The linked article focuses on the physical features of Tokyo. For me, even more attractive is the economic dynamism that they enable.
I moved to Tokyo in 1983 and have lived there and in nearby Yokohama ever since. Until 2005, I worked as a freelancer—mostly translation, but also advertising copywriting and other related occupations. I did my work at home, but I was often out and about in Tokyo to visit clients, attend narration recording sessions, visit libraries and bookstores, buy computer supplies in Akihabara, etc. Over the years, I interacted with hundreds of other people working freelance in the city: graphic designers, fashion designers, recording engineers, narrators, musicians, editors, photographers, videographers, other translators and writers, and various kinds of agents who made their living bringing together other freelancers to work on large projects. Our meetings would be held in coffeeshops, in taxis, on benches in train stations and parks, and in offices on upper floors of the zakkyo buildings mentioned in the article.
In those days, before the Internet changed everything, that kind of freelance work and lifestyle seemed to be possible only in a city like Tokyo. I don’t think any other city in Japan, except maybe Osaka, had a large and diverse enough population to create a similarly productive dynamism. I, at least, was certain that I would not have been able to get as much high-paying, interesting work if I had not lived within commuting distance of central Tokyo.
Since 2005, while still employed in Tokyo, I have been working in academia and have lost touch with that freelance economy. The Internet has probably made it even more dynamic in some ways, but I suspect that it depends much less on the physical urban landscape.
Like Hemingway in post-WW1 Paris or Hunter S Thompson et al in 1960s Haight Ashbury, one part of it is the city/neighbourhoods, one part culture, and the biggest thing is the people who create the culture and local businesses that make the neighbourhoods interesting.
If you hang out with interesting people (or in modern times share their information networks) then you'll find these cultural hot spots.
It's worth it for major cities to invest in fostering this sort of thing but often it happens naturally as a side effect of circumstance (post war Paris was cheap and booming with fun bars/cafes and plenty of artists, SF/Berkley was in the center of the free-love movement, Tokyo was in the Japanese capitalist tech+cultural boom/etc).
That being said, almost every major city has interesting people, you just have to find them. Some cities have much more than others. Some aren't even cities but unique towns/small communities. And some cities are riddled with poor planning or active policies that are anti-fun/creative/risk taking and scare away interesting people.
Seems similar to Jane Jacob’s vision for Greenwich Village(at least, haha). Anyone knows if parts of NYC (besides academia —-grant-drenched NYU, Columbia,&c) had that organic dynamism, at certain points in time, maybe?
Yeah but then you need something that people seem to get upset over.
Culture.
And that doesn’t mean getting stoned or acting weird or being narcissistic af, but having some basic moral and virtuous behavior.
You see old people come out and start cleaning the stairs after a rain. I saw it first hand and thought wow this would never happen in the US. You see people get in line and let the people onboard the train out before going in. Not gonna happen in the US. You can drink alcohol outside but in the US people would just be drunks everywhere and trash the place. And they trash the place without drinking.
So no.
You can’t replicate that sort of dynamic without people acting a certain way. Basic decency would be a good start.
Equally a fault of the people as it is the urban environment which shapes them…
> You can drink alcohol outside but in the US people would just be drunks everywhere and trash the place. And they trash the place without drinking.
Maybe if 95%+ of Americans weren’t indoctrinated since WWII with the concept of “a single family home and white picket fence” as the American Dream (and anything else is to be thought of as less than), Americans would grow up with a sense of and respect for shared space and environment. Instead we usually look at anything that is not our home/backyard/frontyard as “not ours” and thus “not important”. We see this in the lack of flagship public plazas/squares that you can usually find in even small European/South American/Asian towns, but also the continued shrinking of funding for libraries, neighborhood parks, etc.
If there’s no public realm in the first place, it’s no wonder most who grow up have no concept or respect for it. It’s a vicious cycle, and one many Americans (regardless of political affiliation) will insist is the “only” way, and actively fight anything else, since it’s all many know.
I think you're describing the Midwest. People clear sidewalks and driveways for each other after a snow, unasked and uncompensated. People let each other off public transportation before crowding on. And... there are drunks everywhere. So two out of three.
But what I'm aiming at is this: in less urbanized areas of the United States, the sort of shared ideas that allow successful coexistence exist. It's largely the major cities where you cannot find it.
People don't like to hear it, but a high-trust society is enabled by homogeneity.
Look at Japan's demographics, and opposition to foreign religions, languages, etc.
They don't allow "the world" to recreate itself inside them, and the conflict and distrust (Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam) that that brings.
Of course, everything starts with the people. They can have beautiful things on the open since no one's gonna trash it.
I miss how Japanese civilians try not to get in the way of others. When I'm just simply walking past slow people, they apologize thinking they had been blocking my way. Never happens where I live where people have a misplaced sense of entitlement. Where I live, people don't even give a single thought about their car's loud music system and motorcycle mufflers.
This is achievable with cultural education and values being taught from families and schools. It's not that much effort, but it may look unfeasible in the beginning.
Tokyo today is unusually liveable—safe, clean, functional and vibrant—for a megacity of its size: 37m in its greater metropolitan area, including 14m people in the central wards.
Safe streets allow for so many great things in a city. Unsafe streets mean everything had to also factor in security which completely destroys lots of potential business options from being offered most easily.
A minor example of this would be the vending machines everywhere including in out of sight places which we all know would be destroyed/robbed in many Western cities.
Japan is also one of the least diverse developed countries with well over 90% of inhabitants being Yamato Japanese. It is unsurprising that it would be safe, clean, and functional.
They're safe because their police make the US police look human. The amount of ways you can accidentally end up in prison with some extreme sentences is uncountable. I'd recommend watching any of the traveling channels to see their warnings on it for foreigners. Punishments for something even as simple as public intoxication can be comparatively severe when juxtaposed with, for example, the US where you might spend the night in a drunk tank if you're rowdy, or sent safely on your way with a loved one if you're cooperative.
Through extremely tough laws streets become safer. It's opposite most of America in the sense that we have a large degree of leniency built into our laws that seems to be getting more lenient every election cycle. Stuff like no bail, letting people off with warnings, "court dates" that you're responsible for showing up to would NEVER fly in Japan. Statistically criminals will commit crimes again if let out even on minor infractions. Japan seems to have realized this and capitalized on it. Speaking of capital...their capital punishment system is pretty crazy. Their prisons are also draconian even when compared to the garbage prisons we have in the US. Their closest approximation may be Russian prison in it's style of punishment. The sheer level of fear people in Japan must live with when faced with these punishments is clearly enough to keep society polite.
Japan is one of the ultimate "tough on crime" examples in a western-approaching nation...and it works. Well. People have this idyllic view of Japan for some reason and it's understandable why. From a distance it's beautiful. I'm not convinced the tradeoffs to achieve their society are worth it (extremely tough anti-crime law, collectivism, salarymanship, etc). Moreover, I don't think the people who idealize (really, fetishize) Japan want these changes either.
The best parts of any city are the places where cars aren't allowed or are minimized/not the primary method of getting around. The most economically productive, high-demand areas of any city are the ones at walking scale where humans enjoy spending their time.
A lot of infrastructure planners work to optimize traffic flow without much consideration to the actual humans existing in an area.
Tokyo doesn't have this problem in its most iconic places, as it largely relies on rail and subway for mass transit.
Of course, that's not to say that Japan isn't car-oriented. It is in a lot of places, it's more car-oriented than most people assume.
Still, Japan is a place where you rarely hear of any foreign tourist renting a car.
A fun way to visualize how bad cars are for a city is comparing train bridge and tunnel productivity to car lanes. You would need 24 Manhattan-bound traffic lanes to match the throughput of the Manhattan Bridge, [1] and then you'd need a whole bunch of other unproductive, human-hostile space to fit all the off-ramps and road junctions needed to make that concept functional.
The lax zoning laws (at least compared to the US) allow mixed use so you have more things within walking distance. This was a fascinating video on it: https://youtu.be/wfm2xCKOCNk
An absolutely amazing city. And fascinating in that in this more collectivist society you have actual individualism whereas most American towns are heavily conformist and enforce this through law.
A curious glimpse into the fact that societies are not simply collectivist or individualist but so or not so across multiple axes.
One thing that I find interesting is how much laws influence these things and how a society moves from growth to preservation.
It seems that societies grow greatly and then settle into a period of stagnation, constantly talking about golden years while actively stifling them in the present - moribund European economies, the erstwhile innovation cities of America.
Curious. You can only create greatness while your populace is weak because once it is strong it seeks the status quo and slow decline - loss aversion trumping exploration.
Ultimately, in some way, cities and states suffer the Innovator's Dilemma too!
Japanese people are significantly more individualist than Americans. You can have any weird hobby you want and they’ll ignore you. They produce more cultural exports per capita than the US does too.
The stereotypical collectivist society is a better description of Korea. A better way to explain Japan is it’s like England but Asian.
I think the axis here to look at is not individualism vs collectivism but empathy and willingness to cooperate.
> It seems that societies grow greatly and then settle into a period of stagnation, constantly talking about golden years while actively stifling them in the present - moribund European economies, the erstwhile innovation cities of America.
I feel like more often it's not "it was great but now it is worse" but the fact people forget the bad stuff and remember the good times.
Sure, buying a home is more expensive than ever but in general standards of living in most places are steadily growing and we're not getting poisoned by lead in petrol or have lead &asbestos in walls.
I guess you've heard it before but “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
I don't know whether it's true or not... hard to prove there's causation and not just random cycles of improvement and decline due to luck or external factors - the higher you climb, the easier it is to fall.
My first (and only) visit to Japan was a week-long trip to Tokyo in early summer this year. It promptly became my favourite city in the world (and I traveled a few places).
For me, Tokyo represents a pinnacle of successful urbanisation. The people are superbly polite and considerate, it’s safe and clean, with stunningly beautiful architecture within urban spaces that were surprisingly green and simply pleasant to be in. The car traffic is immensly busy, but works amazingly well. Public transit works like clockwork.
Public spaces are busy like you’d expect them to be in a metropolis, but in a non-stressful and benevolent way. Food is amazing.
It was love at first sight. Maybe I was dazzled, but I want to go back there very soon.
No, because the charms come from the culture and the culture will never be replicated elsewhere. Things like, almost no one steals, people return dropped wallets, people don't destroy vending machines (vandalism is low), people try not to annoy others (few house parties, instead rent a bar, practice music in rented music rooms, not at home, it's legal to drink in public but no one does it except at parks and no one gets rowdy, etc... etc...
Compared to the US you’re a lot more likely to live near a bar though. You can open businesses like bars on the ground floor of your house!
The US, which is supposedly capitalist, actually does all it can to stop any profitable use of residential areas to make sure people are already rich before they try buying in one.
It's not crime. It's cleanliness. Japanese people are really clean. That's really the main reason why things everywhere are charming.
There are cities with similar layouts to Tokyo but they aren't charming simply because those alleyways get really dirty. The griminess influences everything including the businesses and the crowds it attracts. It ends up influencing the whole flavor of the city.
Dirty cities aren’t a matter of people cleaning them so much as industrial processes and car fumes not dirtying them.
There’s also the different materials they use - everything in Tokyo is covered in concrete (not sure if that’s good or bad) but buildings also strangely tend to be covered in what I’d describe as bathroom tiles. I wondered about this, but realized it’s just so humid they’d be growing mold otherwise.
Also if you’re comparing to NYC, it’s just particularly dirty because everyone leaves their garbage on the street, since the government is incapable of organizing anything better.
In America, good luck. We can’t even get people to enter/exit a train orderly. It’s not an entirely fair comparison though. For example - trains in Japan stop at designated places so the doors line up with the paint markings. There aren’t any on Caltrain/Bart/nyc - so no one knows where to stand. And the conductors don’t have a consistent target.
Or take a busy underground subway. Japan knows to stand on one side and make way for walkers on the other. That isn’t happening in most of America.
But, I just went to Disney world, and that’s about as orderly/idyllic as I think we can get. When all the people there have a similar goal, and Disney has thought up all the processes to remove friction - like trash cans every X feet make it a beautiful place. Their crowd control is also top notch.
There would need to be a much higher level of societal trust than there has been justification to have in much of the world today. Add to that Tokyo's situation is built on a lot of suffering in silence. Tokyo is nice to visit, but the locals aren't nearly so keen. As a tourist you wouldn't see that so much. Of course that's not to say the world couldn't still learn a lot from the place. Besides, with many countries having children below replacement levels will such situations be necessary? Even for Japan perhaps not in the decades to come.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data."
[+] [-] bookofjoe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tkgally|3 years ago|reply
I moved to Tokyo in 1983 and have lived there and in nearby Yokohama ever since. Until 2005, I worked as a freelancer—mostly translation, but also advertising copywriting and other related occupations. I did my work at home, but I was often out and about in Tokyo to visit clients, attend narration recording sessions, visit libraries and bookstores, buy computer supplies in Akihabara, etc. Over the years, I interacted with hundreds of other people working freelance in the city: graphic designers, fashion designers, recording engineers, narrators, musicians, editors, photographers, videographers, other translators and writers, and various kinds of agents who made their living bringing together other freelancers to work on large projects. Our meetings would be held in coffeeshops, in taxis, on benches in train stations and parks, and in offices on upper floors of the zakkyo buildings mentioned in the article.
In those days, before the Internet changed everything, that kind of freelance work and lifestyle seemed to be possible only in a city like Tokyo. I don’t think any other city in Japan, except maybe Osaka, had a large and diverse enough population to create a similarly productive dynamism. I, at least, was certain that I would not have been able to get as much high-paying, interesting work if I had not lived within commuting distance of central Tokyo.
Since 2005, while still employed in Tokyo, I have been working in academia and have lost touch with that freelance economy. The Internet has probably made it even more dynamic in some ways, but I suspect that it depends much less on the physical urban landscape.
[+] [-] dmix|3 years ago|reply
If you hang out with interesting people (or in modern times share their information networks) then you'll find these cultural hot spots.
It's worth it for major cities to invest in fostering this sort of thing but often it happens naturally as a side effect of circumstance (post war Paris was cheap and booming with fun bars/cafes and plenty of artists, SF/Berkley was in the center of the free-love movement, Tokyo was in the Japanese capitalist tech+cultural boom/etc).
That being said, almost every major city has interesting people, you just have to find them. Some cities have much more than others. Some aren't even cities but unique towns/small communities. And some cities are riddled with poor planning or active policies that are anti-fun/creative/risk taking and scare away interesting people.
[+] [-] balsam|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcurve|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mradek|3 years ago|reply
Culture.
And that doesn’t mean getting stoned or acting weird or being narcissistic af, but having some basic moral and virtuous behavior.
You see old people come out and start cleaning the stairs after a rain. I saw it first hand and thought wow this would never happen in the US. You see people get in line and let the people onboard the train out before going in. Not gonna happen in the US. You can drink alcohol outside but in the US people would just be drunks everywhere and trash the place. And they trash the place without drinking.
So no.
You can’t replicate that sort of dynamic without people acting a certain way. Basic decency would be a good start.
[+] [-] thebradbain|3 years ago|reply
> You can drink alcohol outside but in the US people would just be drunks everywhere and trash the place. And they trash the place without drinking.
Maybe if 95%+ of Americans weren’t indoctrinated since WWII with the concept of “a single family home and white picket fence” as the American Dream (and anything else is to be thought of as less than), Americans would grow up with a sense of and respect for shared space and environment. Instead we usually look at anything that is not our home/backyard/frontyard as “not ours” and thus “not important”. We see this in the lack of flagship public plazas/squares that you can usually find in even small European/South American/Asian towns, but also the continued shrinking of funding for libraries, neighborhood parks, etc.
If there’s no public realm in the first place, it’s no wonder most who grow up have no concept or respect for it. It’s a vicious cycle, and one many Americans (regardless of political affiliation) will insist is the “only” way, and actively fight anything else, since it’s all many know.
[+] [-] JasonFruit|3 years ago|reply
But what I'm aiming at is this: in less urbanized areas of the United States, the sort of shared ideas that allow successful coexistence exist. It's largely the major cities where you cannot find it.
[+] [-] llanowarelves|3 years ago|reply
Look at Japan's demographics, and opposition to foreign religions, languages, etc. They don't allow "the world" to recreate itself inside them, and the conflict and distrust (Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam) that that brings.
[+] [-] signaru|3 years ago|reply
I miss how Japanese civilians try not to get in the way of others. When I'm just simply walking past slow people, they apologize thinking they had been blocking my way. Never happens where I live where people have a misplaced sense of entitlement. Where I live, people don't even give a single thought about their car's loud music system and motorcycle mufflers.
[+] [-] crowbahr|3 years ago|reply
Decency is for people who have things to lose. If you're already a "dreg" why would you behave well?
[+] [-] toxicFork|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] refurb|3 years ago|reply
I see old people tending to their house all the time. Even sweeping the sidewalk and other public spaces.
And some states allow public drinking and it’s not a bunch of drunks everywhere.
I’m starting to wonder where you lived in the US.
[+] [-] roflyear|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wesapien|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BMc2020|3 years ago|reply
Safe streets are the key.
[+] [-] TapWaterBandit|3 years ago|reply
Safe streets allow for so many great things in a city. Unsafe streets mean everything had to also factor in security which completely destroys lots of potential business options from being offered most easily.
A minor example of this would be the vending machines everywhere including in out of sight places which we all know would be destroyed/robbed in many Western cities.
[+] [-] throwaway-9000|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blue039|3 years ago|reply
Through extremely tough laws streets become safer. It's opposite most of America in the sense that we have a large degree of leniency built into our laws that seems to be getting more lenient every election cycle. Stuff like no bail, letting people off with warnings, "court dates" that you're responsible for showing up to would NEVER fly in Japan. Statistically criminals will commit crimes again if let out even on minor infractions. Japan seems to have realized this and capitalized on it. Speaking of capital...their capital punishment system is pretty crazy. Their prisons are also draconian even when compared to the garbage prisons we have in the US. Their closest approximation may be Russian prison in it's style of punishment. The sheer level of fear people in Japan must live with when faced with these punishments is clearly enough to keep society polite.
Japan is one of the ultimate "tough on crime" examples in a western-approaching nation...and it works. Well. People have this idyllic view of Japan for some reason and it's understandable why. From a distance it's beautiful. I'm not convinced the tradeoffs to achieve their society are worth it (extremely tough anti-crime law, collectivism, salarymanship, etc). Moreover, I don't think the people who idealize (really, fetishize) Japan want these changes either.
[+] [-] dangus|3 years ago|reply
A lot of infrastructure planners work to optimize traffic flow without much consideration to the actual humans existing in an area.
Tokyo doesn't have this problem in its most iconic places, as it largely relies on rail and subway for mass transit.
Of course, that's not to say that Japan isn't car-oriented. It is in a lot of places, it's more car-oriented than most people assume.
Still, Japan is a place where you rarely hear of any foreign tourist renting a car.
A fun way to visualize how bad cars are for a city is comparing train bridge and tunnel productivity to car lanes. You would need 24 Manhattan-bound traffic lanes to match the throughput of the Manhattan Bridge, [1] and then you'd need a whole bunch of other unproductive, human-hostile space to fit all the off-ramps and road junctions needed to make that concept functional.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbZXtSnabWc
[+] [-] alexchantavy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wozniacki|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] renewiltord|3 years ago|reply
A curious glimpse into the fact that societies are not simply collectivist or individualist but so or not so across multiple axes.
One thing that I find interesting is how much laws influence these things and how a society moves from growth to preservation.
It seems that societies grow greatly and then settle into a period of stagnation, constantly talking about golden years while actively stifling them in the present - moribund European economies, the erstwhile innovation cities of America.
Curious. You can only create greatness while your populace is weak because once it is strong it seeks the status quo and slow decline - loss aversion trumping exploration.
Ultimately, in some way, cities and states suffer the Innovator's Dilemma too!
[+] [-] astrange|3 years ago|reply
The stereotypical collectivist society is a better description of Korea. A better way to explain Japan is it’s like England but Asian.
[+] [-] ilyt|3 years ago|reply
> It seems that societies grow greatly and then settle into a period of stagnation, constantly talking about golden years while actively stifling them in the present - moribund European economies, the erstwhile innovation cities of America.
I feel like more often it's not "it was great but now it is worse" but the fact people forget the bad stuff and remember the good times.
Sure, buying a home is more expensive than ever but in general standards of living in most places are steadily growing and we're not getting poisoned by lead in petrol or have lead &asbestos in walls.
[+] [-] throwaway821909|3 years ago|reply
I don't know whether it's true or not... hard to prove there's causation and not just random cycles of improvement and decline due to luck or external factors - the higher you climb, the easier it is to fall.
[+] [-] bryik|3 years ago|reply
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
[+] [-] roflyear|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TooSmugToFail|3 years ago|reply
For me, Tokyo represents a pinnacle of successful urbanisation. The people are superbly polite and considerate, it’s safe and clean, with stunningly beautiful architecture within urban spaces that were surprisingly green and simply pleasant to be in. The car traffic is immensly busy, but works amazingly well. Public transit works like clockwork.
Public spaces are busy like you’d expect them to be in a metropolis, but in a non-stressful and benevolent way. Food is amazing.
It was love at first sight. Maybe I was dazzled, but I want to go back there very soon.
[+] [-] asiachick|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astrange|3 years ago|reply
The US, which is supposedly capitalist, actually does all it can to stop any profitable use of residential areas to make sure people are already rich before they try buying in one.
[+] [-] deltaseventhree|3 years ago|reply
There are cities with similar layouts to Tokyo but they aren't charming simply because those alleyways get really dirty. The griminess influences everything including the businesses and the crowds it attracts. It ends up influencing the whole flavor of the city.
[+] [-] astrange|3 years ago|reply
There’s also the different materials they use - everything in Tokyo is covered in concrete (not sure if that’s good or bad) but buildings also strangely tend to be covered in what I’d describe as bathroom tiles. I wondered about this, but realized it’s just so humid they’d be growing mold otherwise.
Also if you’re comparing to NYC, it’s just particularly dirty because everyone leaves their garbage on the street, since the government is incapable of organizing anything better.
[+] [-] tdiggity|3 years ago|reply
Or take a busy underground subway. Japan knows to stand on one side and make way for walkers on the other. That isn’t happening in most of America.
But, I just went to Disney world, and that’s about as orderly/idyllic as I think we can get. When all the people there have a similar goal, and Disney has thought up all the processes to remove friction - like trash cans every X feet make it a beautiful place. Their crowd control is also top notch.
[+] [-] atdrummond|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nuc1e0n|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steele|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hombre_fatal|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TedShiller|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roflyear|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ilrwbwrkhv|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rippercushions|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soperj|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dang|3 years ago|reply
Note this, also, from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data."
Lots of past explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33747701.
[+] [-] luckylion|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Konohamaru|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astrange|3 years ago|reply