Having lived in Tokyo for years, the elephant in the room is "cars". The whole city is full of pleasant mixed use neighborhoods that are more or less car-free, and centered around public transport hubs that have everything you need around them. People, including unaccompanied children, can and do safely walk and ride bikes everywhere at all hours of the day, including when grocery shopping etc. The world can learn a lot from this.
Before anyone chimes in saying "nO tHeRe r cUrS iN tOkYo tOo" - of course there are! The point is the city isn't designed around cars. (and the parts that are are the least pleasant)
I lived in Tokyo for almost five years, and owned a car while I was there ... I don't think this is a question of the city being "designed around cars".
There's a lot more "design for cars" in Tokyo than there is in, say, New York City - look at the Shuto expressway with its multiple rings of highways that run around the city and the radial routes that join them together; its elevated sections and tunnels through the most densely populated parts of the city...
There are also many areas in the urban core with multilane roads, but these always seem to be complemented with pedestrian over/under-passes.
Driving in Tokyo is very much more pleasant than driving in the NYC metro area. There is no street parking (by law), but there is often masses of underground parking to compensate: go to Akihabara, for example, and you'll find a five-story deep parking garage with >500 spaces under the Yodobashi Camera store.
One thing that Tokyo does have is a regulatory regime that means that cars are unavailable to the less well-off. That awesome Shuto expressway is a toll road. You have to provide documentation of owning a parking space in order to be able to register a vehicle. The biennial safety inspection (shaken) and taxes are very expensive by comparison with U.S. standards. Gas costs the best part of $6 per gallon.
Amsterdam is similarly regarded as excellent for biking and walking, but it’s also great for driving. This is hugely different from America, where basically every transit mode sucks (in dense areas) because dense areas are designed for cars at the local level. The solution that Amsterdam (and seemingly Tokyo) have used is to separate the two. You have roads which are excellent for high-speed cars, and local streets which are excellent for people to walk and bike. But you shouldn’t mix the two with local streets designed for high speed driving. (These are sometimes called “stroads”, and are one of the most common road designs used in North America for local access to shops.)
The reality is that if you follow the advice of walking/biking infrastructure advocates, you also get a city which is nicer and safer for driving, because cars are much more separated from the most dangerous and stressful elements of city driving!
This is honestly the thing that bothers me most about cities the US. Having grown up in Europe, I find many (I'm sure there are exceptions) US cities to be plain ugly and unlivable. The reason is obvious to me. It's that they are designed around cars. It makes such a huge difference.
You don't really have real cities in the US = there are a few exceptions but most of the time it's just a very tiny center and a lot of people living away from the center. That's not what a traditional city looks like.
Exactly. The US has very few cities proper, and a lot of huge suburbs that sometimes feature a city-like downtown (L.A., Houston), and sometimes don't (most of the Silicon Valley).
The real honest dense US cities, such as NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and a few others, were built large and dense before the advent of the car, and had entrenched public transportation system before 1930s.
Those that were not as lucky got remade for cars in 1930-1960s, and cemented in that state by zoning regulations.
Europe obviously had a large number of dense cities since medieval times. Even small cities in Europe often ended up dense due to land limitations, and the generally relatively high population density. Cities in the US very rarely faced this limitation early enough, with a few natural exceptions like Manhattan or San Francisco.
No need for door bells. No need for street signs. No need for taxi stops. No need for privately owned cars (rent via phone app or use Uber like service).
Walking around Toronto, Canada, I've noticed that it's getting harder to find street signs. Their placement is for drivers in cars, not for people walking.
Its still really convenient. It is really starting to pick up - I can use my phone to pay fares in a lot of metros now, have real time transit tracking, and use it for navigation even when walking.
Its definitely, imo, to the point where it is becoming a responsibility of societies to provide its citizens access to these technologies because of their utility. That means subsidized / free phones and service, imo. Everyone really should have a baseline of digital access as a fundamental right, hopefully this decade. The COVID relief free cell service in the US I think has been an eye opener for me.
If you mean Los Angeles then I can't disagree more. Maybe Westwood, maybe downtown. But "consisting many of fairly dense walkable neighborhoods" is not a description I would ever have been expected to be applied to Los Angeles.
These are vanishingly small postage stamps compared the absolutely vast sprawl that is LA. I mean seriously. Get on the 10 and head east. Let me know when you get outside the sprawl. It'll be over an hour at highway speeds. It's that big. Just the city of LA itself is 503 square miles. Santa Monica is (nominally) 8 square miles--and most of that is not what you are referring to. 3rd street promenade, a few beachfront streets, a few blocks on Wilshire and Santa Monica blvd. I have a feeling you never really drove around LA and appreciated how absolutely massive it is.
And here's a nice infographic comparing the density of LA and New York, if you're interested in more than anecdotes:
I don’t live there, but I’ve driven around it. Just saying, it’s possible to get by without absolutely having to drive to get a cup of coffee or a bite to eat at least in some parts of LA. If that’s important to you, you can live in those parts. Most people actually don’t care about that at all. So, having to drive everywhere is not a problem for them.
How many neighborhoods in LA have a walkability score high enough where most errands can be accomplished on foot ? Quite a few, right?
This list has 10 and doesn’t even mention all of them
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rent.com/blog/four-walkable...
I grew up in a high density city overseas and I can see the appeal of both types of city. I personally prefer low density, car centric cities (obviously we need to finish solving the emissions problem from cars, but that's separate).
We Americans are a nation of people who spend the vast majority of our waking hours inside. We go from building to building via car isolated from the world and each other. It’s an enormous waste of land and resources since every building has to have its own parking. Most parking lots at stores sit empty most of the time. It’s unhealthy that we walk so little. It’s unhealthy that we interact so little with those around us. It’s unhealthy that we spend so little time outside. We are a nation of zombies addicted to fast food, rage (caused by living virtually in information bubbles designed by Facebook and others), and a fear of interacting with each other.
The ability to walk in quiet, open spaces with low pollution is one of the top advantages of low density suburbia.
Low density suburbia can, and usually has, plenty of walking spaces with a ton of nature around. I lived in multiple suburban neighborhoods and I was always either within a short (and easy) drive to a park or had great walking areas in the neighborhood itself. Contrast with high density, where you have to deal with pollution, noise and potentially crime just to walk to a park (and in the park itself)
Regarding "fear or interacting", in my experience I have a lot of more interactions, of the cordial and polite kind, with the few neighbors I have in my low density area than I've ever had when I lived in a high density city where you can feel like an ant in a colony.
I lived in a suburb with lots of walking paths and within walking distance of a grocery store. This is a rarity in the U.S. Even on nice days very few people out and about. It was rare for me to encounter more than one person on a hour long walk. While some suburbs have walking paths (and many do not) my experience is that few take advantage of it.
I understand your point that citizens in a democracy get the government they deserve. Choices are not made in a vacuum. Path dependence can lock us into local maxima. A series of rational reactions can sometimes lead to an irrational result. People complain about energy price volatility, traffic jams, and climate change but are unwilling to plan meaningful change. Short term concerns and lack of easy solutions tilt us into the same old ways of car dependency, restrictive zoning, tax funded and congested highways, parking minimums, and ever higher housing prices.
The market doesn't want this, it wants to make the most out of land near cities. It's the government (local) that bans density and mandates car-centric development.
Forget about the emissions issue, I just hate driving and having to depend on its supporting infrastructure (repair shops, gas stations, insurance...) for my day-to-day needs. I live in a US suburb. Can't even get a sandwich or buy milk or see someone without strapping myself into my fucking car. This is no way to live.
If I could, I'd give up ever having to drive again in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, here we have few realistic options given where employers are located and how poor the transportation options that remain. It's a racket.
I moved to SF specifically to avoid having a car. Everything about owning a car pisses me off. Insurance and registration are a racket. Parking is either expensive or miserable. Traffic and seeing how other people behave makes me hate my fellow man. Every time I try to merge onto a crowded highway I realize I’m risking my life.
I’m angry that urban design for decades, almost a century, was planned around these machines. Obviously in rural areas they are incredibly freeing and useful. But having traveled the world I’ve come to realize and hate how peculiarly dependent we are on them in the US. We are heavy outliers among developed countries in how much we rely on cars and eschew public transit. They’re dangerous, expensive, and an annoying. In most cities in the developed world it’s normal to be able to get to a convenience store in a 5-10 minute walk.
Moving to Thailand I haven't missed having a car. I bought a motorbike and that works really well without taking up as much space (though are louder than I like and there's no infrastructure for electric alternatives).
The part that rubs me is in both Thailand and Vietnam, despite Bangkok and Hanoi being dense with inexpensive and comprehensive public transportation, even the current youth generation still want cars. When I ask "why?", it's still about status and other reasons are secondary.
Yeah I noticed in Thailand there's many people living in corrugated iron sheds with a big brand new pickup parked beside it. They really have weird priorities :)
I feel just the opposite. I enjoy driving. It puts me in a thoughtful state and the feeling of being free to take whatever turn, shortcut, or scenic route I want at a whim is great. I don’t look forward to the day a human driving is a weekend, closed course activity for the privileged.
But you can do all those things when walking or on a bicycle too. When I want to disconnect I just had to the natural park in the mountains beside the city I live in. It's huge and there's always new things to explore.
what is your point exactly? I can't literally choose to drive my car anywhere, as I am not the dictator of my local DOT. but there are many pleasant routes that do exist near me, and I can choose to take them any time.
> I live in a US suburb. Can't even get a sandwich or buy milk or see someone without strapping myself into my fucking car. This is no way to live.
Where I live has walkability by accident but the car infrastructure is so massive here, to support as many (probably more, TBH) employees who commute to our area for work as there are people who live here, that it destroys your ability to walk anywhere quickly. The street crossings turn a 10 minute walk, one way, into a half of an hour or longer.
> If I could, I'd give up ever having to drive again in a heartbeat.
Try it. I lived in Chicago years ago, where cars are expensive and inconvenient to own, at least by American standards. I would walk to the grocery store, which was about 4 blocks I guess, about a 10-15 minute walk. So your shop is limited to what you can carry back, so you have to shop every day or every other day, with the walk there, the shop, and the walk home taking the better part of an hour. Every other day or so. And on the way you are accosted by at least one street person asking for money, and with your hands full of grocery bags you feel a bit defenseless. And then there were the rainy days. And the cold days. Not fun walking 10-15 minutes at 6 degrees F with a 20mph wind in your face.
It had its charms, but overall it sucked. I prefer my rural house and easy weekly shop with a car now.
In Copenhagen, I can walk to several grocery stores in 5 minutes.
Although since my 15 minute cycle to work takes me directly past seven (yes, seven) grocery stores, I usually stop at one of them on the way home from work. It is essentially like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHTzqHIngk
I agree, I moved to a city in Europe and not needing a car anymore feels really liberating. Not having to worry about costs, damage, fuel, maintenance, the stress of driving...
I'd sell my soul to basically never drive again. Once you find yourself In a situation that just works with out driving the concept just seems stupid. To be fair I do my fair share of ubering but at least Im reading or on my laptop while someone else deals with the incredible shittynsss of driving. For me there is no good trip where I have to drive
It means you are dependent on cars for one, which also means insurance companies, gas,car payment, etc... I am actively trying to ditch cars in a car city because of this. You wastr so much space for parking lots too. You interact with a lot less people because you are always at some destination with the journey barring you from interacting with the people of the city. Physical fitness and health is also affected.
It is ridiculous. In order to have food and shelter you need to be dependent on not just a landlord and grocery store but also insurance companies, car dealers, oil and gas companies, DMV/DPS,mechanics,etc... and infractions against driving law can leave you unable to work, get food, go to the doctor (outside of ER),etc... a traditional city does not require a regulated license for teansporation and you don't spend almost as much as rent on transportation. Especially for low-income people, liquidity is important, it is the reason behind why it is expensive to be poor. Think if all the tragic social cost that can be avoided if people can instead spend money on their other needs instead of cars.
I read somewhere how car makers bribed and played dirty to prevent things like rail cars from being adopted by cities. To me it relfects on how much corporate-run the city is.
From what I can tell, depending on the "car lord" is getting worse and worse too. There may have been an era when cars got more affordable due to greater reliability and longevity. I'm concerned that the car makers have figured out how to defeat that idea by charging fees to use the electronics in your car, and that servicing the batteries is going to be a rent-seeker's heaven.
This is why it's so important to own and maintain the good older vehicles. Resto-modding reliable chassis like 1990s Lexus LS should become more popular. Developments in rapid prototyping, additive manufacturing, etc... all make this easier. I'd love to see more open-sourcing of aftermarket parts as well.
But then again, I'm a weirdo who pulled out a car's entire wire harness to install a CAN-BUS system and solid-state power distribution modules....
Putting all preferences aside, American suburban living is fiscally unsustainable and supported by massive borrowing.
That’s one major reason American infrastructure is so bad. Towns have to balance their books, and that means they cannot afford to maintain their infrastructure until the federal government, which is not legally required to balance its books, borrows a ton of money to give away for basic infrastructure to be maintained.
>Putting all preferences aside, American suburban living is fiscally unsustainable and supported by massive borrowing.
This is commonly stated but is not backed up by any real world evidence. Infrastructure costs are on the order of 10-15% of government cost. The cost of government is almost all in paying salaries (and pensions) to employees providing services. Governments that have gotten into fiscal trouble are there because of ballooning pension cost.
I don’t think this makes much sense. It’s mostly big cities like Chicago or Boston (still dealing with Big Dig debt) with trouble financing themselves, suburbia seems to do very well financing itself with its property tax base.
> American suburban living is fiscally unsustainable and supported by massive borrowing.
These are city dweller opinions, and they're not going to change continued suburban and rural development.
Suburbanites shouldn't have to pay for city subway and potholes. Those are city problems.
Suburban and rural land is cheaper, the air is less polluted, and the low crime environments are ideal for raising families. If people want to live there, it's their prerogative.
You can buy a 2,000 square foot house for your family in the suburbs at a cost lower than a 700 sqft box in the city.
With remote work, it's not even clear that cities are an essential construct anymore.
"Suburbanites shouldn't have to pay for city subway and potholes."
Then city residents shouldn't have to pay for the roads that make car-centric suburbs possible or the various subsidies given to rural residents. Honestly, one of the benefits of civilization is that we help each other out even when it does not immediately benefit us as individuals. Rural and suburban life would not be possible without cities, and cities would not be possible without rural and suburban residents.
Cities form naturally because of industrial operations that are more efficient when they are concentrated in a single place. Remote work changes nothing about it because there are still plenty of jobs that cannot be done remotely, including many of the jobs needed to support remote work (e.g. data centers, warehouses, intermodal terminals). Suburban life depends on industries that make no sense in suburbs or whose presence will ultimately transform suburbs into cities.
If suburbs were as superior as you suggest, cities would not be growing and real estate in cities would not be as valuable as it currently is. People are choosing to live, work, and raise families in cities more than they are choosing suburbs. Remote work has not changed anything and will never change anything. COVID-19 led only to a transient spike in demand for suburban homes that is already declining as people realize that the pandemic is already in its final stage.
Migration patterns overwhelmingly demonstrate that people are migrating from high density cities to low density, "hardcore suburban" cities. In the US, high density living is a boutique lifestyle choice that is constrained in the offer side (NIMBY), thus the prices. The fact that there are people willing to pay for this lifestyle doesn't mean that they are a majority, or even a significant percentage of the overall population.
Is this really true though? Every infrastructure project in cities seems to cost billions of dollars (Boston’s Green Line Extension, New York’s 2nd Avenue Subway). It would take quite a lot of suburban road, gas, electric etc infrastructure to add up to anything close to that.
The infrastructure costs in cities are more expensive but service many more people and economic activity, they are amortized much more efficiently than a suburban bridge to nowhere.
Is this true? As a case study, Boston’s population is about 700k, call it a million people living in a genuinely urban environment in greater Boston, of a metro area of 3 million. I think there’s more suburbanites than urbanites in most American metros.
Where do the suburbanites work? That tunnel, rail, or subway is allowing who to get into and out of the city easier?
> The Green Line Extension (GLX) project will extend the existing MBTA Green Line service north of Lechmere Station and into the communities of Somerville, Cambridge, and Medford.
> The Green Line Extension (GLX) is a construction project to extend the light rail Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Green Line northwest into Somerville and Medford, two inner suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts.
I’m not familiar with the Boston area, are Medford and Somerville mainly urban extensions of Boston?
They cost billion of dollars but they are also supporting places that also pays a lot more taxes.
With suburbia, you get low cost infrastructure, but also low tax revenue. You better hope that your tax revenue exceeds the costs of supporting suburbia.
> Cities are subsidizing your excessive consumption and land use not the other way around.
You're making value judgments about me, and they're not even factual. I happen to live in the city. I just see the value of suburbs and the incredible waste, inequality, and ineptitude of cities.
Servicing suburbs isn't expensive. With wind and solar, they'll grow even cheaper. Suburbs often have their own municipal water supplies paid for by their tax base. Roads aren't as expensive to build or maintain, and many people own trucks that can drive on dirt, gravel, and potholes.
Cities have pollution that contribute to cancer and pulmonary diseases. Noise that increases stress. Busy people that have less sense of community.
Name a city where an average American can even afford to buy a home.
I didn't intend to, I meant cities are subsidizing suburbia.
You sure went off on a tangent and didn't address a single point, correctly - but mostly at all, I or the article made. Pipes are expensive, underground utilities are expensive, roads are expensive. All of those things scale much better within a city and its population & density. Servicing suburbs IS expensive compared to cities. Water is typically metered and paid for as a user rate not from the general tax fund.
Sense of community is on you, not where you live. Either you're not getting involved or people don't want to be around you.
You are talking right past me to be heard, with subjective facts, not to have a discussion.
Where is pollution coming from? Cars generate lot of noise and pollution when they through city streets or on highways. Motorcycles can be especially loud if nobody bother to muffle them.
This is a reference to the NIMBY/YIMBY fight, where the YIMBY position is that most non-single-family-home developments, other than the super high end, have been effectively been made illegal through a combination of zoning laws, neighborhood review processes that add extraordinary costs, unreasonable requirements and delays, and other arbitrary veto points.
Cars are the main source of noise pollution and air pollution in cities, nothing else comes to mind. Factories and such were either moved to other continents, or zoning was updated to ban them in population centers. I guess fossil fuel combustion contributes as well, but that's on its way to becoming less of a problem.
Why should cities be expected subsidize rural and suburban living? Those higher infrastructure costs are rural and suburban problems, no need for states to transfer tax revenue simply because cities make more money for less infrastructure costs.
You’ve set up a bit of a straw man argument there. The person you’re replying to isn’t saying suburbanites should pay for city potholes, they’re saying suburbanites need to be able to pay for their own (suburban) potholes, and the ugly truth is that suburban infrastructure maintenance is economically unfeasible. Suburban development has only progressed as far as it has via ponzi-like borrowing schemes that are entirely dependent on new growth.
I don’t like StrongTowns personally, it just doesn’t grok with my experience that many suburbs are wonderful communities where neighbors know each other and kids play together and folks go watch high school football games. I’ve found that cities make you more anonymous. Living in a high rise in a city I knew just about zero of my neighbors, in my suburb I know all of my neighbors by name.
Yeah, I can definitely relate with you on that point.
I grew up in a mid-size suburban town where I knew many families in my neighborhood and generally felt a strong sense of community. I’ve lived in various cities over the years since, and I’ve never quite felt the same connection with my immediate neighbors. I still know and identify with many people in the area I live now, but they’re much more interspersed.
This varies a lot across the country. Most of the local suburban streets are maintained through a combination of local city/county and gas taxes and don't come from the "city money" general tax pool. Not to mention that most states don't have a dense city to speak of, so they are in practice >95% low density.
The federal government maintains the highway infrastructure (and subsidizes other non-highway building) which does help enable suburban living in many places. I suppose that you aren't advocating to get rid of that because the immense usefulness of such system (travel, trucks, buses etc), though.
Eliminating the suburban lifestyle wouldn't have a massive impact on sustainability of the system because a lot of it isn't maintained by the federal government or simply needs to be maintained anyway. Reducing the number of cars that are on the road due to the suburban lifestyle will reduce the amount of money that comes from the federal government and shared money pools, but probably not too much in the grand scheme of things.
Thus, I think that saying that "suburban living is fiscally unsustainable" is an exaggeration and we should instead say "we need to better allocate the costs of suburban life to suburban taxpayers" (which wouldn't make such a huge difference anyway, especially if we also remove the city living subsidies that come from rich suburbs).
Cars are expensive and use an enormous amount of energy. You can buy dozens of e-bikes for the price of one EV, and charge dozens of e-bikes from one fully charged EV battery. EVs do not fix the emissions problem, as most emissions are from brake and tire residue.
>>> most emissions are from brake and tire residue.
That's not plausible... think about how much gas a car consumes per year, compared to the amount of mass of tires and brake pads consumed. Even minimizing my car use, I fill up the tank every few weeks. The wear from my tires is barely visible on a week-to-week basis. I don't think they're even within an order of magnitude.
After moving to Europe (and Eastern Europe), I can't really consider those places in the US "cities" and get an uneasy feeling that something is off when I'm back stateside.
Concur totally after living in Sevilla (Spain). US cities - with the exception of New York - are just cookie-cutter strip malls. There’s a fundamental lack of coherence that’s hard to explain.
It’s pretty easy to understand when you realize Americans don’t like eachother. If we liked living together we wouldn’t be so car centric, it’s not like the cars built the cities for us. And we keep getting worse. Small towns I drive through now are full of angry people who seem to want to be left alone. It’s incredibly sad.
We are a selfish and community-less people that enjoy the frontier and adventure more than quaint small towns where people have to get along.
There are advantages but in the long run I hate it. And yes I’ve lived everywhere in America. The few that like the more euro model have to pay a 10x premium to live in SF or NYC.
> If we liked living together we wouldn’t be so car centric
It's entirely the other way around, car centric planning results in less community. It's much easier to be angry at the other 2t metal boxes than at your fellow human being.
American cities used to be just like European cities: designed for walking, mixed use developments, small shops, public transportation everywhere. It's only after the delusion of the car being the future was popularized - in large part due to very successful advertising by the automotive industry - that policy was written to heavily subsidise car-centric development to the point of making everything else illegal. There's even real, convicted conspiracies of the automotive industry purposefully buying public transportation just to kill it.
So this is not as black and white as it seems. There are three major pushes that end up pushing people out of the cities.
* the aforementioned highway boom, but this is not enough to actually kickstart the whole thing; most European nations also had a highway boom around this time with much less sprawl
* lending standards. Prior to the Great Depression, banks are wholly in control of mortgage lending. The collapse of the economy also collapses the banking system and the housing market; banks have to foreclose on properties that are no longer worth anything. As part of the bank stabilization efforts, the FHA creates national standards for loans that it will insure. These standards are restricted to single family homes, and to properties without commercial (small businesses have a really high rate of failure). This has the effect of encouraging banks and developers to stampede into single family suburban development; the cost of financing is a lot cheaper because of the Uncle Sam guarantee, and it's a lot more profitable as a result. No other type of property is given this kind of preferential treatment to this extent, and this still more or less persists today.
* desegregation. This is the big one; prior to the civil rights era, suburbs are expanding rapidly, but cities are still growing. The moment Brown vs Board of Ed passes in 1954 all hell breaks loose. The real estate practice of blockbusting gets into full gear, where real estate agents spook the white people out of a neighborhood by having one black family move in; they proceed to buy the houses on the cheap from white people fire selling as fast as possible, and then take advantage of black and minority sellers. Whites move into suburbs in droves, because it's "where the good schools are" without the minorities they used to be legally separated from. And this is a national phenomenon. Even today, we see whites flee school districts with increasing minority populations; they do so even in districts where the minority groups are affluent and educational metrics remain positive, like Cupertino, CA or Johns Creek, GA: https://psmag.com/news/ghosts-of-white-people-past-witnessin...
Exactly. I said “don’t like” to avoid making this explicitly about racism but it’s true. And those planners that made these cities people currently complain about had droves of people who “didn’t want to be near other Americans of another color or class” and loved car filled suburbs and strip mall towns.
You know I used to believe that for many years and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is just a “bike-city” circle jerk scapegoating Robert Moses in order to ignore our deeper problem: Americans don’t like each-other.
We would have built better cities if we wanted carless communities. But we didn’t and still don’t.
We want this. This is what we like. We are a sick people. And it isn’t Robert Moses and GMs fault, they are a product of us. We weren’t brainwashed we weren’t forced into this. There is no cabal that made it this way. We choose it. The sooner we accept that the sooner we can evaluate real options for change.
Older US cities have many of the same characteristics as cities in other parts of the world. Those characteristics can vary, from small single-family homes tightly packed into a walkable neighborhood to large scale apartment dwelling with city squares and boulevards nearby.
Americans used to build cities this way. Whether it was Moses or the emergence of a general dislike of each other, or a multitude of other possible reasons, we generally no longer do.
Moreover, many of those older city neighborhoods are considered extremely desirable to live in, even today, so much so that they have become very exclusive areas available only to those with plenty of income or wealth. That doesn't imply that most Americans would necessarily make that choice even if they could, but the continued elevation of housing costs in the best of these "old world" neighborhoods suggests to me that your thesis is at best incomplete and at worst just incorrect.
There are multiple studies and historical accounts documenting exactly this TsunamiFury. Car lobbies are actually clearly tied to many city planning decisions, combined with white flight and corresponding government loans to create suburban communities that essentially cut others out.
Additionally interstate commerce in a comparatively intensely large land mass like the US did create a need for additional transportation, but the sprawl has indeed been very much tied to the factors PaulDavisThe1st and others have pointed out. Its not 'not liking' each other. Its money + racism + poor representation of the populous. Like a lot of things.
Sure. I’ve studied that for years and I’ve come to the conclusion that is not the root cause. At the end of the day it’s a boogie man people trot out to excuse the fact that they did that and continue to do it together. They let it happen because they wanted it.
That people ultimately do what they want. They aren’t brainwashed. Car companies or lobbies don’t build our cities. We build them they way we want them. If we wanted them some other way we would. And most people live in suburban sprawl where they distance themselves from their fellow American — who they don’t particularly like very much.
But I live in Pacific Heights, one of the most desirable old world communities in America, and it’s mostly empty and full of ghost capital homes.
People like it for a while but they leave for the suburbs pretty fast and go looking for elbow room away from others. And it’s mostly because the energy under the surface of the beautiful homes is rude, selfish and inconsiderate. From the owners to the workers that come to service the homes. Regardless of class we are really angry people.
Pacific Heights is indeed one of the most desirable neighboors, and is very much non-surburban in its nature.
but ...
The current situation in uber-expensive real-estate markets when it comes to high-end housing should not be over-interpreted as having more to say about what most Americans want from the places where they live.
Pacific Heights current situation is also very similar to wealthy old neighborhoods in cities across Europe. London at the very least is full of such examples.
I wouldn't say it's an emergence of a general dislike of each other. It was desegregation; the dislike always existed, but before Brown vs Board of Ed and other decisions in the same cities different racial groups lived in different worlds.
Blockbusting was a real phenomenon in which real estate agents would move a black family into the neighborhood to get white families to fire sell their homes, and it worked because they could no longer legally isolate minorities from their children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting
We know that this happens today, even with minority groups that are affluent and do well in education metrics. https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/07/silicon-valley-whit... (And before anyone accuses me of "wokism", the original story was broken by the Wall Street Journal, which is decidedly not a "woke" publication.)
I’m very unconvinced but this. New Yorkers famously all hate each other yet if you can afford to live in relatively central parts of New York, you don’t need a car. Though New York is still somewhat car-focused. Internationally, London has similar but a slightly milder case of car-dependent sprawl to New York (but people still famously don’t like each other). Swedes are also known for their desire for space and privacy yet they somehow manage to live in cities that don’t follow the North American model. And many Dutch cities used to be going in the direction of the American model (held back by the lower wealth after the war preventing mass car ownership) and only changed direction in the 70s after won’t-somebody-think-of-the-children political campaigning and some very slim majorities in votes on the topic. And the transition was a slow one too.
Specifically white Americans want to avoid living with brown Americans. Once segregation was no longer law, it launched a wave of destruction for public infrastructure: pools, schools, transit, even things like sidewalks all became things to oppose if they had to be shared.
It's more than that. Jews, Asians (individually, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc), Italians, Polish, Irish, Arabic ... all segregated into their own neighborhoods. The "melting pot" was never really real. We are a nation of immigrants that never really got along with one another except when common interests were threatened.
I don't know that it's uniquely American thing either, I think this happens anywhere that different cultures come together. Humans are deeply tribal.
I think the intensity matters: my Irish ancestors weren’t considered white when they got here but there wasn’t a mass exodus from cities rather than sharing infrastructure, and they were allowed into whiteness over time (especially when large numbers of cops were needed to police black populations). The ones who served in the military weren’t restricted to certain units and duties, etc. When white people moved to the suburbs, the neighborhoods which were razed to make highways had a very uneven distribution.
That’s definitely not perfect (and it’s like, say, Chinatowns weren’t raided or sacked) but that option of coexistence wasn’t on offer in much of the country.
The GM conspiracy bought streetcar companies to replace them with buses, not to eliminate public transportation.
The reality is that streetcar companies were already unprofitable, killed by infrastructure cars and poor urban planning. So it was already easy for GM to buy these companies.
> The reality is that streetcar companies were already unprofitable
What seems to me to be a good takedown of “public transit must be profitable or be dismantled”, or “the US post office must be profitable or be dismantled” is: How profitable is the US military?
Everybody has a budget. Going red is just very bad. Sustainability is the keyword here.
A streetcar enhance economic activity and transportation, especially when built with proper urban planning, and may even make a profit.
With the profit, the public transit agency can use the fund to improve infrastructure with hopefully less political influence in order to further it missions.
You could of course make a trade off and not mandate the agency to be profitable and subsidize it, but it's a political tradeoff.
Just because a business turns a loss doesn't mean it isn't sustainable.
Public transport is unprofitable pretty much everywhere, because the explicit transactions don't offset costs of operation. However, the cost of not operating public transit is that you end up with awful car centric cities, more respiratory disease from increased traffic, lost efficiency from congestion, higher real estate prices in walkable areas, etc.
Additionally, there's a ton of positive externalities that are not factored in when judging profitability. Effective public transport increases foot traffic, which increases economic activity.
Even if public transit was 100% free, it would still be worth running. The market is awful at evaluating long-term large scale effects, and just disregards them as "externalities". You can't blindly trust markets to build your cities.
I don't think that is true. If you look at how larger residential areas looked in the States historically, you'll these placese were very livable, since there weee no cars.
The main issue in the US is that at some point the jobs of city and regional planners were hijacked by car industry lobbyists. The current state of affairs is what followed.
Are you sure this is what really happened? The US built cities like any other country on this planet, but the influx of immigrants and people's pursuit of wealth pushed them to settle new lands and establish new population centres.
What's more, until not so long ago, US cities looked differently. Then a lot of what was already built got destroyed to build motorways and huge parking lots. If you look at aerial photos of US cities from around '30s[0], you will see much denser, more walkable cities. Then take a look at what General Motors proposed with its Futurama at the World's Fair; it is the essence of what cities in the US are currently, albeit cranked up to 11.
Some of Europe's cities took the road that GM pushed, and one very prominent example has been Amsterdam[1], which is currently known as one of the least car-oriented cities in the world. The changes have been reverted in the EU, but not in the US, and that is the current state of affairs.
On the last note: US historically has been a place, when local communities had to be strong, strictly because of its roots in colonizing the continent. Without local communities that then shaped into larger organizations, the history would be very different, and States would be under Britain's rule for much longer, maybe even to this day.
Am I sure that westward expansion in the 1800s really happened? A lot of people seems to quote a lot of stuff in HN while missing the pretty obvious big picture.
And you are making my point. If we wanted to shift back to carless society we could, others have.
I'm not asking whether the expansion happened, but whether you think whether it happened because people in the US dislike each other, which is a completely different questions altogether
The north east (unsurprisingly) has many nice small towns, with moderately OK rail connections to big cities, and decent communities. Northern NJ (for example) is full of them. They’re obviously less common as you go west.
Is there a shred of data to support Americans hate each other more than other countries? I will even take a buzzfeed poll slapped together in a minute.
Good try. I am not American. I am an Indian citizen who loves the opportunities available in the US than in India.
One of those opportunities was a good PhD education that taught me how to spot bullshit.
So to confirm what is happening here for a neutral observer, are just cooking up things when you say Americans hate each other more.
I would say Europeans hate each other more. They had two world wars centered around Europe in the last century and way too many real secession movements: Brexit, Catalonia etc.
I do a lot of road-trips through rural Oregon, California and sometimes Texas. I get middle fingers, angry truck drivers actively trying to run me off the road. Someone even hit me once, for no reason. I get threatened semi often in towns where I look like I don’t belong, but trust me they do it to each-other too.
Rural life has always been hard and rough but it’s sad. Their towns are dying and they look, act and feel miserable to each-other.
> It’s pretty easy to understand when you realize Americans don’t like eachother.
As a general rule, people don't like each other. In places where people live close to one another it's not because they like it but out of some kind of combination between inertia and necessity.
When I go to France or England or India (city centers and countryside) people may not Love each-other but they seem to generally be ok with being together and cooperating a bit more. In America it’s a whole new level. Except for a few idyllic small towns and suburbs that are actually economically and racially exclusionary that seem to have a faux-community.
I think the point is that for a series of reasons, during the 20th century the US built a lot of infrastructure that allows a lot (not all!) people to get further away from each other than is typical in Europe (probably elsewhere too, but I have no experience other than the US & Europe).
Neighbors on a street in London don't love but do tolerate each other, and deal with the implications of close proximity and shared responsibilites moderately well. In the US it's much easier to move somewhere and get a parcel of land that makes you feel like a sovereign property owner. Your neighbors are not as adjacent, and may even be ignorable.
Obviously this doesn't cover the millions of Americans who live in relatively dense (generally older) cities, but it does impact the millions who live in suburban, ex-urban and rural parts of the country.
Wow, I had never seen that before. What a bizarre video with a forced tie-in of the whole manifest destiny idea with lunar missions (1976).
It seems to completely ignore the reality of communities and society (and history, for that matter) for an unquestioning expansion of our domain, all wrapped up in this patronizing metaphor about needing "elbow room".
Yes. It is our narrative. This is one of the most honest videos I’ve ever found of our true views on life in America vs the ivory tower discussions that constantly blame GM and Robert Moses for destroying their “communities”
If that is "The American Narrative" how did Chicago or New York City ever happen? How is it that a majority of Americans live in metropolitan areas rather than further out where they can more "elbow room" ?
The European conquest of north America and subsequent repopulation with immigrants (alongside a vastly diminished indigenous population) created an ethos and an opportunity for people who wanted to live away from everybody else to do so ... by pretending that the continent had been empty, and because of the need for natural resources, this was relatively easy to do.
But alongside that process, Americans were building some of the largest cities in the world, developing and improving "urban technologies", and generally pushing the boundaries of what cities could be (a role now largely taken over by SE Asia).
Any explanation for the structure, placement, demographics and dynamics of American society that focuses on single reason for things (whether it is "elbow room", "Robert Moses" or "racism") is going to be wrong about most things.
You might not like cars but everyone else does. They like and want cities this way and in reality it’s people like us that are the outliers. We aren’t right. We are going against the tide.
We built cities around cars Because we like cars — because they put distance between us and our fellow American we don’t particularly like or want to tolerate.
> Any explanation for the structure, placement, demographics and dynamics of American society that focuses on single reason for things (whether it is "elbow room", "Robert Moses" or "racism") is going to be wrong about most things.
to which you respond:
> So cars did this entirely on their own. Come on
Is there something that unclear about what I wrote?
Because you comments are constantly just boiled down to “it’s too complicated to understand”.
Look people left cities in the 50s because they didn’t like other people in cities. It’s a well known and established fact. It’s called white flight. And it continues to this day.
Those quaint European neighborhoods, towns and villages are all also racially and culturally homogenous. And where that is changing, there is animosity and discord.
I can understand why you're being downvoted but I think you have a point. Someone who drinks beer and listens to country music is not going to be doing neighborhhod dinners with orthodox jews. We can claim to be all multicultural and all accepting but we always seek out like minded people. Culturally homogeneous communities let people put their guard down and give people common ground to connect on. You could argue that we want to create a new type of homogeneous culture--one where nobody eats pork, nobody wears MAGA hats, people keep their religious beliefs to themselves, etc. but that's still a homogeneous culture.
First of all, it depends if you have to commute to an office in some industrial park (even if it's only one or two days a week).
Then there's the question of where your friends live, whether you regularly do activities outside the city, etc. Zipcar and Uber definitely make it easier not to own a car. But my observation of people I know in SF who don't own a car is that they make ample use of both Uber and regular/short-term rentals. People can definitely get by but it's often by adjusting their lifestyles and activities in that you just don't do things that are hard to do.
If you live in Japan without a car you will probably end up taking a taxi from time to time. They are lined up outside the major train stations. Overall, relying on mass-transit probably is more pleasant there, and takes less lifestyle-modifications, but you still have less freedom than owning a car. And probably take longer to get around usually. Also in plenty of Japan, by the way, you definitely need a car to get by reasonably. It's not like countries in Europe where half the population lives in the capital city.
If your goal is to avoid any sort of exercise (and the "forced" exercise is one of the biggest reasons to go carless in my opinion) then yes large sections of US cities may seem inacccessible without a car. But if you like walking like I do (at least up to a half-mile or so) then you can live just fine in US cities without a car, in my experience. I've done it all over.
Public transit in Tokyo is faster than cars for the vast majority of trips. The only exception is if there's no lines connecting where you want to go, and you need to transfer a couple times. Nobody complains about "lack of freedom". When people want to go on trips, they rent a car, but even then, they usually take the train to their destination, and then rent a car there.
I live well outside Boston but have lived in Cambridge. I'd mostly be fine with walking and taking transit around the city itself--which I've done. And probably mostly wouldn't want to drive. But I'd regularly want to get out of the city for hiking and other activities and I wouldn't want to deal with rentals every time. (People I know who do live in the city and do similar activities generally own cars.)
Even given a decent commuter rail system it doesn't help for those sorts of activities.
So it's not really getting around the city but getting anywhere outside the city that isn't on convenient mass transit.
True, but the problem here in the US is that the places you can do this are so limited that the price to live that car free lifestyle is astronomical. You either pay 2,500+ a month in rent, have a house payment that is 5,000+ a month, or have to buy a car, move out to the country and shop at a dollar general.
Portland like mentioned about European cities and towns is also incredibly homogenous culturally and racially by most American standards . Lived there for 6 years as a brown person and glad to have gotten out.
I grew up in Stockholm and it too sadly is very, very car centric compared to Tokyo. Amsterdam, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Paris and others are much better... I wish all cities everywhere was more like them! (and Tokyo)
Note that Amsterdam made a conscious flip on this, as did other Dutch cities. Take your 4 lane street, turn one lane in a tram lane, one lane into grass + trees, reduce the width on the other two lanes and add a bike lane with a heightened divider. Bam you've got a street for a more livable city center.
It also took them the better part of several decades.
Most cities that have tried doing this globally have only done so very recently, and it shows, but that's okay, because it took time and patience to methodically go through more or less every Dutch road and change it.
We remade our cities in favor of cars, mostly through applying changes to engineering standards. We could do it again, but the current engineering establishment doesn't want to change in many cases. (They had an easier time applying their standards, because by and large no codified standards existed before them.)
These US vs EU cities discussions appear a lot on HN and when I see people lamenting that their European city is too car-centric I always wonder if they mean
a) their city is not the public transport utopia people want to believe it is
b) their city is completely unlivable without a car
Because this is quite important distinction - I suspect that many Europeans want to convey point a) but are potentially being understood as saying point b).
public transport is better than places like LA and Brisbane Australia (which isn't saying much), but hilariously bad compared to Tokyo and London. So it's somewhere in between.
livability without a car likewise is OK in inner city and immediate surroundings, but quickly gets a lot worse the further out you get. (unlike eg Tokyo, where even suburbs very far from the inner city are very convenient and liveable without a car)
Stockholm's inner city is about as walkable as any other European city I've visited, and much nicer as you're much less likely to get into dilapidated areas (there's almost no graffiti or dirt on the streets, unlike places like Milan, Lisbon or Bruxels) except for a couple of places where, unfortunately, the beggers from south-east Europe congregate, making the place look like a gipsy camp. But the suburbs outside the central area are much more like American or, more closely, Australian cities, with a huge sprawling area where having a car becomes more important the farther you go, but still with decent public transport at least for peak hours... that's just due to the low population density in those areas... Stockholm attracts a lot of young people and families because that's where the jobs are, mostly, so this situation seems unavoidable to me... Adelaide is in the top 3 livable cities, and the situation there is very similar (actually it has a much smaller central area and a perhaps even bigger and less dense suburban sprawling), the differences in ranking between them seems to me mostly artificial unless you're taking into consideration Adelaide's beautiful beaches and mostly great weather compared to most of Europe.
Genuinely curious: what do you find "hilariously bad" about public transport in Stockholm? I've never lived there, but as a casual visitor the T-bana, trams, ferries etc seem to work just fine.
Often, trains and subways will straight up not run because "there were leaves or snow on the tracks" or whatever. Like, OK? No other city I've ever lived has had that problem, lol? (let alone that often! it happens all the time)
Punctuality is pretty bad, which wouldn't be a problem if frequency was good, but it's not, so...
It can be pretty unsafe and unpleasant.
Basically, it's "OK" in inner city and immediate surroundings, but quickly gets a lot worse the further out you get.
Almost every big city has problems with trains running late or being cancelled, I think it's more common than you might think. I live in Stockholm and before the pandemic (when I commuted daily on the pendeltåg and before that, with the roslagsbana) I agree with you it could be pretty bad (there were several days where they simply closed off the trains and everyone had to squeeze into much smaller replacement buses, and a few times when even the replacement buses didn't run - you had to find a cab to get home... and good luck finding one.. but at least the government covered the fee if you could show there was no other alternative at the time) but having lived in a few other countries, I've seen all sorts of crap like that as well, and other things that nearly never happen in Stockholm are quite routine at other places, like stations and trains where passengers squeeze like sardines, buses so full some people go hanging outside the doors (the bus driver is supposed to close the door, ofc, but the situation is so precarious they try to let in as many as they can as they know how terrible it is to be just left behind because there's no space), robberies on night buses (which to my knowledge can happen in Stockholm but are extremely rare)...
There are almost certainly very few cities in the world (if any) where residents who need to use public transit day in and day out think it's a consistently great experience.
Depends which city but it’s A for decent sized cities in central/north/Western Europe (less so for eastern and Southern Europe although major cities there will also be like that).
Even midsized towns in Germany, Austria & Switzerland will be pretty doable without a car. In less affluent countries like Poland and Czechia (I have lots of friends in both and lots of relatives in the latter) outside the major cities people expect to drive (it might still be possible just less convenient than in the German speaking countries to rely on transit). I have Greek friends who say it’s similarly inconvenient in many parts of Greece.
But I suspect almost nowhere urban in Europe will be completely unlivable without a car.
Lived in Paris for years but wanted to go to my native Normandy 90 minutes away by car often, with friends (so train is uneconomical, and whatever): I love car free cities just as much as I love cars, but I feel they always miss the massive parking space at the periphery. Those have to be free one day, and truly understood and desired, so we can sort of mix the intra city metro/bike, the intra regional car, and maybe the rest by train (but again, train multiply cost for a group when car divides it so hard to choose).
Now I live in Hong Kong, bought a 1998 Porsche 911 that guzzled gas and spat good smoke, that cost me so much in eco tax and gas tax (the same thing, really) for so little use I gave up and am car-free now :D
Cant wait for massive electric cars adoption where the discussion will move away from how we murder the world for fleeting amusement, and back to transport convenience and pleasure to drive. But Im sure we ll find problems with Lithium mining or whatever.
Making cars electric doesn't solve any of the problems with cars though. Cars, no matter the technology, are the problem. I'd much rather get rid of more or less all cars, permanently, period.
I don't get that one. Cars are mostly fine if they don't pollute. They'd just be large bicycles. Why do you think the concept of automated personal transport is "the problem" ?
I think for instance we can't possibly build enough railway and bus network to serve every inch of the territory and it's simply to allow fast speed individual transport to distribute the load. It can be even automated with no pilot control, but it's impossible to schedule-base every location in a city without displacing people, rebuilding cities entirely around specific common transport etc. In Europe and Asia, where we build a lot of cities organically, it seems silly. In the US, where cars are even MORE prevalent to the point cities are built for them rather than humans, it will never disappear.
Cars create opportunities for working class people that wouldn't exist otherwise. You're advocating for removing mid to long range personal transportation entirely? what's the basis for this? I'm all for city neighbourhoods being less car centric.
Of course you can't stop at simply getting rid of cars and calling it a day, there's countless other things that would have to come with that. Obvious ones include improving public and active transport, but really, fundamental transformation of entire cities to be less like Houston and more like Tokyo and Amsterdam is what's needed.
People love to respond that that's too expensive or unworkable or unrealistic or whatever, ignoring that it's actually the status quo that is too expensive, unworkable and unrealisitc, and that there are now a bunch of previously car centric cities that have been deliberately and fundamentally changed very successfully.
But that's silly. Everyone agrees with you but what if you need to go to your grandparents in the country side village of 200 farmers ? You could build a once-a-day bus line or you could just let people take a non polluting car from a lot outside the city.
Cars are not the problem: it's their aggregation in dense city + their pollution. Remove the pollution, people stop dying, we can then discuss your dream of perfect public transport for optimization's sake.
>>>People love to respond that that's too expensive or unworkable or unrealistic or whatever, ignoring that it's actually the status quo that is too expensive, unworkable and unrealisitc
I'd want to see some numbers to support that. What does it cost to provide round-the-clock availability of secure, climate-controlled public transport to every possible location, urban or rural? Bullet trains on standby at 0100hrs to take 1 guy from Osaka to Kanagawa would cost a fortune. In comparison, while PARKING and roads definitely have costs associated with them, the hardware/infrastructure is largely concrete, and inexpensive to maintain when operating below capacity. So 1-2 people can hop in a car and take a road trip at a far lower net/civilization-wide resource expenditure.
Japan has great public transport. Japan also has great cars and a very healthy car community. What part of Japan's transportation approach classifies it as "unworkable and unrealistic" to such an extent that completely banning cars is the optimal solution?
I think that there much better approaches to your problem than to just wack a great big car park on the outskirts.
For instance if you don’t have a car, the money save from not having a large piece of machinery sitting around most of the time would probably more than make up for a few train tickets. Another option is car share fleets which allow you to split costs and avoid a cost of owning a car.
Even with electric cars, cities should still be designed for people rather than cars. Electric cars are still a massive burden on the environment so we shouldn’t be aiming for most people to have their own.
>>>For instance if you don’t have a car, the money save from not having a large piece of machinery sitting around most of the time would probably more than make up for a few train tickets. Another option is car share fleets which allow you to split costs and avoid a cost of owning a car.
But cars are not only transportation. They are also secure, climate-controlled semi-private spaces. If I leave a nightclub with a woman at 1am, too far from my home to walk there, trains shut down for the night, no taxis available.....
Having extra pocket money to buy train tickets is useless in such scenarios. If I have my own privately-owned vehicle (POV), I can bang the woman in the back seat, in the club parking lot. And I sure as shit don't want to "car share" with anybody ELSE inclined to do so as well!
POV ownership is like having insurance: it's often underutilized but when you REALLY need it for those rare edge cases, it's worth its weight in gold.
> I grew up in Stockholm and it too sadly is very, very car centric compared to Tokyo. Amsterdam, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Paris and others are much better...
I’m really glad to see this because I moved from central London to central Stockholm 20 years ago and no one believes me when I tell them I find this town more car-centric even than London.
Away from the tourist areas, everything in Stockholm is arranged around the free-flow of traffic - from the phase of traffic lights, the dimensions of the roads vs pavements, to the sheer design of the street layout.
Unfortunately the car-mania of the 1960s and 70s still survives here, which is dangerous for kids and enervating to live with, and such a contrast to other European towns.
I lived in Stockholm for sometime before moving to London. There are a lot of parts in London where it's very easy to live without a car. I think the main reason is because it's essentially made of small towns that eventually all merged together. One is never too far from a fully functional high street and etc. Stockholm is built differently and having a car there makes life much easier even though the public transport is very good.
we left London last year after spending there 10 or so years. We spent the last 5 in a leafy part of South London. Commuting to work( before covid) was pretty easy with trains but also time consuming. Arrival of our child did change things and not having a car was putting limits on certain things by quite a lot. If I'd turn the time back, I'd definitely buy a car.
There are many boroughs in London with a majority of households not owning a car - more than 60% in Islington, Hackey, Tower Hamlets, Camden, Westminster, City, with Haringey, Hammersmith/Fulham, Kensington/Chelsea, Newham, Southwark, Lambeth, Newham, being over 50% without a car.
Oddly the Isles of Scilly, which are tiny, and lack a proper vehicle ferry to the mainland, has about 50% of the population with a car or van. The furthest you could actually go would be able 2 miles.
It’s not all of Sweden though. I live in Malmo and I haven’t felt the need to drive at all.
There are people who drive of course by the bulk of the city feels like it’s for the pedestrians and cyclists, and driving through the city itself is simply awkward.
I moved here from London. If that helps lay context.
The city council in Stockholm in the 60s had a plan to empty what they saw was the slum-center of the town, the residents of which they felt were morally degenerate, and move them out to the suburbs.
The working classes would then commute into work on public transport, while ‘fine’ office workers would take their car. The cachet attached to traveling by car has never been lost, and any attempt to curtail car use is always met with enormous resistance ever since.
Looking at pictures of Stockholm in the 40s and 50s one can see the streets were full of cyclists.
New York City proper (five boroughs) has a population of 8.4 million. Sweden has a population of 10.35 million. But yes, I agree with your sentiment about having high density of manufacturing in a particular segment will probably skew your policies towards it. This might explain why Munich is so rich, but has such poor mass transit compared to Berlin.
What surprises me more is that big Japanese cities like Tokyo and Osaka chose to build enormous rail networks (above and below ground) instead of wide, fast boulevards and raised expressways.
Tokyo has an extensive network of raised expressways. They're just so extortionately priced (roughly $1/km) that nobody uses them unless they really have to, but since Tokyo is so crowded, they're jam-packed all the time anyway.
Overwhelmingly, it's the Social Democrat party, not evil capitalists or car manufacturers, who are responsible for aggressively promoting cars and car centric policy and infrastructure in Sweden. This fact will grind the gears of both Swedes and misinformed Americans alike, lol.
The history of "folkhemmet" is a topic about which entire books are written, but I'm not sure there are any that focus specifically on the car, I've appended some stuff from a quick google below.
As a result of this history, today, the social democrats (just like all other parties) pay lip service to environmentalism, curbing emissions, fighting climate change etc etc, but the truth is they rely heavily on the utterly car dependent rural, small town and suburban voters they themselves have created, and are thus constrained in how much they can really push policies that meaningfully reduce car dependency.
När väl vågorna efter andra världs-
kriget började lägga sig blev vår in-
ställning till bilen och bilismen
oåterhållsamt positiv och Sverige
blev det land i Europa som hade det
snabbast växande antalet bilar per in-
vånare. Det blev snarare det övriga samhället som fick anpassa sig efter bilen
än tvärtom. Dessa hjulspår kan vi idag se lite varstans, inte minst i våra städer
och tätorter som så småningom fick
genomgå genomgripande förändrin-
gar och i många fall till stora delar
byggas om för att biltrafiken skulle
fungera rationellt.
I samband med det stora genom-
brottet under 1950-talet förändrades
synen på bilen. Man såg den inte längre som en lyxartikel, bilen kom till och
med att bli en byggsten i folkhemsbygget. I skriften ”Har vi råd med bilen?”
slog socialdemokraterna inför valet 1956 fast att bilen både var leksak och nyt-
tosak och att den inte längre enbart
var en angelägenhet för överklas-
sen. Bilen kallades till och med för
en demokratisk kraft...
...Man drömde om att komplettera folkhemsidyllen med
en lagom stor bil – kanske en Volvo PV 444 eller en Saab 92.
Med det utbyggda vägnätet och det stadigt ökande antalet bilar började samhällsplanerarna övergå från att anpassa bilismen till det gamla samhället till att istället bygga ett bilsamhälle enligt förebilder från USA. Bilen ingick nu i ett gigantiskt tekniskt system där motorvägar och bilanpassade köpcentra med väldiga parkeringsplatser ingår. För att nå fram till bilsamhället började också Sveriges städer omvandlas — stadskvarter revs, vägar breddades, parkeringshus byggdes och städernas förorter utvidgades allt längre från stadskärnorna. Resultatet blev ett kulturellt och ekonomiskt bilberoende.
You have to remember that after the self-imposed devastation of WW2 all European countries wanted to catch up with the US. Fridges, televisions comfortable houses and yes cars- these things were available to every worker in America. Living standards equal to the US were finally reached in the 1970s.
Just to note. The abbreviation for the Social Democrats in Sweden is "S". The "SD" party is the Sweden Democrats, a socially conservative right wing nationalist party.
I thought that the social democrats have been having close ties to the industry for a very long time? Maybe not capitalists in a strict sense, but industrialists? To me it seems like it's the social democrats, the industrialists and the unions who for long time worked quite a lot together and aligned?
I think Stockholm's greatest problem is the geography. Everything going north or south in the entire region has to pass through the same few islands in central Stockholm, all options are awful. Therefore we end up with the horrific traffic on for example Hornsgatan or Sveavägen used for essentially thoroughfare when they instead should be calmed nice livable streets.
The way to solve it is by finishing the bypass (Förbifart) Stockholm and an eastern ring connection and then start greatly limiting traffic going through the center.
Completely agree outside the inner city. You can feel that it was designed in the 60s and 70s and then never touched again.
A counter argument is that US has a very developed suburban living culture with families living in houses. And while obviously this is comfortable living, you then need a car to get to the city center.
Having said that, I agree that nothing beats the walkability of European cities, quality of living wise. US has a lot to learn from that.
The attribution is much more grey with the advent of so much globalization. As humans we like to pin the blame on a singular entity but the real world is far more complicated.
Technically it shdnt. Just imagine you send your oil to another country to produce stuff for you, should the carbon emission for that be counted for country A or B? I think clearly country A. Now what if the oil doesn't come from country A but is bought from the money for the goods from country C. Well, technically you shdnt attribute it to country B. Either A or C.
per capita is the more accurate measure. Yeah I note my mistake in another reply.
Even so, the US historically took the number one spot for both total greenhouse gases and greenhouse gases per capita. If you look at it from a perspective of a longer timespan, the US is basically number one.
It is only in recent times does the US now currently take the number two spots for both categories.
My bad, number 2 largest producer of greenhouse gases per capita. Right behind Australia which basically has the same type of suburban city design centered around cars.
Good public transportation systems require a certain level of density to be practical, roughly on par with where European cities are at. This is why places like New York have fairly decent public transportation systems compared to the rest of the country.
You're not wrong, but your plan involves either uprooting people or sending out so many buses that it would create an ecological catastrophe far greater than we have now (assuming you want to cover all of the suburbs mentioned by the op).
Japanese houses are quite different from US ones. My in-laws live in a house in suburban Chiba well outside Tokyo, but it has literally no garden space and the neighborhood is so densely packed a taxi can't even pull into the little laneway it's in. Within a 100 meter radius there's a grocery, a drugstore, several restaurants and more, and everybody gets around on foot, by bicycle or by bus.
I want this for my kids (stuck in US suburbia), but have instead opted for them to grow up close to their grandparents. I’m not always sure that I’m making the right trade off, and it annoys me that I even have to make such a choice.
Anyway, it’s been over 20 years since I visited Tokyo, and I’ve been to many major cities since. Tokyo remains my favorite.
If you haven't seen it already, the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes has a great video making the other decision (ie. moving to the Netherlands) with some compelling reasoning: https://youtu.be/ul_xzyCDT98
They do, Tokyo is full of detached homes, and the people living in them don't need a car. (some have cars, some don't, but a car is not needed, and even those who have one, chances are they can't use them for things like grocery shopping etc even if they wanted to)
Agreed. The closest you'll get to a walkable/non-car focused designed city in the US is NYC or Boston. MTA is accessible nearly anywhere in NYC (not without exceptions) and runs 24hrs
A big limiting factor with many cities though is if you need to commute to an office. In Boston, for example, many professional jobs will require commuting out to the suburbs. In tech specifically, there's more in the city than there used to be--there were basically no major employers in the immediate urban area any longer as of a couple decades ago. But the majority of engineering jobs broadly speaking require driving to a suburban office.
This 100%, I measured the volume in my neighborhood in Central Tokyo 5 mins from the nearest station (it’s one of the more popular spots in the city) and it clocks in at 30dB or less. Compared to Manhattan where it’s deafeningly loud all the time.
Aside, NYC’s train system is, besides being filthy, unreliable, slow, poorly maintained, and a pain to switch between transit agencies, it’s also unfriendly to anyone who isn’t fully able bodied (the escalators and elevators are always broken and only present in a small fraction of stations), and neighborhoods are often designed in ways that lend places outside of the Manhattan core to be more dangerous and unpleasant than they have to be. Not to mention the usage of land in and around stations is very poorly used (the ~2 shops in Times Square station are a hilarious joke for what’s ostensibly the financial capital of the world), and any expansion of the system is prohibitively expensive for stupid political reasons.
But I suppose it’s still better than the transitless wasteland that is most of the USA.
>This 100%, I measured the volume in my neighborhood in Central Tokyo 5 mins from the nearest station (it’s one of the more popular spots in the city) and it clocks in at 30dB or less. Compared to Manhattan where it’s deafeningly loud all the time.
No, but even there if you walked 5 mins from the station towards Ebisu (away from the arterial road), Shinsen, Yoyogi Uehara, or even towards Harajuku on Cat Street it would probably be similarly quiet.
It took me a while to realise what it was that bothered me, but yes there's a real lack of 'high street shopping' and markets type organisation from what I've seen in North America - instead drive to a big square ~car park~ 'lot' surrounded by 'big box stores'. Everything scaled up.
If you like it fine, can't really say either's objectively better, it's just really quite different and I suppose you likes what you grow up with or are used to.
There's no "cannot", it's a conscious choice - if you have more space than necessary that absolutely does not require that you expand to fill all of it. And in particular this has caused issues because American cities tend towards sprawl, filling up area with low-density housing that requires significantly more infrastructure per capita, and implementing zoning laws to prevent higher-density development even as the population grows, resulting in housing shortages.
They sprawl because people want space. If you're from Paris or Tokyo or London you really just don't know what it's like to have a quiet, detached house with a nice garden, maybe a pool where your kids can play randomly without needing to plan a trip to the community center, space for a garden, knowing everyone within 200m of your house by name...
It's a completely different way of life that is not possible without lots of space. Some people want that and so they will pay to buy it. It's not like city planners are laughing in smoke-filled rooms like, "haha! this will be our most sprawling city yet!"
People see what people want to see. An average family with two toddlers using bicycles to get around in the dead of Chicago winter. Sure, sure.
I would wager that the vast majority of the folk here that are pushing this romanticized idea of car-free european city have actually grown up in upper middle class US suburbs and bulk of these attitudes are really just subconscious rejection of their parents' lifestyles.
Having grown up in one of those car-free european cities myself, I can vouch that the US set up is, on average, far more convenient, which is also why you see car/pool/detached house/garage ownership rates increase with income and GDP. People that have the means clearly choose to avoid communal setups.
As some other commenters have noted, in cities like Amsterdam and Tokyo there are enough nice safe public spaces that even young children are free to play outside on their own and there's much less planning required to go places since you don't need a car.
That being said, I'm sure there are plenty of North Americans who love having a ton of space for gardening etc. But I would guess they're actually in the minority and that most people choose to live in sprawling suburban developments because they're the only affordable option to guarantee access to good schools and a safe neighborhood.
I also live there and one interesting bit that, in retrospective is OBVIOUS, is that there are also no cars parked on the streets! Like, if you look at pictures or walk down the street it feels so pleasant for some reason but difficult to put your finger at it, until you realize there's no huge cars piling on the sides.
I prefer European Architecture for downtown buildings, but the no cars bit generally overpowers this preference in making Tokyo at a similar level of beauty for me, and the bits where there are particularly beautiful buildings in Tokyo or Japan well that's just perfect.
(also warning like parent, there is some street parking, but it's just minuscule)
Yeah, it really adds to the pleasantness of everything when everything is not covered in cars and infrastructure for cars. The whole notion of street parking is bizarre. No one would tolerate if you used public space in the middle of a busy city to store your stuff. But if it's a car, suddenly it's OK. Just what?
Bike parking is everywhere too. Trying to get bike parking in our city is like asking for the council for their first born. All of a sudden funding and public safety are all extremely dire concerns. Whipping a 4x4 through the CBD and plonking right in front of a business is fine though.
Interestingly, this also greatly improves visibility for all forms of road locomotion: walk, bike, (push/electric/motor) scooter, car, truck. That said, there is also something zen about urban drivers in Tokyo. They are unusually patient and careful. I have never seen anything like it in other countries.
I believe it’s because Tokyo does not have public parking space. Parking lots are private and when you buy a car you have to proof you have access to a parking lot. Makes sense if you think about it. Land in cities is valuable, and the cost parking should be priced in the cost of car ownership.
You really notice it too, walking around the city feels very quiet even though there are so many people and a decent amount of noise from businesses. When you make it to a busy road, there's a notable lack of businesses nearby and you really notice the noise difference. That said, car speeds in Japanese cities are slow, and cars are heavily regulated so they're just not as loud as other cities.
Cars add a sort of tense background track to life, perhaps because we perceive the danger subconsciously as a pedestrian. Sitting in my house in the burbs I can hear the highway out the window, in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, there was a type of quiet I just wasn't expecting from a city.
I think the enabling features for this to occur are of course public transport and mixed use streets, mixed use sets the stage for a sensible compromise between cars and people. The majority of streets do actually allow cars, but you barely see any using them because they'd be incredibly slow, like walking speed. This means that if you decide to use one, you must really need it and so you can, but if not then you'll just use a road more suited to fast cars.
Replying to my own comment because I had a thought,
> Sitting in my house in the burbs I can hear the highway out the window, in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, there was a type of quiet I just wasn't expecting from a city.
I'm also wondering if it's because of the density of buildings. In the burbs, I can hear a dog barking a block away, and the highway is pretty far from me but I still hear it. In Tokyo, it can almost feel like the city is muffled, and I wonder if that's because of the intense amount of concrete, medium height buildings and narrow, sometimes winding, crosshatching streets. In the immediate space you'd expect some reflection, but there's no way you'd hear something a block away.
In many western cities - and I won't name names - the downtown area is not pleasant due to anti-social behaviour. So even when they do make it walkable, I don't want to walk there, I'd rather drive to a suburban mall and reduce my chances of an altercation.
Yes, it's a known problem. Lax law enforcement, most social services are also "downtown."
While the commenter said they wont name the cities, it can be Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, etc.
It makes it unpleasant, and if you do have to live in the middle of downtown or such, not only are you paying more - you have to for safety. Safety of a living place, safety of controlled entry, safety of a garage for your car, etc.
In General it's all depressing, you'd imagine downtown cores would be the "best" of a city, but in the USA they generally are not.
Now whether or not it's true insecurity, fear or such can be up to person/gender but criminal statistics do not lie. You can pull up a map and see where the majority of crime is reported of happening - and there you go.
Then you can look at the threshold and severity. But nowadays we live in an era of political correctness or wokeness, so saying or making direct observations of that data can become very faulty quickly, especially once you bring up age, gender and race of the perpetrators.
murder per capita is an important statistic for a city, but it can be misleading.
for one thing, it depends a lot on how city borders are drawn. for example, baltimore city usually shows up in top five lists for per capita murders, and indeed it is an unusually violent place. but unlike many (most?) american cities, baltimore county is completely separate from the enclosed city. if you calculated murders per capital for baltimore city and county as a single population, it would still be bad, but it wouldn't be in the national top five every year. a corollary to this is that murder rates can vary much more neighborhood-to-neighborhood within the same city than they do when comparing entire cities. most cities I've been to have at least one or two dangerous areas to be avoided if possible.
second point: even in "dangerous cities" upper-middle class professionals are unlikely to be victims of violent crime. they generally choose to live in safer enclaves of those cities. realistically, property crime is a greater concern for this demographic, which does not scale linearly with violent crime and is not restricted to the "bad neighborhoods" the same way. interestingly, "safe" cities like seattle and SF actually have higher rates of property crime than baltimore.
IIRC St. Louis has a similar arrangement with the surrounding county.
Addressing the context, though, Baltimore certainly belongs in any discussion of unpleasant downtowns. Altercations are a potential issue even driving (more so than walking actually). But there's also increasingly little to even walk to. The nightlife and culture all moved to the surrounding neighborhoods, now you just go downtown for the aquarium or the occasional bureaucratic necessity.
> Altercations are a potential issue even driving (more so than walking actually)
are you referring to the complimentary car wash at president and lombard? but yeah I agree, there's a lot that's wrong with baltimore's downtown.
if you assume that most people have to commute to work, it does make sense to have a downtown that's mostly office buildings and well-connected via public transit. so I kinda expect most downtowns to be kinda boring, not sure why you would expect them to be fun to walk around it. of course, nowhere in baltimore is particularly well-served by public transit, and the downtown is not merely boring; it's downright unpleasant and somewhat unsafe.
Yeah, that and the one on MLK (not really downtown, I know). Seems pretty common that women take the long way to avoid both.
I guess you could imagine restaurants switching from lunch to dinner service, but yeah the whole idea of downtown lends itself to emptiness I guess. Certainly not helped in Baltimore's case by how many of the offices are just empty.
> especially once you bring up age, gender and race of the perpetrators
Is there sufficient social support for the families of young black males? If not, it may make sense economically to provide it, if it would make American cities functional again.
He is referring to 20th century social services meant to fix slums, that wound up making marriage something that could get you kicked out of public housing and on-books work something that could get you kicked off financial support. This is often blamed for making everything worse and contributing to the social disaster zones that were the large public housing projects in northern cities.
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a pretty accessible introduction to one of the most notorious public housing disasters in the US. It was available on Netflix at some point.
The name for welfare discouraging marriage is "the marriage penalty", but it's a general policy thing that people still argue about, so I couldn't find anything good about the old AFDC marriage penalties on short notice. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/wedding-bell-blues-marria... does a quick outline in passing.
I wouldn’t say danger and unpleasantness are the same thing here. Every decently sized city has higher and lower crime rate areas. Locals tend to be more sensitive to this than tourists and the higher crime areas often have their own charms, because the crime isn’t really visible. True unpleasantness is only found in a few notable cities, is very visible, and both locals and tourists avoid it or have developed a coping framework or take a mission-based approach to their encounters with it. But those unpleasant areas don’t necessarily come with a greater chance of mugging or stray bullet shooting or auto part theft.
Cities with shittier weather, e.g. in the Northeast or upper Midwest, don’t seem to have this problem as much. Much less antisocial behavior than in California cities, which seem uniquely bad in this respect.
What used to be a nice, safe neighborhood near uptown no longer is. Leave your car doors unlocked if you park on the street overnight, or else you'll find the windows broken by morning by kids looking for stuff to steal (happened to a coworker, the one night her husband forgot to not lock the doors).
In the last two years, theft of catalytic converters from cars, as well as carjackings, have skyrocketed citywide. It has definitely changed the mood on the streets.
We also have homeless camps, which get cleared out when the annual deep freeze comes through (amazing that people try to sleep outside when the temp can drop to -40). Those same encampents leave used drug needles all over public parks adjacent to schools.
Granted, I'd have the problems we have over what CA cities have to deal with, but then again I also chose to bail entirely to live out in the countryside.
Do you live in the PNW? Because that sounds a lot like the PNW.
The northern east coast is what I believe the GP was referring to. We don't really have homeless people. I've honestly never seen a homeless person before, until I left. Neither has anyone tried to "get something" out of me, until I went down south or out west.
I think it's cultural. The people who had moved out West were those that weren't necessarily successful or prosperous in their homelands (e.g. Britain, Russia, or the original 13 colonies, comprising mostly of the propertied class). So what you get is a bunch of grifters, drifters, and people who didn't "fit."
And well, if that's what your communities are comprised of, I expect them to be antisocial.
The saddest thing is I have family there, who have children; and seeing those children slowly take on the typical West Coastian attitude (and believe that property, violent, and sexual crimes are simply the way the world is), has been heartbreaking. I'm sure they will perpetuate the cycle of shit, in their own unique way -- even if it is minor.
nope, upper midewest here. it's been nearly 200 years since the first major non-native settlements were founded here, primarily fur trading, logging and farming. Needless to say, culture has changed rather drastically since then. lots of northern european immigrants in the mix, plus more recently refugee communities from vietnam, somolia and central america.
"grifters, drifters and outcasts" really doesn't describe us at all.
I live in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and while it has many issues the general "not designed around cars" makes everything feel much more human scale which is something I miss when I visit the US.
Unfortunately, cars are a status symbol and becoming increasingly prevalent, which then puts pressure on government officials to design around them. It doesn't help that government officials all have cars and clearly see cars as superior and a sign of being a rich country.
It isn't designed around motorbikes either. They didn't really exist in numbers 30-40 years ago which is when much of the infrastructure was put in place. Go watch some videos of Saigon in the 1980s, it is mostly bicycles with a tiny smattering of motorcycles and cars.
Another Japanese city that would be quite livable without a car is Osaka. I myself have lived carless in Tokyo and Yokohama for nearly forty years without any problem. About ten years ago, I started going to Osaka several times a year and have found it similarly easy to get around on foot and public transportation. The center of Osaka is quite flat, and a lot of people there also use bicycles. If I weren't settled in Yokohama, I would be happy to live in Osaka.
Basically mid-twenties wanderlust. I was planning to stay for maybe a year, supporting myself teaching English, before either going on to another country or returning to the U.S. But as soon as I got here I got a strong urge to learn the language, and I spent the next couple of years studying it intensively. I then starting doing freelance translation work and, over the next few years, gradually settled in both careerwise and in my personal life. It’s now my home, and I will stay here after I retire from my current university job next year at the age of sixty-five.
> Did any of your translation work involve anime or video game?
No. I translated a wide variety of texts for many different clients, but I was never asked to do any anime, manga, or video games. Not being into those things myself, I didn’t seek that kind of work, either.
I knew quite a few other professional Japanese-to-English translators in the 1990s, and only a couple were doing otaku stuff. I wrote a bit more about this at [1].
> How did you fare after the bubble economy burst in the 90s?
No effect. After the bubble burst, I realized that some of the work I had done in the late 1980s had indeed been “bubbly”—fluffy PR materials for purely domestic companies that had no need for PR in English but were spending their borrowed money on things they didn’t need. But when those jobs disappeared, other work arrived to fill their places. I had as much work as I could handle pretty much continuously until 2005, when I took an academic position.
I knew only one freelance translator who left the business because of the burst bubble. He had been working mainly for real estate developers, and real estate was the sector hardest hit by the downturn. Rather than trying to build up a new slate of clients in another field, he changed careers.
If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me privately. My profile page contains the URL of my website; see the About page.
I think Tokyo still has too many cars (and plenty of two or three lane roads) and Japan as a whole isn't really bicycle friendly. The city is very dense however and the cost of parking spaces makes cars only accessible to upper class families.
Japan as a whole may not be bicycle friendly, but you can get across all the major cities on bike quite easily without interacting with high speed cars. There are either bike lanes on main roads or back streets with no traffic to circumvent interaction with cars.
Have done this in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya and they have been fantastic cities to bike commute in.
There are definitely some areas were biking is amazing, such as Shimanami kaido, Biwa lake and Kasumigaura.
Cycling in Tokyo is a bit of a mixed bag in my experience, some streets have bike lanes, some have a bicycle strip on the main road (though this is often shared with temporarily parked cars), sometimes bicycles need to share space with pedestrians. Signage is often unclear.
I guess calling it bicycle unfriendly is a bit harsh, but at the same time it often feels that bicyclists rank third behind cars and pedestrians.
Biking in Tokyo is more casual and for short distance, people don't bike to work, they bike to the nearest train station or shopping street. It is very different attitude, there is no need for helmets, the speed is low and there are no dedicated lanes, most traffic is mixed with pedestrian traffic. I find it much nicer than the lycra culture of biking in countries like the US or Australia, but each biking culture makes sense when considering the different environments.
I actually agree with this. Tokyo isn't like Amsterdam, where there is an explicit goal to reduce reliance on cars. Instead, the relative lack of cars is kind of an accident resulting from other policies and ideas. I'll take it over explicit and deliberate car-centrism, but I do wish Japan was more like the Netherlands - that would be perfection.
I generally do not like cities, at least not to live in, but I really liked HK, Shanghai, Phnom Penh, Chiang Mai and Bangkok. Tokyo and Melbourne are often mentioned as the greatest and I spent months in both; it really depends what you want, situation you are in, what period in your life etc. I though Melbourne was dead; after midnight the city is just a graveyard. And so was Tokyo. I like cities that are alive: in HK , Shanghai and Bangkok you can do whatever 24/7. It is lively. If I wake up at 3 am craving something or wanting to see a band, chat with someone, I can walk outside and get all of that in many places (not so sure about Shanghai now: that was the longest time ago since I worked there, well in Suzhou, but went to Shanghai all the off time). Even small towns in Asia have that but a mega city like Tokyo was dead; the apartment we were in was in a popular district and friends invited us to craft beer things and such; they shut down at 11pm. In my village (with 100 people) bars are open until 3 am or until the last guest leaves (often after 9 am).
It really all depends what you want from a city. As I do not have or want kids, and I work 12 hours a day (by choice!), when I finish, I don't want to hear kitchen is closed etc. No clue why I would pay the money to live in a city then (and I don't as there are no real 24/7 cities that I like in the EU; Berlin but too cold; for the atmosphere I would live there though).
Moscow is 24/7 city as well. Shanghai is promoting nightlife economy on the city level. Both are insanely pedestrian-friendly with one of the best public transportation infrastructure in the world.
I would like to hear more from people with experience living in Moscow. All of my impressions so far are negative: brutal winters, lawless driving, organized crime - but I think this is due to my relative ignorance. I'm genuinely interested as it's one of the top cities on my travel list
Well, winters are cold, indeed. Normally between -20C and -30C. I wouldn't call that brutal, though. With central heating it's not a big deal, in my opinion. Lawless driving? For sure not true. Organized crime? I don't think it's significantly higher than in other countries/cities. At least the last 10-20 years.
I love Tokyo but I know lots of Japanese people that love suburban America. They love the space.
I quick search suggests the average size house in Tokyo is 66sq meters where as in LA it's 167sq meters or nearly 2.5x larger. And that's just LA. My guess is plenty of other suburbia cities the average is even larger.
I lived in Tokyo for 15 years. My last place was 54sq meters. I like there are more options in sizes than most cities I think USA and I don't believe that everyone needs a huge place.
But, I so am envious of people who have space. Space for workshops, craft rooms, etc. My mom is into Love it or List it, and people have enormous houses with yards in suburbia. I'm jealous even though at the moment I prefer carless city lifestyles
In the rural towns, houses can be bigger if they are older, but modern design in Japan builds small houses right next to each other and it is easier to build a small tight suburb because of the way infrastructure and land ownership works. So like you'll see a small cluster of a dozen houses all right next to each other in the middle of farm fields.
There’s definitely an aspect of suburbia - eg a lot of Hachioji, although the zoning is a bit different and that’s shaped the way they’ve emerged. It reminds be a bit of the way London has expanded - suburban areas centred on stations of train lines that were laid out in the 60s, with low-rise houses that are larger with modest outdoor areas. Tokyo proper is also smaller than the Tokyo conurbation that includes parts of Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama prefectures, where the density really starts to fall off and give way to agriculture.
I am not a Japan expert, but my understanding is that houses are generally smaller across the country, because land has always come at a premium due to higher population densities.
Tokyo, and most big Japan cities, are probably the only cities I could visit regularly without getting bored. Whether it's cuisine, the shops, or the people, it felt like a home away from home. It's surely super crowded in some areas, but you don't have to go there either. There are plenty of areas where you could enjoy a quiet (literally) afternoon sipping a good coffee without having to queue up. Also, it's so damn clean compared to other major cities in the world.
Just avoid the train during peak hours, and you'll enjoy every moment staying there.
That's the thing. It's a super great place when you are a tourist.
I lived there and I saw the bad sides, too. To keep this amazing tidyness, order, extremely high quality of service, people go to their limits - with low pay and low perspectives. We have these "bad" jobs also here, people in those jobs are half-assing them, are rude or just quit. In Japan, at least from my experience, it's the conservative conformity, the anti-individualism, the meat grinding discipline that keep people doing bad jobs at high pace and quality.
It's paradox to me why many individualism loving Westerner are going to Japan and are loving it so much. It's a hell for many many people.
Many Japanese are racist, sexist, pedophilia was normalized for a very long time. Women are supposed to be housewifes in middle class families, gender is clearly defined.
All this is clearly against the western values that i often hear quoted when I hear the same people talking about "China". But Japan seems to be ok for them.
Paradox.
Just wished people would start thinking about their attitude towards other nations and would develop norms and values that they apply without bias to everyone in order to avoid double standards.
Overall, i enjoyed the positive racism in Japan, i was special and I felt it. I experienced racism, too, but i just ignored it. Working in Japan was bad. I also worked in China and felt that the overall package of racism/work/life/society was better for me.
Most of the things you mentioned here is why I like Japan more han the Western world.
To be fair, Japan isn’t perfect. But a lot of things make sense for us.
Are you a westerner? It seems that your way of thinking is just different than ours. We value things differently. For example, have you ever stopped to consider that maybe Japanese woman prefer to be in traditional role?
The western world has a lot of problems too. And its a choice that the western world makes. We make our choice according to our values. This is what we prefer.
Harmony takes the first place. Harmony over diversity. We like diversity too but harmony always comes first. Harmony first, diversity later, when we need it. I can talk a lot about this.
> maybe Japanese woman prefer to be in traditional role?
Great, good for them, everything should work out. It's not the women who want to be subservient to men that I'm worried about, it's the ones who don't. Japanese society doesn't leave a lot of room for them and I don't think that's OK.
You can’t please everyone. That’s the whole point of diversity vs harmony. Besides, Japan doesn’t go around killing opeople who don’t adhere to their society. Please think about this hard as lonng, philosophically.
To answer your question. Yes we have a lot of single women, doing careers instead of doing families just fine.
> Japan doesn’t go around killing opeople who don’t adhere to their society.
This is a pretty recent development in Japan's history and the world hasn't forgotten.
And for those those single women - why not also married women? How many of them are CEOs? The numbers don't look good for women in Japan when it comes to representation in the higher levels of business https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088915832...
> This is a pretty recent development in Japan's history and the world hasn't forgotten.
What do you mean? No, it's not. With the exception of WW2, Japan has seen way less conflicts and very little wars in it's history compared to other countries.
As for your link, I cannot access the source, but your comment seems biased by the meaning of marriage in the first place.
Basically, in Japan getting married means starting a family. If you don't plan to have children, you usually don't get married. Because if you remove the cultural and sentimental value given to the act of being married in the west, there is not much practical advantage or benefit to it in the first place.
Except for the one time Japan teamed up with Hitler and tried to rape and pillage the world, and not giving up until someone invented and then used nuclear weapons to make them stop. That is a pretty huge asterisk on Japan's claim to being a peaceful nation. I think Japan's neighbors might have a list of other incidents they could bring to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Japan
It has nothing to do with marriage or definitions. Here's the abstract:
This paper examines the effects of female chief executive officers (CEOs) on firm performance. Using data on nonfinancial listed firms in Japan, we show that only 0.8% of some 42,000 firm-year observations have female CEOs. There is also little evidence that firms appoint more females as CEOs during our sample period. While the stock market reacts positively to the introduction of a firm's first female CEO, the relationship between CEO gender and firm accounting performance is generally not strong. However, when we classify the type of female CEO, the estimated coefficient for a founder female CEO and Tobin's Q is positive and significant.
> Because married women takes care of kids? I genuinely don’t understand this question…
Your comment here is 100% the problem we're talking about. In your mind, women get married for the sole reason of having kids, and further, it's their job to do so. It's incredibly sexist and that's not because of Western ideals.
>For example, have you ever stopped to consider that maybe Japanese woman prefer to be in traditional role?
how can you know this for certain?
if Japanese culture writ large is "woman should be homemakers", and most Japanese women become homemakers due to societal pressures of cultural conformity - not ever having the opportunity to freely consider alternatives - is that really a "preference"?
Please don't misunderstand me. Maybe I wasn't precise enough with my thoughts. My main point was:
Western people are often pro Japan but anti China. If people would apply the same norms, this wouldn't be possible as there is clearly a double standard.
My wish is that Western people (i am one of then) stop apply their world view, norms and values to everyone else on this planet. We believe that so many things that define us are universal and we expect that all people around the world start demanding that and thinking that.
I totally understand your pointed that harmony, order, hierarchy works for you and many other countries. I respect that - however I like many Western norms better because they work better for me. It doesn't mean that I want that Japan or China stop behaving the way they behave.
I’m one of those people. Japan and China are quite different. I really liked visiting Japan. I really did not enjoy visiting China at all. The two cultures are not as similar as you imply, and the differences matter, at least to me.
If you are just visiting, you won’t see much similaries. Japanese also consider non Japanese (or more precisely, non Asian looking), to have different norms than us so we treat them differently. Its an internal barrier that homogeneous society make. We will be polite about it but forever we will consider you a foreigner.
Fair enough. I agree with that. The westerners like to idolize Japan compared to China. I do think sometimes it is unfair.
On the other hand. I think Japan is trying to have a good balance between western style democracy with harmony, hence Japan is not as totalitarian as China. Due to bushido culture, Japanese individuals have more shame built-in so it is easier to have a homogeneous society compared to China, to the point that this bushido culture is sometimes frowned by westerners.
Each society makes their own laws and values, with its pros and cons, and it is reflected differently.
My experience is that Western people are generally against the Chinese government, not the Chinese culture. The Chinese government is currently authoritarian, expansionist, and genocidal. Japan's government is none of these things (it was all of them back in WW2, and then it received the same hostility that China's does now).
Well, Western people generally dont know ANYTHING about Chinese culture. Ask them to name 3 pop stars, 3 polititians, 3 Chinese brands, 3 cities (excpet Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong), 3 rivers, 3 philosophers and 3 Chinese concepts.
> consider that maybe Japanese woman prefer to be in traditional role?
This obviously can’t be true for all Japanese women, so what’s your solution to that? At least in Western countries there is progress being put towards letting women chose if they’d rather be a housewife or an independent person. In Japan there is no such option.
I wanted to comment, but deleted them since you've described my thoughts seeing the parent comment. All I'm going to say is I'm not a "Westerner" so I don't view things in the western perspective.
I think you are also not looking at the other side of the coin. People work hard at low-paying jobs in Japan, true. That leads to services being much more affordable, so those low-wages go further.
And I know you weren't taking the counter position to this, but there are also many intangible benefits from the values you mentioned being preeminent in Japan.
More traditional families means fewer children raised in single-parent households, and thus lower incarceration rates, and fewer anti-social types leaving paths of destruction through society.
More aggressive policing means less drug use and no opioid epidemic claiming tens of thousands of lives each year. It also means far less violence on the streets. See how many people are knifed and bottled in the UK for contrast. Not having to worry about random outbursts of terrifying violence makes for a significantly higher quality of life, with people feeling like they have more genuine freedom.
More discipline means no riots with hundreds of millions of dollars in businesses going up in flames.
And a more conservative culture allows the laws that make all of the above possible to remain in place instead of being swept away in counter-culture social movements that rail against traditional values.
> All this is clearly against the western values that i often hear quoted when I hear the same people talking about "China". But Japan seems to be ok for them.
I think you're jumping to conclusions here.
Are people in Japan disappeared for criticizing the government? Do they have their organs harvested / altered for believing the wrong religion?
I'm OK with a society with very different defaults than my own. In fact, I prefer it - real diversity doesn't come from mixing (like we do in the West - the mix of all colors is shitty brown), it comes from people being strongly different, yet managing to coexist.
So Japan is OK. It works as a society. Also for the "different" (well... somewhat - there are problems with overworking, herbivore men, low natality etc. but the West has analogous problems). China doesn't work; people aren't free; it's a repressive regime.
Let me add that Japan also doesn't claim an independent country (Taiwan) as their own territory. And they don't raid new agencies for reporting the truth. These are the things people complain about China, not the traditional culture.
There’s a street in Tokyo known as "JK alley", or "schoolgirl alley", from the Japanese Joshi Kosei, meaning high school girl.
There, teenagers in school uniform sell their time to passers-by, while their minders hover in the background.
Men pay to hold hands, go for a walk or have a cup of coffee with the girls. Some even pay to sleep on a girl's lap.
This is all legitimate, above board and legal.
Japan is also home to 300 "JK cafes", where adult men pay to hang out with underage girls (the age of consent in Japan is 18).
Until 2014 child pornography was legal to own in Japan. The law has changed, but the sexualisation of minors continues.
"Chaku Ero", which means "erotically clothed" is a kind of soft porn - it doesn’t involve nudity, but it can get very, very close and is often overtly sexual.
It’s been notably less pleasant for the last two years, for reasons shared with substantially all cities (ex-China, I suppose). Would heartily recommend it otherwise, which would have surprised me when I was younger. In particular, the neighborhoods allow you to pick your vibe, pace, and sense of scale at multiple points along the continuum, so if e.g. the Shibuya scramble crosswalk is not your idea of a good time you can live five minutes away by train and enjoy tree-lined streets and cozy bistros with a bit of outdoor seating instead.
Chinese cities haven’t been doing much better. You have to wear a face mask everywhere, lots of mass people events are curtailed, domestic and international travel is restricted, and your city can go into lockdown at any time (like Xian right now).
Many posters have already mentioned some of the great things about Japanese cities: walkable neighbourhoods, good public transport, life without cars. I agree with all of these.
However, you can't get something for nothing. Even in the suburbs there are essentially no gardens (a friend of mine lives way out of town and has a 10m by 10m garden which is enormous and unusual). Houses and apartments are significantly smaller too.
I think the tradeoff is worthwhile. You can meet friends at a restaurant instead of at home. You can go to the park instead of play in the garden.
In that case, they should build tall apartment buildings, so that people can have a large indoor floor area. Normally that is at the cost of having a garden/yard, but you are telling me they don't have a garden anyway.
One more drawback to mention (Having lived in Tokyo a few years) it’s worth pointing out its not exactly kid friendly. I really don’t think most big cities are tbh.
As somebody that lives in the downtown of a large city (Toronto) I disagree, though it will obviously depend on the city. There is so much for kids to do. My kid has access to museums, an aquarium, several parks/playgrounds, children's programs, community centres, etc. All this is within a 15 minute walk.
What do you mean by kid friendly? I lived in central, urban Tokyo (Minato) for several years and found raising kids was way easier than where we live now (Bay Area). There were several parks within 10m of where we lived and each neighborhood has a community center with a very nice indoor play area for rainy or cold days. I found businesses to be more children friendly than in the US. Several businesses, both large and small, in our area would have well maintained child seats and silverware for children.
The only thing I like better about where we live now is the much higher salary (even with cost of living) and the access to outdoor activities. You'd have to take a train at least an 1.5 hours away to get to larger green spaces in Tokyo. Arguably, this might be more convenient for those that don't like driving but getting several kids ready and babysitting them on a long train ride is a bit difficult.
For context I am comparing it to the suburban United States.
Boarding public transit is definitely an issue.
Going anywhere with small children is a bit difficult to be honest as their are quite a lot of rules. For example, no toys in the pool.
Constrained and limited places to play outside. Outside of the park everything is concrete and many types of play are banned. When out, I had to watch them like a hawk. Here they go over to a neighbors yard to play and have no such worries.
Childcare is also expensive to get if both parents do not work (in that case it’s free).
That said I knew plenty of expats from population dense areas that were of different opinion. They had cars too :)
I used to like living in the city with a kid. Lots of access to interesting places and activities, able to walk to school and playgrounds and such. It’s lost some allure during the pandemic.
> Tokyo comes joint fourth, but its population is larger than the combined populations of the others (Adelaide, Auckland, Osaka and Wellington).
Having lived in Adelaide and visited Toyko, Osaka and a bunch of other Japanese cities, I can take a crack at the difference:
Adelaide is a great lifestyle city, if you don't actually want to live in a city, love car enabled lifestyles and the outdoors. Tokyo would be great if you just love city life and have an insatiable desire to discover city culture, and you want to spend most of your time as a pedestrian. You just can't run out of things to discover in Tokyo or Japan in general, and everything is easy to get to in Japan from Tokyo.
In Adelaide, you need a car to get out of the burbs, it's very car centric, and because you'll eventually run out of stuff to do in the city since it's quite small, you'll need the car to drive out to new places. Public transport is spotty, or non-existent. Trains aren't too bad, if you move here, move near a train.
I would recommend Adelaide if you're pretty content with a median lifestyle, and just want to focus on hobbies, sports and don't mind going to the same handful of cafes every year. I think you'd get more mileage out of Tokyo if you want to dive headfirst into city life and city culture.
The other difference is that with a low population, hobby groups in Adelaide are small, and what you love may not even be in Adelaide, getting supplies for things can be difficult. Lots of new things don't make it there due to that issue as well. It can feel a bit dead-end in that way. In Tokyo, if you like it, there's a group for you somewhere, and what you want is probably sold nearby.
I honestly don't understand how "cities" like Adelaide, Auckland and Wellington keep making these lists of "most liveable cities".
Their low populations mean they just don't have much of the things that make cities desirable. (like, lots of culture, lots of diversity, lots of options for dining and activities etc etc)
Granted, that can make them comparatively pleasant and peaceful, with good access to outdoors and fresh air, but yeah, it's disingenuous to even include them in a comparison that includes Tokyo, London, New York, what have you.
In case anyone thinks this is me being uncharitable, I currently live in Brisbane Australia, which is hardly a cosmopolitan global elite city either, so this isn't me throwing shade, I'm just saying.
Although they aren't "towns" (in Northeast US parlance), a lot of people want a large town or "city-lite" lifestyle. Walk to a market, hardware store, cafe, etc. Maybe some local low-level cultural events.
But also low crime, low noise, not too crowded. And you can hop in a car and head off to relatively nearby nature of some sort.
Many don't want to live in Manhattan which, while an extreme example, means really committing to the urban lifestyle. Doesn't mean you can't go somewhere else for a long weekend but it's not a trivial undertaking.
It's a really hard thing to be objective about I think, the lists are never going to be particularly useful. There are definitely parts of Tokyo life that don't score well, like house pricing, size and type. The concrete jungle isn't for everyone either, there is an amicable amount of greenery but it's mostly concrete.
The lists seem to bias toward those things you mentioned, family homes and access to nature, so I think they're targeting a really specific demographic with that.
I'm big on urban wandering, dining out and social stuff but I can see why someone might retire in Adelaide instead of Tokyo if they want to relax their retirement away. I think I'd rather Tokyo, just because of the public transport. You'd be able to go anywhere even after you can't drive.
It is interesting you wrote <<house pricing>> when the post above specifically mentioned Adelaide, Auckland and Wellington. Compare Tokyo house price inflation in last 10+ years to those others. Tokyo is a steal by comparison. It is a myth that Tokyo is still crazy expensive like in the 1990s. And when publications like The Economist talk about housing prices, they are looking at how senior executives live in the center of the city. They are not looking at middle class housing, which is in abundance throughout most of the city.
The other stereotype is that housing is very small by comparison to a city like Adelaide, is that not true still?
For example in Adelaide, a 3 bedroom home with a garage, front yard and large back yard is pretty common. But mostly I see two story narrow townhouses, or small apartments in Tokyo.
I think the problem is that the idea of habitability is not always clearly defined in facile compilations of locations. And the compromises and sunken-cost calculations are not always clear.
Any good community, big or small, is healthy. Clean air, water, good food, waste management; sensible urban planning and shelter cost; access to nature, infrastructure, and health services; intellectual and cultural prospects such as libraries, bookstores, museums, music, galleries.
A "city" as a market/marketplace is rarely very healthy. Some people might choose to trade health for money and prestige. These are personal choices, but do not scale well over time to a large population.
I live in Osaka and I have no idea whatsoever how it made second on this list. I like things about Osaka, some a lot (though I do complain), and the people I've met here will always be in my heart, but second? I couldn't be sure it's even the second best city in Kansai.
What I've come to appreciate the most is how easy it is to get around by foot. Everywhere I lived previously seemed to have been built with pedestrians as an afterthought. But in Tokyo you can easily tune out with little chance of coming into contact with traffic. Public transport is also great provided you're ok with crowds, although not as big an issue for me now everything's remote.
I thought about getting a job there as a dev. However certain things like culture, low pay, the language, and making new friends has held me back. I really loved the city when I visited a couple years back.
Does anyone live in Japan as a dev and not really know how to speak japanese? How has the experience been?
I didn't speak Japanese when I first moved there. In larger cities (especially Tokyo), there are plenty of people who speak English, so it's generally not a huge problem (although you'll find things easier if you do speak the language).
The biggest issues are crowding and racism. Don't expect to get into any role of importance, and don't freak out when you hear "gaijin dame" (no foreigners allowed) in some places, or people sudenly moving to seats and tables further from you. On the other side of the coin, you won't be expected to understand how things work, so they'll be very forgiving (in a condescending way) of social gaffes and the strange way you act (after all, you're a foreigner; they all act that way). Many rules won't apply to you, unless you make an effort to have them apply to you (don't do this). You'll make few (if any) friends of the same gender. You will alway be an outsider. If you can live with this, you'll have a fun and interesting time there.
Edit: Also, make friends with some oldtimers in the expat community (as long as they're not the jaded kind). They are a treasure trove of information and help.
Edit 2: Don't learn Japanese from someone of the opposite gender (unless they're a trained language teacher). You'll sound ridiculous when you speak otherwise, because men and women use very different words and turns of phrases in many cases (nothing worse than hearing a man say "atashi" or the up-pitch "ne" unless he's in drag). Reading Japanese comic books can be helpful here because they tend towards hyperbole, which makes it easier to pick out the differences. I've found that female artists tend to play with language more than male artists.
Edit 3: DO NOT BREAK THE LAW. Getting arrested in Japan is a hellish experience, and prison is even worse. Their justice system is still quite medieval. Quoting a friend of mine: "Japan is the most advanced 3rd world country I've seen."
That's surprising to hear. I have lived in Tokyo a fair amount of time (5+ years) and only experienced true racism, e.g. being not being allowed in a place for being non-Japanese, a handful of times, and those were mostly for what would be considered nighttime establishment that are a bit shady. Not doubting your experience, just putting this here as another data point.
Most of the times being treated differently was just other people being scared of talking English and avoiding me, but that usually fixed itself when they realize I speak Japanese.
Unrelated, but I think a lot of the foreigners in Tokyo are oversensitive to racism because they have never experienced looking different in their own country - that leads itself to interpreting all kinds of tiny acts as racist when something doesn't go the way they want. But in reality many of the acts have a different cause behind them, like the insecurity of the other person.
Maybe it's just me but racism on the level of being kicked out of places for being non-Japanese a handful of times in 5 years sounds terrible. Even once is insane.
I'm white so don't have any personal experience, but my partner is a brown immigrant to the UK and has experienced nothing even remotely close to that anywhere she's been in UK or Europe.
Hah, I should mention, I'm a westerner, but I'm ethnically Chinese. I look Chinese but I can't read or speak Chinese. This type of targeting is def an important factor against not going to japan.
I think you can satisfy my curiosity. I'm brazilian but as far as I know all my relatives up to my great-grandparents were japanese so I look no different from them. However I don't have a lot of interest in japanese culture and know just a handful of words my mother taught me like abunai. How would I be treated over there? I imagine it would be worse than a foreigner since it's expected that I know some things.
Yeah… I heard a lot of either revolting or heartbreaking stories. But also some great and uplifting ones.
I will not lie - the moment that you are perceived as Chinese, a lot of people can become assholes. Unfortunately, there is way too much nationalistic propaganda around.
But it’s also a place full of amazing people too. People who will appreciate you for what you are. I wouldn’t write off the whole country. But you do have to develop a thicker skin, unfortunately.
I guess that's true. It wasn't really kicked out (just edited it to clarify) but rather not being allowed in - It's probably also important to note that most of these places, except one, were what you would call nighttime establishments a bit on the shadier side. So we're not talking about restaurants or anything like that.
Somewhere like the Golden Gai, I'd absolutely expect that a Westerner would be waved away from some places. Some may even have signs up although I don't specifically remember.
Do snack bars in any Japanese town/city allow foreigners? I mean, I get it, these aren’t places foreigners should be going, but their forbidden nature always raises eyebrows.
> I mean, I get it, these aren’t places foreigners should be going, but their forbidden nature always raises eyebrows.
Snack bars aren't anything forbidden or erotic, they're bars where women are employed to speak to the customers and entertain them (again, not in an erotic way), that's it. I live in a suburb with lots of them around, it's not some kind of red light district filled with brothels, they're just bars I pass that usually have badly sung karaoke blasting out.
I also don't understand the replies you're getting as they seem to have run with this misconception, I can't be sure these people have even visited Japan!
I made friends with some Yakuza while I was there, and after awhile I would get invited to some of these places sometimes. You REALLY need to be careful hanging around them though, and don't get dragged into their shit. They usually keep that separate, but it's not guaranteed.
Also, you're expected to be on your BEST behaviour. DO NOT EMBARRASS PEOPLE, because the responsible person will suffer for it (not you, but please, don't be a dick).
Actually, if you want to get a peek at what the underbelly looks like (with a lot of creative license of course), check out "The Naked Director". It was quite refreshing compared to the regular pablum of Japanese television.
True, I could imagine snacks to be among the places where you have problems going as a foreigner. It probably just depends on the owner.
I haven't been to many, so I can't really speak to that. I tried a few times and had no trouble getting in, but I was with Japanese friends. May have been a different story if I had been alone.
The ones in resort towns seem to always have “no foreigners” signs in English…I guess to avoid having any awkward denials at all. Seems perfectly legal to not serve foreigners, in any case.
I haven't really seen many of those signs in Tokyo. I could imagine that in resort towns they want to keep tourists out? Having tourists who don't understand what those places is asking for trouble I guess.
I’m sure the snack bars cater to Japanese tourists, these are resort towns and the snack bars line the main tourist streets. But the fact that they also attract a few foreign tourists (because we also enjoy onsens) they need the signs.
Exact same thing in South Korea. Folks afraid of embarrassing themselves with their English, but once you speak Korean (and look presentable) it's not a problem.
Funny thing about the oversensitivity to racism: many foreigners assume racism, but if they understood Korean they'd figure out that either they're not the topic of discussion, or the locals are gossiping or speaking the same way they would about a local Korean person as well.
100% AGree don't learn Japanese from another gender, you will sound effeminate - if you have some standing in the langauge, then it is totally okay - but then there's another side of the stigma/gaijin hunter that use langauge exchange for dating/making kids.
But, yeah, using emi (笑） or ww as a guy is a very huge social gaffe if not used sarcastically. You can use it it, but better with close relationships, like really close - and that whole "ne" and up pitch voice also is 100% accurate.
With that said, ne, "sou da ne?/そうだね" is acceptable as a guy if it's usually sarcastic or mocking - context: drinks, talking about friends or such - or teasing one another about their gf/wife - 100% acceptable. Doing it at a mall, store, work, no - and they won't tell you!
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For the older timers/gaijin bubble, it depends. I find the older crowd, if they're settled and have a family a huge plus. If they're an English Teacher/in Eikawa, avoid - that sounds rude and cruel, but if someones early 20's and in JET - that's acceptable, if they're mid 40's and trying to play as they're still in their 20's - they may know a few things and such but it's not a good sign usually.
ww or 笑 is absolutely 100% acceptable as a guy. It has never even crossed my mind and a hundred of people I worked with use it. Dont know where did you get this info.
I laughed at your comment about "few (if any) friends of the same gender"
I have noticed the same problem. Interesting to hear someone else say that, too. I always thought it was a "native male" thing... women could make native women friends that were only friends. Any native men "friends" were roughly always trying to be slightly more than friends. Men could make native women friends and truly only be friends. Men didn't make friends with many native men, at least beyond superficial relationships...
FWIW. Learning the language (and popular culture) makes a huge difference in the people you’ll meet and how people react to you.
I worked in a Japanese company for years and made a number of good friends (of the same gender) who I’m still in contact with, and see whenever I go back.
Also the more you learn the language the more chance you’ll have of reaching a role of importance. That’s the same pretty much everywhere though. If people have trouble communicating with you or you cannot express a complex concept then you’ll be bypassed.
I recognize the word "dame" from playing the game of Go,
where it means [1] a neutral point of no value. Curiously,
that page says "It also has the everyday Japanese meanings of bad, don't do it."
A lot of the foreigners living in Tokyo misinterpret tiny bits of nothing as hostility and racism
I'm a big guy, sometimes people make space for me on the train or whatever. It isn't racism. I'm a scary and weird looking guy too by local standards, it isn't racism when people gawk a little sometimes. People talk to me like a kid after I completely botch some basic phrase
The only racist thing that ever happened to me in years living there was this: I went to a bar with my white friend, and they said "No American" and made an x sign at us. I asked in Japanese "sorry, what was that you said?" and suddenly they welcomed us in.. I guess they just didn't want rowdy dudes who can't speak the language. Definitely not acceptable behavior from them, but not too bad IMO. I get way worse treatment in the USA for being Hispanic than I ever do for being a foreigner in Japan
The expat community in Tokyo is kinda obnoxious. There are a lot of lazy, burned out guys who complain about everything
Living in Tokyo is amazing, but working for a Japanese company as a dev is probably not a great career move if you're relatively young. Software Engineering in Japan is many years behind the rest of the world, the pay is relatively low, and it isn't considered as desirable of a career as it is in other countries. It would be much better if you could find an international or remote company that allows you to live in Japan. Then you can get the best of both worlds. If you don't speak Japanese you probably wouldn't be able to get a job at a Japanese company anyway.
> However certain things like culture the language, and making new friends has held me back
I think it's really hard to generalize because it's different from person to person. However, I think it's a very different experience if you speak Japanese. Roughly 95%+ (if not more) of the population in Tokyo does not speak English more than a few words. You can certainly get everything done in English, make contracts, find housing, find friends, there is a big enough community, but your social life will be extremely limited if you don't speak Japanese.
I've thought about trying to get a remote role for a company in AU/NZ and living in Japan that way, then you're "only" off by 1-4 hours. Better be good at waking up early though.
I am an expat living in Tokyo for 5 years. My language skills is limited - I haven't given any JLPT. I can understand some conversation but can't speak. I depend on my wife for most official paperwork. I have lived in US, China & India before.
I work mostly in MLOps. Life is really not that bad. I would probably never go back to US. I work in niche ML & robotics domain and there is enough scope for growth and making new things.
About life in general, what expats miss is that Japanese people forgive you for not knowing the language, but they do take offense at not following the general customs of the place. Being loud, making hand gestures, acting aggressively, talking on the phone in a public space & metro etc are big no-no. Too many foreigners feel unwelcome because they refuse to blend in & want to be the sore thumb sticking out.
Once someone blends in their society and manages to have japanese folks invite you in their inner circles, you become as thick as a family member. It all boils down to being respectful of the local way of life. If you live in Japan as a Japanese, (and maybe speaking some Japanese e.g N4 level), life is really comfortable & easy
As others have pointed out, you probably don't want to be working for businesses that are run in the Japanese way, but there are plenty of both expat and native run businesses that aren't. The pay will be low but Tokyo is incredibly cheap so it's not really a problem locally. (but it is a problem in the sense that whatever you save won't be worth much elsewhere if you move back to the states or whatever later years later)
It goes without saying your experience will be incomparably better the sooner you learn Japanese, and it's nowhere near as hard as popularly portrayed.
I've tried in the past, but didn't hear back from most of the places I applied to. The ones that did respond suggested that I look for a domestic role for the same company because my Japanese wasn't strong enough. I hadn't taken the JLPT at the time but I had been learning the language for 7 years at that point, and I would guess I'm currently at an N3 or N2 level. It does makes sense since they would say that since the JLPT doesn't test for language production, only interpretation.
It's likely that I'm just looking in the wrong places, though. About all I understand how to do is to just trawl through public job boards looking for open positions. I still think it would be nice to work in Japan, even if it's only a thing that lasts as long as I can bear it. However, the pandemic has set back so much as visiting Japan as a tourist by several years, so I don't know how that bodes for working there.
I've been working for a large US company in Tokyo for several years now. No need to know Japanese for work; I know a lot of people that speak it very poorly (though I wouldn't recommend that if you're staying here long term).
The pay is good (~35M JPY/300K USD at L5) but there are very few companies with this level of compensation so the real cost is in the limited opportunities.
Like everywhere, there's good and bad parts to living in Tokyo, but I've enjoyed it for the most part. It's friendly, clean, safe, and relatively cheap. On the other hand, there's sometimes discrimination against foreigners (especially in housing) and I don't appreciate how cramped apartments and houses are.
Are you in FAANG? That level of pay (300k) is also in the higher range for SV. Seems really rare to land such a role given that all the other reported salaries are around 60k. Would love to know if your situation is a fluke or if it's very possible for me to land such a role myself?
The high-paying tech companies in Tokyo that I'm aware of are Google, Amazon, Indeed, Woven Planet, Stripe, and Doordash. Those last two are just starting out here so still have a limited presence.
Those are basically your options. Outside of these, TC will go down quickly
I worked there for two years as an engineer for a multinational without speaking Japanese. The primary language of my team was english so the workdays were fine. I eventually was able to speak enough broken Japanese to order at restaurants, cafes, etc but anything beyond that was impossible for me. I know there are a few companies (Google, Facebook) that are hiring engineers in Japan where English is the primary language used. I have heard that there are also some native Japanese companies, like Mercari, where a significant amount of English is used as well.
I found that not speaking Japanese was not that big of a deal especially if you live in central Tokyo or one of the suburbs that have a lot of expats. Most businesses that you would likely frequent will have english menus or speak enough broken english to get by. I had a few health problems while I was out there and there are several clinics that have native english support.
The thing I found the most difficult about Japan is making Japanese friends. You will always be an outsider and in general Japanese folks just have different expectations when it comes to "work" friends vs "real" friends. You might think you're super close to a colleague from work but in reality you're a total stranger. It's not uncommon to not even know if someone is married or not. On the other hand if you're okay with having mostly expat friends, the community is very welcoming.
Pay isn't that bad provided your expectations are reasonable. For reference I'm making more here than I could expect to make in NZ/AU/UK but nothing close to what's on offer in SV.
You can probably make more in China than Japan as a dev, assuming you have some talent that can’t be found easily locally. Of course, it might be impossible now given how the Chinese government has shifted, but that isn’t because of demand.
I've lived here for two years and my Japanese is still not great, though getting better all the time.
Both the highs and the lows have been bigger than I expected. I've loved the place on the whole but there have definitely been significant downsides too. If you don't like the culture I'd be very cautious about coming here.
Don't need to speak to be a dev. Pay is low, rakuten imports devs regularly. Japanese prefer South East Asia/West Europeans vs Americans (North, Central & South.)
Learning the language isn't hard either, I passed JLPT N4 within 3 months of just showing up in Tokyo.
Max pay would be 40-60K/yr until you get PR &/OR N1/N2. Then it may balloon up a bit but not so much. You should be able to score a free apartment though.
Just as an existence proof, I interviewed for a team at Apple in Tokyo. The job was all in English and the team members had varying levels of Japanese language ability. I did not get far enough in the interview process to discuss comp.
I mean eventually I want to learn the language right?
The point is there will be a period of time where I don't know the language and hang out with my fellow ex-pats. Additionally I will never ever really actually master the language to the point where I'm indistinguishable from a native.
I'm just wondering is Japan bearable under these conditions?
Not to be depressing, but you could speak fluent Japanese and you will always be "my foreign friend" or "our foreign coworker" or "the white guy with really good Japanese" to, by and large, even your closest friends.
On average, the country and its people are incredibly inviting and kind to guests and appreciative of foreigners that learn Japanese. However, you will always be viewed, by the vast majority, as being a guest - even after many many years and fluent Japanese.
And some people are fine with that, and some people can't stand that.
I'm of mixed minds on this. The phenomenon is definitely real -- you'll be instinctively treated like a pet by a lot of people. This is frustrating. But I would not go as far as saying "you will always be 'my foreign friend'".
Many foreigners in Japan have no marketable skills, and therefore get stuffed into the comfortable role of Foreign Guy, and never leave the role. It's a seductive role: you can get by with pretty minimal language skill and cultural awareness, make enough money to live in a nice place and do fun things, and you don't have to live with any of those annoying rules that drive the natives crazy!
So people get to a certain level of cultural proficiency, and stop. Perhaps they teach English (or some other non-Japanese language), and their professional identity becomes...English. They go to foreign-hangout places, and hang out with foreign people. They don't learn the cultural norms beyond tourist-level schtick, and stick out like a sore thumb in any social situation. So yeah, of course those people tend to attract people who fetishize foreigners. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I've also met foreigners living and working across the country, in real professional capacities. They have colleagues and friends spouses and lives that I characterize as native as you can get. You're never completely native -- but that's true anywhere.
> Not to be depressing, but you could speak fluent Japanese and you will always be "my foreign friend" or "our foreign coworker" or "the white guy with really good Japanese" to, by and large, even your closest friends.
I know what you mean, but I wanted to say that this is true essentially in all parts of the world, with the notable exception of some parts of North America.
I think you refer to the subtle changes of behavior that come with the "you're our foreign coworker" that are specific to a lot of Asian cultures and are highly unpleasant, sometimes even racist.
That, however, is also present in China, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam, etc.
Interestingly, in my limited experience, the Philippines is an amazingly open and hearty country without this "insider vs outsider" mentality.
Yeah I heard of this, I think I'd be ok with it as this kind of thing would likely happen in China or other asian countries as well. Thanks for the tips.
I think this is largely the case for asian countries where the people are more homogeneous. You get much less of this in countries or cities that are much more ethnically and culturally diverse.
On top of that, it’s very easy to get stuck in expat community. It’s damn comfy. And it takes a lot of effort to break through.
I spent 6 months in Japan a while ago. Working with other gaijins, hanging out with gaijins… My best contact with locals were at gaijin bars. They could speak some English, I could talk to locals.
Was it bad? Definitely no. Could I make extra effort to talk to locals more? Yes. But since my goal in life isn’t to cosplay a Japanese…
I had the pleasure of visiting Tokyo years ago, but after having visited many more cities since I only retrospectively realised how great it really was. I've been making plans to head back since 2019 and am excited to see how my experience changes now smartphones are accessible.
If you dont have to work there and commute 1h30 each way per day just to avoid living in a too small apartment and instead spend time in a bedtown where there's nothing around your house. Did you capture that, the Economist?
Someone commented that people hate each other in the US more than elsewhere, thus need more space apart from other people.
This made me think: how does this supposed US hatred for itself compare with European hatred for "the other"? Living in Moscow I heard from a German girl that she was scorned for being German; in another situation I heard form a Russian man that he felt unwelcome in Germany for being German. I'm not even getting into ancient Spain x Portugal, Poland x Germany kind of enmities.
It’s interesting to look at Tokyo from space, what you’ll see is a type of sprawl but it’s an dense urban sprawl. In the us we have taken to trying to constrain growth to small specific areas to drive up density, but that wasn’t needed in Tokyo to achieve density. It tells me that in some ways our attempts at urban planning through zoning have been ineffective. The reason why a location 5 miles from a city center can only house a single level big box store isn’t due to cars or the great expanse of America. That piece of property could be put to better use if people were able to build as they do in Tokyo.
On the other hand, if we aspire to be like Tokyo, we might consider what the Tokyo area originally looked like as a natural environment and how the unchecked growth in density turned most everything to concrete.
Going to Tokyo once was enough to make me hate American cities. We got things so wrong, and we invested so heavily into the wrong infrastructure that we'll never change.
Coming home from Tokyo to New York in 2018 was depressing. You get so used to living in a dysfunctional society that you forget it's dysfunctional, but getting off the plane at JFK, I was reminded of Biden's comment that our airports are like stepping into a third world country [0]. The next week in New York, I felt like I saw nothing but broken things and lost people.
How many places in America:
* have good schools and offices within walking distance
* have such good public transport that you don't need a car
* provide easy access to nature and parks
* are affordable to midde-class people?
I think the answer might be zero places -- those that meet the first three criteria (Berkeley, parts of NYC, and Seattle) don't meet the fourth.
New York is an exception though. It's a place for world's super-rich and the immigrants that keep it running. Austin, Texas is way more livable for the middle class.
Buddy, Austin has garbage public transit and infrastructure. It is not walkable. No one wants to walk in the heat 20 mins to HEB and be accosted by homeless people. It's the latest entry into the shitshow that is garbage American cities.
This kind of thing comes back once a while. You know what? Japan has extremely low birth rate! And very high suicide rate! No. It’s not a pleasant place to live. Not any big city, for a family with 2+ kids.
It is unbelievable how true this is . Ive almost got some sort of trauma where living in cities gives me a lot of anxiety and Tokyo is the only exception
Tokyo has so many people, it couldn’t avoid being one of the most diverse cities in the world. I guess the stereotype is that all 40M people are salaryman drones and housewives, but clearly that’s not true. If even half are something else, that still leaves tens of millions of people to fill out all the other varieties of people.
Whatever your culture or interest is, there will be a place you can find that in Tokyo, probably more so then any other city on Earth.
Au contraire. You'll find all sorts of people with different ideas, interests, curiosities, tastes, desires, opinions, vices and virtues; the full gamut of humanity, as you might expect in a metropolis of near 40 million.
Yes, certain traits predominate as they do in any culture but if you go looking I'm pretty sure you'll find what you're looking for in Tokyo.
You seem to (inexplicably) entail from «Tokyo [is a] big city that is also pleasant to live in» a number of assumed ideas and unduly conclusions.
TFA:
> [...] Tokyo is now the world’s largest city, with 37m residents in the metropolitan area and 14m in the city proper. It is also one of the world’s most liveable, with punctual public transport, safe neighbourhoods, clean streets and more restaurants and Michelin stars than any other. In the liveability index of the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister group, Tokyo comes joint fourth, but its population is larger than the combined populations of the others (Adelaide, Auckland, Osaka and Wellington). “It’s possible to have a liveable city at any scale - Tokyo proves that,” says Gabriel Metcalf, at Committee for Sydney, an Australian think-tank. // It offers lessons to developing cities elsewhere. In 1950, 30% of the world’s population was urban; by 2050, 68% will be [...]
The title is The big city that is also pleasant to live in, which seems to pretty clearly imply that others are not. The title on HN last night was Tokio: the big city that is also pleasant to live in, which seems like a moderately reasonable edit by OP, but certainly emphasized my perception of that implication. The title has since been edited to be less accurate but, hey yeah, maybe more representative of the article’s content.
There is a lot of anti-urban content out there and I’m fairly used to people who don’t live in mine maligning it anyhow. So yeah, I saw the title and took it to be that with a twist. And I read far too much of that already so I didn’t read further.
Before anyone chimes in saying "nO tHeRe r cUrS iN tOkYo tOo" - of course there are! The point is the city isn't designed around cars. (and the parts that are are the least pleasant)