
Japanese zoning - nkurz
http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
======
po
Some anecdotes from my neighborhood in a quiet mostly residential part of
Tokyo (All of this is about a 20 minute walk from the famous "Shibuya
Scramble" super-busy intersection that you see all the time):

\- I walk past two or three different convenience stores on my 8 minute walk
to the train even though my neighborhood mostly _looks_ like it's residential.

\- All of the buildings around me are either very large single-family homes,
or medium sized 3 floor multi-unit apartments. Almost nothing higher than 3
stories. There is also a school and an embassy on my block.

\- The very large estate owned by a single family that has lived there for
over 30 years that was next to my building was torn down last year. They are
constructing an apartment building. That single lot will go from 1 unit to 26
units. Most units are single bedroom and will not have a parking spot and will
be priced from about $500,000 up to $1.5M for some of the larger ones. I think
there will be 10-15 parking spots in the basement underground.

\- A guy down the street from me has set up a vegetable shop in front of his
house. He puts out locally obtained vegetables with prices and you take what
you want and drop the money in a slot in a cardboard box he has in his open
window. People running little side-businesses like this out of their
apartments seems pretty common.

\- Buildings tend to have walls that are built right up to the street edge
forming a 'corridor' feel.

\- Streets are so narrow when I first got here I couldn't believe they were 2
way streets. It might take cars 10-20 seconds to pass each other going the
opposite way because of negotiating the walls.

\- It's extremely quiet and peaceful (except for the construction next door)

~~~
sdrothrock
> Buildings tend to have walls that are built right up to the street edge
> forming a 'corridor' feel.

I can't stand this and wish it were regulated. I stopped cycling in Tokyo
because those walls up to corners make for a lot of blind turns for both me
and drivers, and as someone with a hearing impairment, I can't count on being
able to hear the car before it blindsides me or vice-versa.

~~~
po
With all of the prius and electric vehicles, you can't count on your ears to
save you anymore anyway.

Tokyo gets a lot of things right about zoning but the way bike lanes are
designed here is absolutely maddening.

------
mrschwabe
The difference in zoning practices is super evident the moment you walk down
any city street in Japan for the first time. In Japan, there are little shops
and mom & pop restaurants on just about every street corner amidst even the
most heavy residential areas. In many cases, the business owners live in the
dwelling above.

As a north american, I found this odd initially; but came to really appreciate
it given all the excellent options for eating nearby!

~~~
themodelplumber
Same here. When I left Japan to move back to the U.S., some of the things that
seemed really odd to me were: 1) sweeter food, 2) obese people, 3) old cars
driving around, 4) having to drive everywhere, even just to get to a small
store, and 5) arriving via car at stores that sold things like electronics and
office supplies that looked like throwbacks to a bygone era compared to what
they had in Japan. As a small example of the latter, in 1997 I was using the
Hi-Tec-C pen and I'm pretty sure I didn't see it for sale in the U.S. until
2007 or so.

~~~
sampo
> _4) having to drive everywhere_

I can imagine that people who have grown up in walkable neighborhoods, would
find a totally car-based lifestyle annoying. But how will those people feel
who have made the move in the opposite direction? If someone moves from e.g.
Texas to e.g. NYC or London, will they feel restricted or liberated when they
walk, and use the metro? Or will they try to keep driving everywhere?

~~~
brianpgordon
I moved downtown last month from the suburbs and I've found that in the city,
the problem of getting to your destination is vastly more complicated. I'm
completely bewildered by the changing bus/train schedules and don't understand
how anyone can juggle all of those routes and times in their head to construct
a path to their destination. Walk 3 blocks to A stop (absolutely not the stop
closest to you, that's very important), wait B minutes for the bus but make
sure not to get on the C bus, only get on the D, and make sure not to miss the
stop at E or you'll go clear across the bay, and then walk a block to the
station at F, take the G train to H; there's no public transport there so
you're going to have to walk. Don't stay too late because the lines don't run
all night. Oh, and you'd better go now because all of those directions will be
useless tomorrow because it's Saturday.

It's insane. I want to leave any time I want, pull up in a vast parking lot
less than a hundred yards from my destination, my GPS guiding me every turn of
the way, and get there in air conditioned comfort without getting all sweaty
from walking everywhere. I want to be able to go to any restaurant or shop
within a 20 mile radius without thinking twice about it, instead of being
constrained to a few places within walking distance. I want to be able to
drive home a car overflowing with groceries from any store I care to visit
instead of having to spread my shopping across every day of the week so that I
can carry it home on the bus/train.

On the restricted/liberated spectrum, I feel strongly on the restricted side.
You can't get _anywhere_ in this city without paying, either for parking or
public transport or an uber/lyft/taxi ride. I feel imprisoned within walking
distance, unless I have a specific errand that justifies the price of a ride.

~~~
kimburgess
> I'm completely bewildered by the changing bus/train schedules and don't
> understand how anyone can juggle all of those routes and times in their head
> to construct a path to their destination.

Two words: Google Maps.

~~~
zyxley
This is pretty much it. There's literally no need to memorize schedules, just
plug in point A and point B.

------
mattm
From the chart, I probably live in a Neighbourhood Commercial Zone which is
weird for me coming from Canada. There are small factories making sheet metal
or agricultural products right next door to or across the street from
someone's home.

I live in a city of 400,000 people. The sheet metal factory has been in
business for 65 years so I'm guessing that they were here first and as the
city grew, the area was designated as a Neighbourhood Commercial Zone so they
could stay but allow houses to be built since it is close to the centre.

Some other weird things in my area:

\- there will be 3-4000 sq ft mansions and then down the street there are
people living in basically what amounts to something a little bigger than a
shack

\- there is one new house near me that was literally built in a parking lot.
It is surrounded on 3 sides by a parking lot and the back side faces right
onto an apartment building.

\- another house comes directly up against a graveyard

------
desdiv
I was as giddy as a school girl when I read the phrase "euclidean zoning", but
alas, it has nothing to Euclidean geometry:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Euclid_v._Ambler](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Euclid_v._Ambler)

------
JDDunn9
It's unfortunate that zoning laws seem to keep us far away from our food and
nature. The inventor of the skyscraper intended it to allow for high
population density and be surrounded by nature. China's trying to do this with
Sky City, but it would be hard anywhere else.

~~~
_delirium
I think this is one case where the law is largely following many people's
desires, at least in the USA. I used to live in a city with no zoning
(Houston), and yet it was exactly the same thing: no retail or commercial
anywhere near the residential area, and very low density. Why? Houstonians
reinvented zoning via private-sector contract law. Since many people
apparently want to live in residential-only neighborhoods—or at least have
fears of what kind of noise/crime/etc. might happen if the alternative were
allowed—developers cater to that by putting "residential-only" deed
restrictions on new developments, so there are large tracts of land where it's
prohibited to use the land for commercial activity. Usually higher-density
redevelopment, or even subdividing/subletting, are also prohibited by the
contracts.

~~~
kiba
They believe they want to live in residential-only neighborhoods? They believe
they want to drive cars everywhere?

Yet, when it did come to living in those neighborhoods, would they change
their mind?

~~~
_delirium
I mostly grew up in American suburbs, and my conclusion from that is that many
people really do seem to like that lifestyle. Not everyone; some people who
live in residential-only, car-oriented neighborhoods would rather not, but
have various constraints keeping them there. But quite a few people moved
there on purpose and like it.

------
Too
Exclusive zoning sounds really odd to me. Not only because you have to travel
to get to anything. It also divides the usage of the city into different zones
for different times of the day. 7-17: People are in the office or industrial
districts. 17-20: People are in the shopping/eating districts. 20-07: People
are in the residential districts.

Even the most busy office district can become quite dead and scary at night
time, would you want to walk alone there at night when nobody else is around?
Who watches over your house during the day?

The problem is also when you combine these time slices with the traveling -
Everybody has to travel between the different zones at exactly the same time,
causing major traffic congestions.

------
abandonliberty
Japan has some of the most awesome architecture as house resale value is
extremely poor.

~~~
jcdavis
For those curious - this is apparently due to laws regarding depreciation:
[http://www.archdaily.com/450212/why-japan-is-crazy-about-
hou...](http://www.archdaily.com/450212/why-japan-is-crazy-about-housing/)

"Collectively, the write-off equates to an annual loss of 4% of Japan’s total
GDP, not to mention mountains of construction waste."

~~~
cskau
I'm not seeing anything in there regarding any law. My understanding of the
issue is that it's simply the norm. Expectation is houses only last 30 years,
so nobody spends more to make them last beyond that.

------
obviouslygreen
This meshes with my impression that the separation here is almost nonexistent;
the zones are more a matter of density than category. The lower residential
zones can't have quite the same type of commerce in them, but I think most
people in Tokyo live somewhere in the quasi-residential/neighborhood
commercial/commercial row, so the more limiting zones aren't something you
necessarily see a whole lot of.

------
sfall
Zoning on a national level in the US would be horrible. I bet it can have some
draw backs in Japan when you are trying to get something rezoned.

~~~
twic
Why would it be horrible?

How about zoning at the state level?

~~~
sfall
a regional or state level would be much accurate comparison.

------
WildUtah
It's worth nothing that bigger cities in most first world countries generally
have more expensive housing, rent or buy. Wages rise in bigger cities, too,
but not as fast as housing prices.

Sometimes we're told that it's a natural result of city living, sometimes
we're told that without high rise apartment density, it's inevitable. Tokyo
has 35 MM people, almost double the second largest first world city (Seoul, 21
MM), and has housing prices to income ratios far lower than London, New York,
or Los Angeles. [0]

Tokyo has very few high rises, medium density (150/hectare or 40k/mi^2)[1],
low traffic, quiet streets, and mostly single family residential homes. What
it doesn't have is low density suburbs (everyplace is medium density),
mandatory free parking, or a street grid that serves much car traffic.

There are eight first world cities over 10MM people and their housing to
income ratios roughly run like this:

(Middle class people can easily buy homes) Osaka/Kyoto Seoul Mexico City Tokyo
(Things start to get really expensive) Paris Los Angeles London New York
(Insanely expensive)

Japanese zoning has a lot to be proud of. If Nagoya were a smidgen larger,
Japan would dominate the liveable and affordable part of the list even more.

[0][http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/japan-shows-the-way-to-
affor...](http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/japan-shows-the-way-to-affordable-
megacities)

[1] SF is about 70/ha incl. parks, Manhattan 260/ha, Paris (20
arrondissements) 210/ha

~~~
maratd
> Wages rise in bigger cities, too, but not as fast as housing prices.

If you want to lower housing prices, get rid of rent control policies and ease
up on the zoning. Developers will create more housing units and you'll see a
substantial increase in supply, leading to a lowering of the price level.

The problem is that those already living in the city don't want this. They are
against new development and they're all for rent control. They want to
continue paying artificially low prices, while keeping anyone else who may
want to live there out. Just a tad bit selfish.

~~~
liveoneggs
this is false and boston proved it

~~~
scott_karana
More information please, for those of us who aren't Bostonians?

~~~
MrFoof
NYT article comparing Boston post-rent-control and New York City:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/15/nyregion/when-rent-
control...](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/15/nyregion/when-rent-control-just-
vanishes-both-sides-of-debate-cite-boston-s-example.html)

One of the big complaints about "increasing rents" is more of the matter that
low-income rental stock is almost never built, whereas luxury apartments are
built constantly (though they have to provide a number of low-income units
that are the same quality as everything else in the building). The low-income
stock still exists, it's just the most sought after rental stock in the Boston
market.

