The Japanese Urban Zoning System
marginalrevolution.com
marginalrevolution.com
This was a great post. Mixed use cities are generally much more desirable in my eyes. The American suburbs are a blight on the land which make our nation so much more carcentric than it needs to be spreading the population out and reducing the efficacy of our now underfunded and sprawled out public transportation system.
Of course it's not a shocker that such a system evolved in a nation with such a staggering amount of land available to it's citizens who live and have lived in a nation with huge amounts of racial segregation.
The idea of a set of national guidelines makes sense from an engineering perspective because small towns can't afford engineers often (or may not even think to seek out their expertise) and in the end you have a group of individuals with no qualifications determining the fate of their town with arbitrarily decided rules.
And rating things by their nuisance (traffic plus noise) levels is a really neat way to quantify whether a building should exist in a given area.
Awesome! Lots of new things to entertain the mind.
Unfortunately the same system was later exported to other countries and adopted by their citizens, although these countries did not have the same 'free' space. As a consequence the drawbacks of the system are even more perceptible (and the individual benefits are lesser) in these places.
Talk about having an opinion that over half the U.S. population in behavior (and likely a hell of a lot more) simply don't share. The suburbs when done well, and especially now with the promise of solar and electric vehicles is a wonderful place to be. Wonderful even when done imperfectly. Why would you want urban if you could have greenery? Why would you want close quarters when you could have space? Why would you want loud and bright when you can have peace and quiet.
When I walk the urban downtown area, sure there are food vendor smells, but there is also inescapable rotting sewer smell in the streets. When I walk the suburbs, I smell fresh air. I see the greenery that was planted by the people who enjoy the extra space to have freedom to do so. Distribution of the population is a great thing for a lot of health reasons, even if it's supposedly less efficient for travel to work. The more companies get their head out of their ass, the less driving people will have to do anyway.
Here are a few really good articles:
- Why we should tax property by street frontage: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2016/07/city-taxes-as-urban-g...
- Advantages of one-way streets: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2016/03/the-case-of-one-way-s...
- Impacts of commercial density: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2015/11/commercial-or-residen...
Strongly recommend it! It's my favourite urbanism blog, although there aren't usually that many posts thanks to the long length and high quality
Amusingly, one effect was that love hotels put in restaurants to comply, and, to the surprise of management, their unashamed customers starting ordering meals. So more regular hotels put in rooms with sexy features, and love hotels started getting guests who just wanted a place to sleep. The distinction between the two has gradually disappeared.
One funny aspect is when you order room service, they give it to you via a little privacy sliding door. I assume so couples can order food after having already "slipped into something more comfortable."
This was Japan, so it doesn't need to even be mentioned that everything was incredibly clean and in perfect working condition.
I agree. They're also great for traveling by car if you have two or three people, since they're always by the exits. Rather than paying per person, you pay the room fee, pick your length (4, 6, 8, 12, 16 hours being common ones) and sleep in/relax/plan as long as you want.
Some chains are particularly picking up on this trend and going modern-natural, with wood/leather furniture and classy designs, with hardly a hint of "love" in the hotel other than the requisite jet bath and slippery gel mat.
The standout thesis of the book is that from a birds-eye-view perspective (what the state sees), cities that were designed to meet the local needs of people look chaotic, but the ideal clean order from that perspective ignores needs of people.
For example, a neighborhood with just houses connected by a highway to a commercial district looks clean and organized on a map. Only with boots on the ground do you see what a disaster that is compared to the model of having neighborhoods and boroughs with all of the community resources (housing, work, food, shopping, parks, schools, etc.) they need.
That sounds exactly like big gov't promoters, and trying to solving things at the federal level.
When the economy was growing like crazy in the 80s, Japan had the most expensive real estate on the planet, and the same zoning they do now.
Are you sure? From Financial Times[1]:
> During the 1980s Japan had a spectacular speculative house price bubble that was even worse than in London and New York during the same period, and various Japanese economists were decrying the planning and zoning systems as having been a major contributor by reducing supply,” says André Sorensen, a geography professor at the University of Toronto, who has written extensively on planning in Japan.
...
> "To help the economy recover from the bubble, the country eased regulation on urban development," says Ichikawa. "If it hadn’t been for the bubble, Tokyo would be in the same situation as London or San Francisco."
[1] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3c...
* * *
Edited to add: To your first point, if you restrict your consideration of Japan to Tokyo, you see the largest metropolis in the world with a growing population -- other cities in Japan are shrinking, but Tokyo is growing, yet Tokyo prices are steady. I'm not sure about its economic situation, but I wouldn't be surprised if Tokyo's economy was stronger than other parts of Japan. Regardless, it's important information that Tokyo alone is building more housing than the entirety of California (source: same FT article).
Very interesting article none the less! I find it a strange effect of the London housing market that it benefits property developers to under deliver in house building as the supply and demand situation will, even with brexit, mean increasing house prices. What can be done to get the incentives right?
The GDP of the Tokyo metropolitan area is about 1/3 of Japan's total GDP. The country is weighted toward Tokyo like the UK is weighted toward London.
In the US, the center of finance is New York, the center of entertainment is LA, and the center of tech is Silicon Valley. In Japan, Tokyo is the center of all of those things, as London is in the UK.
First, that FT article is terrible. It uses a "desirable 20 sq km slice" of Tokyo as a proxy for the city's population growth, but in reality the city's population growth, by its own accounting, was flat from 1977-1997:
http://www.metro.tokyo.jp/ENGLISH/ABOUT/HISTORY/history03.ht...
Even since 1997 Tokyo's population hasn't grown quickly, going from 12M to 13.5M (12.5%) in 18 years (0.65%, annualized). By comparison SF is a boomtown, having grown by nearly 6% since 2010 (1.2%, annualized; that's nearly twice the rate of Tokyo over the same period):
http://sf.curbed.com/2015/2/4/9995388/sfs-population-is-grow...
Instead, the FT article manufactures a lie by explicitly comparing the population growth in one ward of Tokyo (again, Minato) to that of all of SF over 20 years. It uses this unfair comparison to conclude that SF is growing more slowly than Tokyo. It's possibly the most egregious example of cherry picking I've seen in the press in years.
So the FT article is not to be trusted. But what about that "astonishing fact" about housing starts being more numerous in all of California?
Turns out, it's way less astonishing when you realize that Japanese homes are essentially disposable - the average lifespan of a Japanese home is 38 years (compared to 100 in the US). There's no market for used homes in Japan, and homes become worthless after 15-30 years:
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-are-japanese-homes-dispo...
A culture of disposable homes is obviously going to have more construction than one where homes are treated as investments. But what about this zoning change that fixed everything, and made Japan safe for development again?
Oh...that law was passed in 2002, and it mostly had to do with encouraging re-development of blighted spaces in cities across Japan, as well as improving infrastructure and safety:
http://www.toshiseibi.metro.tokyo.jp/pamphlet/pdf/udt2013eng...
It does some useful things - like establishing a class of apartments with no key money or ridiculous deposit requirements - but it's wishful thinking to suggest that this law, passed in 2002, suddenly made Tokyo real estate affordable.
My argument stands. If you want to know why Tokyo land prices have stayed flat, look at the economy. Japan has been struggling to find growth for nearly two decades, its population is flat/declining, and it is struggling with deflation. Everything else is a detail.
Basically, underemployment, wage deflation, people leaving the workforce, rise in part-time labor, fall in full-time employment.
Japan ranks 27th on GDP per capita (PPP), which is pretty good. In fact it's mostly a reflection of their unusually old and retired population. If you looked at GDP per capita excluding retired people, they would likely be in the top 15, maybe top 10.
"they're struggling with deflation"
Deflation normally leads to lower consumption and unemployment. Is Japan struggling with unemployment? Nope. 3.2% in Japan, which is incredibly low.
It's interesting how foreigners tend to have a distorted view of Japan's actual economic performance indicators. You can look at a lot of them, but ultimately what matters is that people have jobs and make money, so the unemployment rate and GDP per capita is what matters,¹ and Japan is doing very well according to both.
"population is declining"
That's the only factor you correctly identified. A shrinking population means lower demand for housing, hence lower prices.
¹ Actually some economists make the point that what matters is happiness, but it's hard to objectively measure it.
http://www.newgeography.com/content/005042-peak-people-japan
In any case, being able to live above your place of business on an urban street in Tokyo is a no-brainer improvement to quality of life for small entrepreneurs. It's a major reason why Tokyo remains such a livable city for so many people (30 million in the Tokyo-Yokohama megalopolis) despite the extended stagnancy in growth.
Because their products are wanted internationally, their elderly generation is parsimonious and has an almost religious belief in the state and all it stands for, and everyone buys domestic because it's basically the best quality around.
How is their economy in the toilet again?
To counter deflation (how many other countries have a deflation problem again?) you can just print money, free money. The only reason Japan can't print free money is because its citizens have so heavily invested in the state that it would be a political problem if you were to devalue their holdings on purpose.
Alternatively they could just collectively chill and simply not work so hard, but yeah, Japan.
Currency deflation is a First World+1 problem. It means your currency is harder than you'd like it to be. To even have that problem means your economy is stronger than any one economy that works on the basis of inflation.
Oh my word - when playing the SimCity series as a kid I always thought "well, this is a kinda weird way to work but I guess it's just a game..." when laying out the little squares of green, blue or yellow (SC2K colors iirc, can't remember the others!). I had no idea that this was a relatively accurate abstraction for real-life city planning in the USA.
This link isn't value added over the original post, it's value subtracted.
not surprising to hear that person is a white supremacist
While the Japanese system is implemented and managed on the national level, I can imagine this being more effective on a more granular level, while still being much higher up than the city level as to avoid the political repercussions of local special interest landowners.
Generally I dislike the way top-level governments are becoming the only game in town. But the point is to have multiple levels of government checking each other. When it comes to zoning: its the locals who are the "bad" guys.
I think the best solution is still planning at a local level but there should be approppriate rules from a higher level to ensure it works - usually including a growth target which must be planned for and minimum densities (allowing for some exceptions) for different kidnds of locations (greenfield, around train stations, etc)
On your other point - in my experience states tend towards the opposite - being developer lobby driven much more than nimby
It's not just japan, I'm not sure the US-style exclusive euclidian zoning is practiced anywhere else, if only for historical reasons: in most countries cities grew organically and mixed-use.
When we are young, we can do many impractical things. But if we make it to being old, its likely we've let a lot of those things go. So too with cities.
I'm not saying other countries don't have forms of zoning (japan, the subject of the article, certainly does) I'm saying few to no countries have as exclusive and tight zoning as the US.
First of all, the history of Japanese agitation for change, especially in Tokyo, has been notable. Consider the massive protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s over security and labor unoin issues, and the protests against the establishment of Narita airport in the 1970s. Consider also Goto Shinpei's ambitious rebuilding of Tokyo, which had been destroyed in the 1923 Kanto earthquake, with a roads, parks, and a transit system inspired by the great cities of Europe and the US, not by Japanese tradition.
Japan's current zoning system is a recent innovation, borne of the necessity of spurring growth during their long recession. The system it replaced was developed during the 20th century. You would have to look back before the late 19th century to find more traditional systems. This, along with the history of protest movements and the radical redesign of Tokyo in the 1920s, disproves the idea that Confucian orthodoxy and survival of tradition have much to do with Japan's zoning system.
Furthermore, traditional Japanese urban buildings are not a whole lot like traditional Chinese urban buildings in their exterior appearance nor their interior layout.
IMHO, rebuilding can hardly be classed as agitating for change against tradition. Furthermore, while protest movements have of course existed I would argue that they are few and relatively late to develop (massive discontent precedes) relative to other societies. It is a fact that many of Japan's oldest buildings are direct derivations of Tang Dynasty architecture, and in some cases (Kyoto) city layouts (urban plans) were directly copied from China.
Because you generalize by deploying tired old tropes about Confucianism and a conformist, "harmonious" society, which were never really true.
> Your opinion appears biased in terms of: (a) 20th century; (b) Tokyo.
Well, considering that we are discussing Tokyo in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the context of the article posted here, that seems appropriate.
> Furthermore, while protest movements have of course existed I would argue that they are few and relatively late to develop (massive discontent precedes) relative to other societies.
Demonstrably untrue. During the late 19th century, and most of the 20th century, protests were a significant aspect of Japanese society -- more so than in many western countries.
> It is a fact that many of Japan's oldest buildings are direct derivations of Tang Dynasty architecture, and in some cases (Kyoto) city layouts (urban plans) were directly copied from China.
If you were talking about city street layouts instead of architecture, you should have written about city street layouts instead of writing about architecture. In any case, Kyoto is unique within Japan. Within Kyoto, the urban architecture is not really Chinese, even if the street layout used to be. The primary influence of Chinese architecture in Japan can be seen in temples, not in urban buildings.
{{citation-needed}}
we are discussing Tokyo in the late 20th and early 21st centuries
OK, scope difference. 'The Japanese Urban Zoning System' != modern Tokyo.
Demonstrably untrue. During the late 19th century, and most of the 20th century, protests were a significant aspect of Japanese society -- more so than in many western countries.
I would argue that extreme temporary conditions (war, forced modernization/industrialization) are a skewed sample of a society's normal behavior.
If you were talking about...
The title is 'The Japanese Urban Zoning System': city street layouts are closer to this than architecture.
Within Kyoto, the urban architecture is not really Chinese, even if the street layout used to be.
I would argue that modern architecture in Kyoto is demonstrably descended from Tang Dynasty woodworking techniques, courtyard layouts and Chang'an-style high density urban layout. The street layout is still based on Chang'an.