Hacker News Reader

Comment by WillPostForFood | Hacker News Reader

Tokyo proves you need tremendous investment in infrastructure, not just unleashing developers to build without restriction.

View on HN

Most (if not all?) of the transit in Tokyo is private. When you build densely enough, transit becomes highly profitable on its own, and someone will do it.

They are private in ways specific to Japan that, what I know, you pretty much won't find anywhere else.

Can you elaborate?

Transit as retail and real-estate play: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/05/secret-tokyos...

The end to end control over development of these networks+districts was still more centralized, though not by a government, compared to the rather uncoordinated mess that has been US public transit development.

Public-private partnership is not so "specific to Japan". The transit/retail connection is definitely a uniquely bright idea but it's something that many other jurisdictions could emulate.

Having that work is specific to Japan. If there is a single example of someone managing to do that successfully, especially with multiple companies, I would like to hear about it. Transit/retail or rail plus property is used in other places, like Hong Kong, but with government owned operators.

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-projects-and-inf...

Operated privately is very different from built privately.

As I understand it, developers are quite free to build with minimal restrictions in Tokyo.

It's of course not the only thing you need for a healthy city. But it's a great start!

From what I've seen if you build the infrastructure it doesn't change residents attitude to increased density. Actually makes them more opposed as they now have very good public services compared to elsewhere and they don't want to lose it.

It's a chicken and egg problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com