
Tokyo may have found the solution to soaring housing costs - g4k
http://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-costs-tokyo
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danbolt
The reasons for Japan's lower housing prices make a lot of sense to me and I
think their solutions are a good idea for developed nations.

I'll admit I'm not particularly educated on this sort of issue, so I'd love to
hear from someone who thinks this sort of central planning isn't as good of an
idea.

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jstalin
It's the opposite of central planning. According to the article, there is a
uniform set of rules. Follow the rules, build your condo building. In the US
there is central planning on the local level, usually the city level. Planning
commissions determine if your project meets the "character of the
neighborhood" and neighbors bitch and complain that your project will "create
more traffic" and the (central) planning commission denies your permit.

~~~
sokoloff
I agree with what you observe, but I'd characterize Japan's solution as
massively and strictly central planning, whereas the US has loosely adhered to
local planning.

~~~
erikpukinskis
You're confusing strictness with centralization. The rules are strict, but
there is no centralized control. The way you get decentralization is by having
rules.

Consider Bitcoin for example. The rules are incredibly strict. You basically
have no choice but to obey all of the rules in order to participate. They will
not budge, and they were devised by one person, which calls to mind "central"
and "control" but is just the opposite. Those rules are carefully constructed
to allow the system to be completely decentralized. No permission is needed to
participate. No one has the power to veto or alter your contributions. Simply
obey the rules and no one else can have power over you.

The distinction you are making about federal vs municipal control isn't about
centralization vs decentralization, it's just about the scale of
centralization. Municipalities are small, but they still have a single
bottleneck at the mayor/city council.

The reason this matters is that a rule-based decentralized system provides a
structure that you can rely on. You can make a plan for compliance, and be
reasonably assured that it will work. With centralized planning, even at if
the central office is only governing something as small as an HOA, then there
is no plan you can make which has an assurance of success. You are at the whim
of the planners who have veto power.

This turns planning into a stochastic game where your plans need to have
redundancy at every level in order to have high probability of success, which
increases cost and slows the pace of development substantially.

~~~
danbolt
I appreciate the distinctions! I feel like I should research them more, but I
must be conflating the the terms in my mind.

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kqr2
A good article on Japan's national zoning laws and how it differs from the US:

[http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-
zoning.html](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html)

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mywittyname
It also helps that Japan has a culture of tearing down "used" houses after 15
or so years, and rebuilding them [1]. This means that neighborhoods are
constantly being reconstructed to meet the needs of the current population.

That attitude seems to clash pretty dramatically with those of San Franciscans
or Londoners, who prefer to maintain the heritage and culture of a
neighborhood.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/disposable-...](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/disposable-homes-japan-environment-lifespan-sustainability)

