
Continuous urbanization in Japan - oftenwrong
http://devonzuegel.com/post/continuous-urbanization-in-japan
======
annywhey
I believe a number of factors tell the tale:

* As noted, the zoning laws and general policies surrounding real estate have made it so that residential development keeps with demand. In every developed area, the buildings consistently climb to 8 stories high. I can't speak for Europe but this is something the U.S. simply cannot do within its existing policy regime, now that the automobile suburbs are built out. It's stuck with an escalating price bubble for the foreseeable future.

* The shinkansen itself cannot be underestimated either. Other cities tend to be like "suburbs of Tokyo" in the Japanese model, taking pressure off the city to go supertall.

* Although you can find neighborhoods with large office parks and highways(e.g. Akasaka), the zoning laws permit using your home to do business, which reduces average commutes and requirements for dedicated workspace, and goes a long way to explain the high degree of similarity between any two random urban streets in the country.

* The rail lines are also real estate companies, which creates a virtuous cycle around every transit stop to pile on amenities and maximize the attractiveness of each neighborhood. You have to go quite far out to find "sleepy" train stations.

* The keiretsu business model that built contemporary Japan is likewise intertwined with the transit and development pattern. The economics of the conglomerate dictate that business units should complement and support each other which allows for a certain degree of robustness, further encouraging neighborhoods that have many similar patterns. Even in Sapporo, with it's 19th-century gridded blocks designed by an American, the overall development is distinctly Japanese. U.S. style patterns tend to favor superlative extremes of optimization - the biggest, the fastest, the most profitable - and not average case outcomes. Manhattan may be exceptional simply because we've assumed every city should be exceptional.

~~~
jpatokal
You're missing two large factors:

* Tokyo is in a very active earthquake zone. Building earthquake-proof supertalls is even more expensive than usual, and not practical in the large portions of the city built on reclaimed land.

* Sunshine laws make it very difficult to build tall buildings even when zoning regulations otherwise allow it. This is why you often see weirdly shaped (triangular etc) buildings in improbable places.

Shinkansen commuting is also a fairly marginal phenomenon, the cost is
prohibitive and I recall reading that the number of active Shinkansen commuter
passes is measured in the thousands (for a megalopolis of 30 million plus).

~~~
m_mueller
TBF I find their sunshine laws make sense. Tokyo to me feels way more liveable
than any Western megacity I know.

~~~
mercurysmessage
I agree. Tokyo is my favourite city, for many reasons. Livability and comfort
being two of the top. I've already lived mid-term in Tokyo, and I see myself
returning in the future.

~~~
m_mueller
right. it looks a bit ugly at first if you're not into it, but living there
after a while it all really makes sense. great people too generally - friendly
and welcoming like in a big village, yet leaving you alone when you need it
like in a big city. perfect for my tastes.

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rtpg
It's pretty depressing that Tokyo is kinda the high point of urbanism and even
it has so many issues. The bar is set really low for nice cities

Tokyo has many city centers, but I think it fails pretty badly when it comes
to office space distribution. There's still concentration of large companies
in a couple central areas, meaning everyone is going into a couple spots every
morning, and leaving every evening.

There's a big status thing involved where companies want to be in the good
neighborhoods so their address tells people that the company's successful. It
means that huge swaths of the city are empty during the day. This compounds
into lack of as good public services in certain areas, basically creating
dreadful suburb communities where there's nothing but housing and convenience
stores for miles, and local businesses can't survive on the paltry foot
traffic

Meanwhile everyone and their dog is in the same 5 neighborhoods

Tokyo is lucky in that there's permissive zoning, so theoretically this can be
corrected. But there's almost no incentive to do so because there's still a
lot of prime construction to be had in other parts of the city

The city is going to end up with a bunch of holes in its urban planning
because theres not much glory in developing the less popular places

The dark side of the transit network being in place is that there's not as
much incentive to ensure local growth. So everything is a 40 minute train ride
away.

(To a greater extent the Shinkansen did this for neighboring cities. You can
now get to Tokyo in an hour, so there is less pressure to have stuff in your
town. People end up getting used to it and moving to Tokyo)

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rayiner
The development permissiveness in Tokyo is amazing. In the US, space under
overpasses is wasted, and often becomes desolate and quite scary for
pedestrians to traverse. In Tokyo, you’ll see retail built under the overpass.

~~~
harryh
Interestingly, there is a mall underneath the Manhattan bridge overpass in
Chinatown NYC. It's a pretty cool place:

[http://bedfordandbowery.com/2016/12/your-next-favorite-
book-...](http://bedfordandbowery.com/2016/12/your-next-favorite-book-or-
album-is-hiding-in-a-mall-under-the-manhattan-bridge/)

[http://gothamist.com/2014/11/18/dim_sum_dance_party_you_guys...](http://gothamist.com/2014/11/18/dim_sum_dance_party_you_guys.php)

~~~
rayiner
That’s neat. I can’t think of anything like that in DC. These are all over the
place in Tokyo.

~~~
harryh
After thinking a bit more, I also remembered Pershing Square Cafe underneath
Park Avenue across from Grand Central Station. Kinda the same thing on a
smaller scale.

[https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7521215,-73.9777846,3a,75y,1...](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7521215,-73.9777846,3a,75y,190.77h,100.71t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sucyEbqJyUWSYt_BUtqLQSQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

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coldcode
One factor not mentioned is that Tokyo was almost completely destroyed by
bombs and especially by firestorms during World War 2. This required
rebuilding much of the city after the war. Cities like New York have never
been destroyed. San Francisco was destroyed by earthquake much further back
(in 1906 before modern skyscrapers were common). So some of what we see here
may be rethinking following destruction as well as other factors.

~~~
lemoncucumber
On the other hand, the cities in the US that were built out postwar tend to be
sprawly and not very dense. San Francisco arguably got lucky to be (re-)built
before detached single family homes were in vogue.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Even the US cities that have grown post war generally had their city centers
long before the war, and their tallest buildings tend to be there. This is
about tall building density, not population density.

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ruytlm
I've noticed similar in some European cities in terms of an apparent higher
average density. I've always attributed it to cities that have existed longer,
and that were already significantly more established by the time technology
(bicycles, trains, cars) helped people commute further.

In the absence of this technology, I've always assumed people tended to stay
more local, which meant that cities ended up a cluster of local communities,
rather than one large central district with a large number of commuters.

That said, this seems to conflict with the example of Tokyo, which I
understand was significantly rebuilt after the second world war.

~~~
sevensor
There's also the fact that, not only was Tokyo rebuilt after the war, but that
it is continually being rebuilt in a way that U.S. cities aren't. My
understanding is that there's a strong preference in Japan for living in newly
constructed residences, which means that older housing stock is being replaced
at a much higher rate than elsewhere.

~~~
graphitezepp
There is a strong preference for new houses, add in their superstition where
if someone dies in a house it might as well be considered unmarketable and you
get a market where you have to always keep building.

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hudibras
This blogpost lays out a pretty convincing case that difference between
Japanese and (say) American zoning laws are the main reason for this type of
"continuous urbanization" in Japan.

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

~~~
dnomad
It's not unique to Japan: many other Asian cities exhibit dynamic, multi-polar
cities and extraordinary continuous density.

> 1- Zoning is a national law, not a municipal by-law

This is pretty much it.The fact that strong central governments can ensure
good density and growth means that Asian cities are growing as needed to serve
the national economic agenda. In the West, particularly Europe and the US,
cities are ruled by local municipal powers who all have strong incentives to
stop growth and increase prices/rents. There's really no mystery here.

~~~
stevenwoo
Interesting policy in urbanization/national economic agenda in China.

[https://www.economist.com/china/2018/06/23/china-is-
trying-t...](https://www.economist.com/china/2018/06/23/china-is-trying-to-
turn-itself-into-a-country-of-19-super-regions)

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tompccs
London is similar to Tokyo. After the Second World War, Blitzed-out land was
bought cheaply by local councils and high-rise, high-density (but generally
good quality) housing was built on those sites, hence an uneven spread of
high-rise buildings throughout the city. Historically though the tallest
buildings had to be church spires and the first true "skyscraper" in London
was probably the Post Office Tower (now BT Tower) in Fitzrovia in the 1960s.
It now stands pretty isolated as most of the tallest buildings in London are
concentrated around the City and Canary Wharf, in the east and east docklands
areas.

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beerbajay
My understanding was that the actual _ground_ in NYC roughly determined
building height. Manhattan was originally a swampy island, so you need to find
something hard underneath (bedrock) to build on if you want 50 stories.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _you need to find something hard underneath (bedrock) to build on if you
> want 50 stories_

This is actually something of a myth [1].

[1] [https://www.google.com/amp/observer.com/2012/01/uncanny-
vall...](https://www.google.com/amp/observer.com/2012/01/uncanny-valley-the-
real-reason-there-are-no-skyscrapers-in-the-middle-of-manhattan/amp/)

------
quicklime
> I’m still at a loss as to what caused this dynamic. My best guess is that
> the city developed alongside a mature, well-supported rail system that could
> whisk people from one part of the city to another, so the advantage of being
> in the middle of it all was lower. Manhattan’s subway system could be
> described in much the same way though, so this answer is not satisfying.

I think the author is correct in saying that it's due to the rail system. The
difference between Tokyo and New York is that the Yamanote line runs in a
circle, whereas Manhattan's subway lines don't.

The Yamanote line not only connects most of Tokyo's major districts (Shinjuku,
Shibuya, Ginza, Ikebukuro, etc.), but it's also the line that connects other
train lines together. It's kind of like the beltway/orbital/ring road of a
typical American city, just that it's a railway not a freeway. My
understanding is that after WW2 when the city was being rebuilt, it was a
conscious decision not to define a central neighborhood, and instead have all
the lines connect to any station on the Yamanote line instead.

Note that this is not a Japanese thing - Osaka's tall buildings are clustered
around Umeda, and Nagoya's are in the area around Shin-Nagoya station. Those
cities also don't have a central circle line like the one Tokyo has.

~~~
pandem
Osaka has a central circle line, Osaka Loop Line.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_Loop_Line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_Loop_Line)

The main stations along this line are probably Kyobashi and Tennoji, the
latter of which has at least the tallest building in Japan.

I would mainly divide Osaka in two centers, with Umeda being the CBD and
Namba/Shinsaibashi area to be the center for people going out.

~~~
quicklime
Ah you're right, I don't know how I missed that! I guess it just doesn't
follow the city's main neighborhoods like Tokyo's one does. There goes my
theory...

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mercurysmessage
Looking out over Tokyo from one of the city centres (Tokyo is really a
prefecture, and a collection of smaller cities), you can see that the other
cities look quite built up, and the areas between are the smaller buildings
the author is talking about.

I don't think the image provided does it justice, as it just showed a small
subsection of Tokyo, and not what the city actually looks like.

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lang_agnostic
No mention to earthquake or typhoons?

I always thought the urbanization of Japan was mostly limited by natural
conditions.

Indeed, there is no point in making tall buildings if they are more likely to
fall and cost more in repairs and anti-seismic technology

~~~
boomboomsubban
San Fransisco was one of the main cities Tokyo was compared to, which faces
very similar natural conditions.

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tzakrajs
How can the author claim the lack of density in a city such as Tokyo when it
has districts like Shibuya or Akiba which you really can't go any more dense
without adding stories to the existing building.

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2038AD
Léon Krier is worth mentioning here. He's an architect associated with New
Urbanism who also creates illustrations which demonstrate his points well.

For height limits you have the architectural stutter
[https://www.architectural-
review.com/Pictures/web/p/y/l/spee...](https://www.architectural-
review.com/Pictures/web/p/y/l/speech-stutte_380.jpg)

San Francisco vs Japan seems very much like monocentric vs polycentric
development
[https://architecturehereandthere.files.wordpress.com/2017/01...](https://architecturehereandthere.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/screen-
shot-2017-01-10-at-1-50-08-pm.png)

\-- and organic expansion through duplication
[https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5JgoOuUmeDg/WMhJTUWeNWI/AAAAAAAAr...](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5JgoOuUmeDg/WMhJTUWeNWI/AAAAAAAArrE/V1Fvtt37HacOF5b76ly6UndVpvPpdgdlwCLcB/s1600/Leon%2BKrier%2Bon%2BOur%2BFuture%2BCities.jpg)

In this talk here he talks about the classical vs vernacular layout styles
[https://youtu.be/kFiYL8AvvnY?t=1150](https://youtu.be/kFiYL8AvvnY?t=1150)

