 5 years ago

Being a homogeneous ethnostate does wonders for the social cohesion that allows for a society like Japan to work.

stormdennis• 5 years ago

Not a popular opinion, it seems.

llampx• 5 years ago

Plenty of homogeneous states which don't work. Seems it's not such a great indicator.

j-bos• 5 years ago

Hard to say because while Japan has long been homogenous and had strong social order, the modern level of safety is historically recent.

eldaisfish2• 5 years ago

You are being downvoted but this sentiment is not wrong. See also the nordic countries and this Freakonomics podcast that goes into some detail: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/happiness/ In particular, note Denmark's notoriously strict immigration system.

The key point being that ethnically homogenous societies tend to work well. It isn't guaranteed but it does contribute because everyone is the same or similar. Similar ideals, similar goals and so on. The feeling one gets in these societies is stifling. We have nice things but they are for us, not for you.

freetime23• 5 years ago

where I walk my daughter to school every day

From first grade onwards kids actually walk to school in groups, without adult supervision (except for the occasional crossing guard). So while you wouldn’t be able to walk with your daughter, I think it actually says even more about the safety and walkability of Japanese neighborhoods that 6 year olds are able to get to and from school safely without adult supervision.

tkgally• 5 years ago

My two daughters went through elementary schools in Tokyo and Yokohama, and they walked to school in groups—called tōkōhan—that were arranged by the schools. In Tokyo, their tōkōhan met each morning in front of our apartment complex; in Yokohama, it met a block away from our house. There were about ten to fifteen kids in each group.

The children were taught at school how to behave safely in the tōkōhan, and older kids were assigned to walk at the front and rear of each group and to keep tabs on the younger ones. In the afternoons, though, the kids came home on their own, as different grades finished at different times.

In Yokohama, parents shared the crossing guard duties. For a week or so every couple of months, I would have to stand with a flag at a nearby corner for fifteen minutes every morning and wave each tōkōhan by. (I was working from home then and was available to do it.)

The streets in the area where we lived in Tokyo had sidewalks, but in our Yokohama neighborhood the narrow streets are used by both pedestrians and vehicles. That has always made me a little nervous, but fortunately there’s not a lot of traffic in our neighborhood; most of the people living nearby do not have cars, and those who do seem to do most of their commuting and errands on foot or bicycle. I feel less safe in rural areas of Japan, where pedestrians often have to walk along narrow, sidewalk-less roads with cars and trucks whizzing by.

skhr06802• 5 years ago

If you can find a way to make money without working for a company that demands all of your time for a small wage, Japan is a great place to live. Having schools etc in walking distance means that all of the local people keep an eye out to make sure each other’s kids are safe. It’s really nice.

JohnJamesRambo2• 5 years ago

You can get all three, you just have to live somewhere outside the two coasts I think. I’ve got all three in a small town in the middle. I walk on the sidewalk in front of my house to the library that is a few doors down from my incredibly affordable house. It feels like a Norman Rockwell painting.

I’m hoping remote work can allow more people to experience this.

gremIin2• 5 years ago

What are you job options if you get laid off? How often do you and your spouse spend time with friends? I would hate moving to a small town and being cut off from seeing friends whenever I want to. Not to mention people tend to congregate towards larger cities, so moving to a small town probably means giving up quality food and my favorite events like sports and the symphony.

helen___keller3• 5 years ago

FWIW you can have all of these on the coasts as well. For example, if you can afford a suburban Boston house, you can find any number of small towns in New England where you can afford to live and have a small walkable community (that is to say, in absolute terms these communities are expensive but in relative terms for New England they are not).

The problem this is missing is that "walkable" doesn't actually include everything you need to live. Jobs are the most obvious one, for those who don't have remote work or their own business, which is to say for most Americans. You'll also probably end up driving when you need to do serious shopping because your town center's general store isn't a Wal-Mart. Similarly for any number of specialized purchases or services.

In any case, small-town living and city living are very different. What's impressive about Japan is bringing a walkable, livable urban form to a mega city of 30 million people. When American towns start growing into cities (or when they are informally annexed into a larger cities' urban region) they usually do so by converting farmland into car-accessible suburbs, which is the problem.

thethethethe3• 5 years ago

Edit: modified the list of cities based on comments

Is your neighborhood truly walkable though? Do you walk to the grocery store? What about the hospital? dentist? Physical therapist? Pet store? Restaurants? Is there transit nearby?

Afaik, there are only a few cities in the US (all costal) which are truly walkable in the traditional sense, SF, NYC, Boston, DC and maybe Philadelphia and only limited parts of the cities are actually walkable. These are the only cities with limited single family zoning and didn't boldoze their city centers to build parking lots and freeways in the 50s like the rest of NA cities (see https://www.vox.com/2014/12/29/7460557/urban-freeway-slider-...)

Many cities and small towns in the US and Canada may have walkable elements in limited areas, but they are still very car dependent in most cases

hnlmorg3• 5 years ago

Europe is like this too. I find America's implementation of zoning to be very weird. Maybe there are some upsides to it that I'm not aware of, I'd be interested to hear some opinions of the American system from those who favour it.

lbriner• 5 years ago

There is some "zoning" in the UK too, it is just not so set in stone. Most councils have areas that are pre-approved for new housing, any other areas would require planning permission.

Building in a conservation area (not necessarily rural!), on a listed building or in a "greenbelt" area require special permission, which is not always easy or obvious.

I think the theory must be that people want some assurances. If somewhere is zoned for housing, I don't have to do pointless paperwork to build houses. It also keeps commercial areas away from residential which might or might not be a good idea although I suspect most residents prefer it that way.

toyg6• 5 years ago

Eh, some of Europe. Yes, we are nowhere as obsessed as the Americans with suburban life and car-based commuting, because of 2000 years of urbanization (one of those things "the Romans did for us"), but in the last 20-40 years there has been a real shift towards similar models. Suburban hypermarkets, IKEA, entertainment centres, and the pursuit of "Wysteria Lane" habitats, have become commonplace for families across the continent.

Some of it is driven by economic growth (city centres have become increasingly unaffordable, particularly in capital cities), some by population growth (you can only scale up a residential block so much before it becomes a mess from a social perspective), some by fashion (hello Hollywood), some by speculation (it's easy to bootstrap a shopless residential suburb), some by urban planners simply failing in the attempts to create new urban centres.

sho_hn2• 5 years ago

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM for one of the major reasons.

japanftw2• 5 years ago

Europe is far, far, behind japan in pretty much every aspect. Paris, London or Berlin are basically dumps compared to Japan’s cities.

xboxnolifes• 5 years ago

There are upsides, but only relative to the issues it solved decades ago. We stopped (drastically) improving our zoning from the original changes and now we're stuck with the consequences.

aikinai3• 5 years ago

Japan's not a paradise in every way, but this is exactly why my family has settled here. The lifestyle possible in most of Japan is very difficult to replicate in other countries and invaluable to general quality of life even if you have to compromise in some areas.

mlindner3• 5 years ago

More like a "lack of zoning". Japan's very limited zoning restrictions allows more natural cities to be built.

Additionally, the train companies own the land around the train stations and are thus encouraged to develop the land for commercial use, effectively setting up destinations for the users of their train systems. The cities then develop around the train stations as the primary hubs of commerce.

bane• 5 years ago

"Life Where I'm From" is a fantastic channel. His series on homelessness in Japan is one of the best and most thoughtful pieces on the subject I've ever seen, and makes me very much question the way of homelessness elsewhere.

Japan isn't a perfect paradise by any stretch of the imagination, but if you end up having to build several high-density megalopolises, it's as close to an ideal model as possible. It's very hard to describe why their cities are so good because it's a list of a million small things. If you can, visit and see. It's a wonderful collision of familiar and bafflingly different all in one.

setgree• 5 years ago

Very nice! For more on the subject, see this article in the Financial Times [0], which got a nice write up on marginal revolution [1]

[0] https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3...

[1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/la...

newyankee• 5 years ago

If the income/ wealth for a given city is not uniformly distributed (not delving into the reasons), having an almost strict usage of land based on higher incomes doesn't seem quite capitalistic as in US/ Canada. Quite a valid point by the narrator.

If housing is a basic need, vested interests are preventing it from becoming cheaper due to how much intertwined it has become with today's economic system. NIMBY is just class warfare with a catchy names and wrapped in supposedly noble intentions while impacting the poorest.

mlindner3• 5 years ago

There is no evidence for the so called "class war" some people try to make as an argument for why housing is so expensive. They have built in assumptions that there already is a class war and then try to find evidence to support their theory, when in fact the high housing pricing can easily be explained by simple supply and demand which is usually caused by restrictive zoning regulations making additional housing either impossible or uneconomic.

pjc502• 5 years ago

I'd be interested in hearing how this is handled in various European countries, because "zoning" in the SimCity style doesn't really exist in the UK. We have an explicit permission system: https://www.createstreets.com/the-long-history-of-british-la...

(long, but extremely good, it describes the system as "nationalising development", very much in keeping with the postwar mood).

lemoncookiechip• 5 years ago

Japan has a serious problem with lack of sound proofing in most of the buildings you'll come across, as well an insane amount of paper work involved in everything you do. Finding a house, moving, trashing large items, getting a car license, dealing with the bank, and pretty much every aspect of life you can think of, involves a lot of paper work as well as your physical presence.

If you're a foreigner who is moving to Japan, this problem is tripled, as well as some discrimination (not necessarily racism) you might find while looking for housing, due to fear of foreigners just leaving. These issues aren't very clear when you're there on a tourist visa due to how easy everything seems. Unless you have a company dealing with this stuff for you, you're going to have some headaches.

There's also odd day to day things, such as being unable to withdraw money from ATMs after hours, which is mind-boggling to a foreigner like me.

Otherwise, Japan is an amazing well oiled peaceful machine that just requires A LOT of paper work to get going.

teek• 5 years ago

I've been living in Japan for over 5 years.

Japan has a serious problem with lack of sound proofing in most of the buildings you'll come across

In older or cheaper buildings this is true. However if you pay you can have better sound proofing. For example some Japanese mansions (residential low-rise condominiums) are built from reinforced concrete and isolate sound fairly well. You just have to be careful to read about the building and its construction. You also have to be willing to pay extra for better construction materials.

as well as some discrimination (not necessarily racism) you might find while looking for housing

This is true for rentals. I also want to clarify Japanese also experience discrimination so it is not purely a non-Japanese thing. Generally landlords have freedom to put whatever restrictions they want on who they rent the unit to. But this is for good reason. A landlord cannot easily evict a tenant. So the landlord is taking a huge risk in trusting that the tenant will respect the contract and actually pay the rent.

I will say in buildings owned by corporations or businesses, they sometimes don't have any discrimination by nationality. They do tend to have higher requirements for income and may discriminate based on your current company employment contract. Also they may require a specific guarantor company which tends to be more expensive. The guarantor company is sort of a risk insurance for the landlord paid by the tenant.

However things are quite different if you buy the land outright. Here the only restriction is bank loans. If you do not have permanent residence, the number of banks willing to lend money are very few. If you have permanent residence then you have many more banks to choose from. Otherwise there is no restriction on who can buy land.

Unless you have a company dealing with this stuff for you, you're going to have some headaches.

I think it is all about perspective and expectations. In Japan the Japanese are used to dealing with bureaucracy (though many Japanese also really dislike it). The information is readily available, you just have research yourself. Otherwise you have to accept that you are moving to a non-English speaking country and it is your responsibility to find a way to understand the local language or get someone to help you.

I do agree that there are still many headaches to adjust to Japanese business and culture. But I also don't understand why everyone has an expectation that Japan must change to meet their expectations. Japan is a first world country with many issues, but it isn't a place where you can expect to be free of first-world problems.

For example in the US nearly nobody bothers to complain about credit rating agencies. Maintaining your credit is seen as something you control. Which isn't necessarily true. Credit ratings greatly affect American lives. So everyone is in a way obligated to participate in a non-government created scheme yet nobody bats an eye. Just sign up for a credit card.

namelessoracle2• 5 years ago

LOTS of people hate the credit agencies and complain about them.

I would say hatred of credit agencies is probably one of the few issues left you could get wide support of across the political spectrum.

toyg6• 5 years ago

Japan is an amazing well oiled peaceful machine that just requires A LOT of paper work to get going.

One has to wonder if that paperwork is an essential cause of such a peaceful state. It might well be channeling (male) energies that could otherwise end up unsettling society.

When even criminal cartels are highly-formalized, one has to wonder if the acceptance of ritualistic forms of bureaucracy is a key to the "dynamic stillness" of Japanese culture.

iratewizard5• 5 years ago

Japan's well oiled and peaceful machine comes from a thousand little things that everyone cooperates on. Only areas with large numbers of foreigners have trash cans in public (and still have litter issues). When you walk into a grocery store during a downpour, you do your best to dry off and leave your wet umbrella at the fire. If young people are whispering too loudly, someone will ask them to quiet down and they will listen. Mutual trust and respect that comes with a tightly knit and homogenous society.

ido• 5 years ago

Are you arguing paperwork is placating men who would have otherwise been criminals and revolutionaries? That's certainly a take but it'll need a lot of convincing to believe it.

csomar• 5 years ago

One has to wonder if that paperwork is an essential cause of such a peaceful state. It might well be channeling (male) energies that could otherwise end up unsettling society.

Don't know where I should start. These two sentences do not make any sense. France and the Soviet Union are/were highly bureaucratic states, they do not seem to be revolutionary-free or that successful. And that "male energy crap" doesn't really mean or exist anywhere beyond these "alpha-chad" forums.

Peace happens when a majority of people accept the status quo. This is usually coupled with a ruler (or a government) that has laws that are compatible with the social expectations of said population.

Japan is not a particular exception. During its history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Japan), it had its fair share of violence, revolts and internal conflicts. It also had periods of peace, like the one they are experiencing it right now.

When even criminal cartels are highly-formalized, one has to wonder if the acceptance of ritualistic forms of bureaucracy is a key to the "dynamic stillness" of Japanese culture.

I think that if anything was to destabilize Japan it would be its inability to reform its bureaucracy. That being said, I don't think it's as bad as people think it is. You shouldn't look at bureaucracy as only government papers but the whole process of operating there. Japan is still a very efficient country and they do lots of things efficiently. Would you rather spend 30 minutes filling paper work and have fast public transport; or fill no paperwork and spend 1.5x250 hours on traffic jams?

bart_spoon6• 5 years ago

I don't think its the paperwork necessarily. In my opinion it entirely boils down to individualism. Japan is peaceful because in general everyone values societal harmony. If you are going to step out of line, there better be a good reason for it. In the US, the individual reigns supreme, and society is exists only so far as it makes things better for you individually. Even many of the more collectively minded political movements in the US seem to by hyper-focused on individualism, comparatively.

There are tradeoffs. Japan tends to have more entrenched bureaucracy, more stringent cultural norms, etc. But it is also far more safe, harmonious, and, in my opinion, pleasant, than the US.

aikinai3• 5 years ago

How long ago did you live in Japan? Very little of this is true anymore. Unless maybe you're deep in the country and only dealing with businesses and authorities that stopped evolving decades ago?

I recently moved and only communicated with the real estate agent and the moving company by chat. Large trash reservation is online. Drivers license requires an application, but isn't that normal? Same with a lease; I think those are still paper in most countries.

I don't know of any ATMs that close anymore; maybe super rural banks still do?

It depends on the municipality, but the good ones have moved most of their paperwork online and allow you to digitally sign it with an actual signing certificate embedded on your My Number card and the NFC chip in your phone. If you're doing the paperwork on a computer, you scan the a QR code to complete only verification and signing with the phone.

Certainly not everything's cutting edge, but a lot of things are quite streamlined these days. Immigration paperwork, for example, is a cakewalk compared to the US, probably requiring about 100 times fewer pages at least in my past experience.

Edit: And as someone mentioned below, modern apartments are very soundproof, just not the old wooden ones.

makeitdouble2• 5 years ago

Didn’t you still have to stamp the actual lease contract ? (+ guarantee paper, insurance etc.)

We went through the whole dance a few months ago, and while most of the discussions were done by chat/mail, we still ended up snail mailing a ton of paper back and forth to close the deal.

Also most bank ATM still have closing hours, it can be way later than it was 10 or 20 years ago, but it still closes at night e.g. Mufg’s Kouenji branch: https://map.bk.mufg.jp/b/bk_mufg_s/info/BA592126/

Going further west and some will close at 18h or 20h without remorse.

For soundproofing, it’s less a matter of modernity than of price. Foreigners often will only get access the super low and middle-high offers, so there is a higher chance to land on a pretty well soundproofed building. Your random Leopalace built this year will still have paper thin walls, and so do cheaper appartments in general,

kaboomman• 5 years ago

As someone living in Japan, none of this has been true for for me. Except for the driving license part, I can't comment on that since I never tried to get one. Perhaps it was like this 10 years ago or may be the case in rural areas, but life in Tokyo is pretty hassle and paperwork free.

I also had never had problems with soundproofing. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised how super soundproof everything was compared to the places I lived in in the U.S. But I've only ever lived in newer apartment buildings, not the old ones.

amake• 5 years ago

There's also odd day to day things, such as being unable to withdraw money from ATMs after hours, which is mind-boggling to a foreigner like me.

This hasn't been true for over a decade. 24/7 ATMs can be found at any convenience store, which are plentiful.

glandium• 5 years ago

24/7 ATMs can be found at any convenience store, but there usually are fees associated with using them. Fees that vary depending on time of day and/or day of week. The ATMs anywhere else that is not a convenience store are also still, for the vast majority, not 24/7.

aeharding• 5 years ago

Why Japan Looks the Way It Does: Zoning [video]

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