
Urban design and mental health in Tokyo - blacksmythe
http://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/journal-3---tokyo-case-study.html
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kaybe
"People in Tokyo sleep, on average, 5 hours and half at home, (and they add to
that their sleep during the commuting time in a train.)"

That does not sound healthy at all. How does this work?

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Raphmedia
Not from Japan but one on the things I miss the most now that I have a car is
being able to sleep around 5 hours and catch up during commute.

It's crazy how good you get at falling asleep instantly and how you get a "my
stop is at the right corner, I need to wake up right now" sixth sense.

Now I require more sleep and commute makes me more tired when I get to work
and back home.

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Neeek
I agree.

I developed this habit in highschool but no one else I know seems to have
picked it up, interesting to see it discussed here :) I get VERY sleepy
whenever I'm on a bus now, even 7 years of car commuting later.

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Animats
The enthusiasm for superblocks is interesting. That's been a disaster in US
city planning. It's associated with housing projects. Stuyvesant Town in
Manhattan, which is a huge, expensive apartment complex, gets higher rents for
apartments which face the "outside" streets than for those which face the
interior open space.

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lucideer
This is a very common observation in my experience, but I strongly suspect
it's misplaced. My guess is that there are other factors that cause housing
projects to be "disastrous", and the correlation with superblocks is either
coincidental, or - more likely - connected to institutional biases.

If you look at a lot of superblocks in Nordic countries, they're extremely
successful, but they also have a few not-so-great superblocks dotted here and
there as well.

I think there's probably examples of both to be found ("good" and "bad"
superblocks) in every country, with just the ratio varying per-country.

I'd be interested to see research though as the above is just
anecdotal/intuition.

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nihonde
My theory, having lived in New York and Japanese cities with lots of
superblock developments, is that everything depends on how well the residents
maintain the site.

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lucideer
That's definitely a big factor but there's also a lot of others.
Socioeconomics are going to influence the ability to maintain, as well as
build quality, architectural considerations, &c. Local crime levels and law
enforcement are going to influence residential threat models/security
considerations and have positive/negative effects on residents' priorities and
approaches to the maintenance of their own blocks. Provision of public
amenities -vs- gated private amenities will produce different effects in
different areas. QoS from building maintenance companies, the list goes on.

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nihonde
My experience with these buildings in Japan is that many of the residents are
either extremely low income or extremely thrifty senior citizens, or young
single people away from their family unit and unable to afford more than a
room for a few man yen per month--with a heavy bias toward the seniors. They
have the benefit of Japan's excellent public safety network, such as local
police boxes (koban) and lots of watchful eyes everywhere. There are very,
very rarely going to be groups of idle men hanging around in public spaces
during the day. No drug business or other illicit street activity is tolerated
--it would simply stick out like a sore thumb and be handled with extreme
prejudice. (Whether that's a good thing in itself is another topic for
debate.) Anyway, it gives enough breathing room for the residents, many of
whom are quite poor and infirm, to stay busy cleaning the grounds and keeping
an eye on each other. The maintenance staff is usually one or two guys who may
bring in help for landscaping or big jobs, but are usually just doing rounds
and odd jobs. It is remarkable how much it operates as a self-contained unit
with very meager resources and without much help from the outside. My direct
experience was local (Nagoya) but it looks quite consistent in other places,
at least from the outside looking in. Maybe others have a different view from
places like Tokyo or Osaka.

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lucideer
Really great insight. Thank you for this.

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mercurysmessage
That Sumida River drawing is a nice touch. When I used to work in Tokyo I'd
often go to the river at lunch, it's very relaxing and I love being near
water.

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mc32
They should add more trees. Sometimes you just need a bit of shade while you
lunch or nap.

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mercurysmessage
Yea more trees would be nice. The area I frequented had a nice bridge I'd use
for shade haha

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robzyb
I saw Layla (the director of UDMH) give an excellent presentation at
PechaKucha Tokyo last month.

I look forward to flicking through this document.

