It seems in America you can pick 2 from safe, affordable, and walkable.
From first grade onwards kids actually walk to school in groups, without adult supervision (except for the occasional crossing guard). So while you wouldn’t be able to walk with your daughter, I think it actually says even more about the safety and walkability of Japanese neighborhoods that 6 year olds are able to get to and from school safely without adult supervision.
The children were taught at school how to behave safely in the tōkōhan, and older kids were assigned to walk at the front and rear of each group and to keep tabs on the younger ones. In the afternoons, though, the kids came home on their own, as different grades finished at different times.
In Yokohama, parents shared the crossing guard duties. For a week or so every couple of months, I would have to stand with a flag at a nearby corner for fifteen minutes every morning and wave each tōkōhan by. (I was working from home then and was available to do it.)
The streets in the area where we lived in Tokyo had sidewalks, but in our Yokohama neighborhood the narrow streets are used by both pedestrians and vehicles. That has always made me a little nervous, but fortunately there’s not a lot of traffic in our neighborhood; most of the people living nearby do not have cars, and those who do seem to do most of their commuting and errands on foot or bicycle. I feel less safe in rural areas of Japan, where pedestrians often have to walk along narrow, sidewalk-less roads with cars and trucks whizzing by.
Building in a conservation area (not necessarily rural!), on a listed building or in a "greenbelt" area require special permission, which is not always easy or obvious.
I think the theory must be that people want some assurances. If somewhere is zoned for housing, I don't have to do pointless paperwork to build houses. It also keeps commercial areas away from residential which might or might not be a good idea although I suspect most residents prefer it that way.
Some of it is driven by economic growth (city centres have become increasingly unaffordable, particularly in capital cities), some by population growth (you can only scale up a residential block so much before it becomes a mess from a social perspective), some by fashion (hello Hollywood), some by speculation (it's easy to bootstrap a shopless residential suburb), some by urban planners simply failing in the attempts to create new urban centres.
I’m hoping remote work can allow more people to experience this.
My gf and I don’t really like to socialize that much and prefer to stay in and play video games and watch tv, so we love it. The ubiquity of the internet has made it possible to live almost anywhere in my opinion. For $25 a month we can see and do pretty much the same thing everyone else is doing every night on the internet. We cook our own meals also. You can always make new friends in a small town.
There are trade-offs to be sure, but if you knew how low my mortgage payment is you might choose like we did. :) All the money I save has allowed me to invest heavily, which will allow me to travel and see the world instead of see a city go by every day on a commute to work until I’m old.
In many places, you can live in a smaller town and be within an hour or so of a city. It doesn't need to be a choice between living in Manhattan or the middle of nowhere in Wyoming.
The problem this is missing is that "walkable" doesn't actually include everything you need to live. Jobs are the most obvious one, for those who don't have remote work or their own business, which is to say for most Americans. You'll also probably end up driving when you need to do serious shopping because your town center's general store isn't a Wal-Mart. Similarly for any number of specialized purchases or services.
In any case, small-town living and city living are very different. What's impressive about Japan is bringing a walkable, livable urban form to a mega city of 30 million people. When American towns start growing into cities (or when they are informally annexed into a larger cities' urban region) they usually do so by converting farmland into car-accessible suburbs, which is the problem.
Is your neighborhood truly walkable though? Do you walk to the grocery store? What about the hospital? dentist? Physical therapist? Pet store? Restaurants? Is there transit nearby?
Afaik, there are only a few cities in the US (all costal) which are truly walkable in the traditional sense, SF, NYC, Boston, DC and maybe Philadelphia and only limited parts of the cities are actually walkable. These are the only cities with limited single family zoning and didn't boldoze their city centers to build parking lots and freeways in the 50s like the rest of NA cities (see https://www.vox.com/2014/12/29/7460557/urban-freeway-slider-...)
Many cities and small towns in the US and Canada may have walkable elements in limited areas, but they are still very car dependent in most cases
To the sibling comment, walkable means different things to different people.
Walk to a hospital or a grocery store that isn't a small market/convenience store? You're already talking a city at that point. And, in the hospital case, probably not all the medical professionals you might conceivably want to see are likely to be within a one mile or so radius.
A ton of places are walkable in the sense that you can buy a house/condo and walk to a restaurant or two and pick up a few groceries. But, as you say, very few cities in the US are walkable in the sense that you really don't need a car without a lot of compromises/depending on others/using personal transportation services a lot.
I'll also say D.C. (and to some extent Northern Virginia and select parts of Maryland) makes car ownership optional, the transit system does a good job of covering a lot of neighborhoods.
I've been to a few college towns that also, by necessity, are dense and are walkable or at least bikeable oasis in otherwise rural areas.
Some figures:
- 10 percent of Pittsburgh residents commute by walking [0]. 17 percent commute by public transit [1].
- "According to the U.S. Census Bureau, public transportation commuters in Pittsburgh spend an average of 32 minutes traveling to work, the 11th-fastest transit commute time of the 136 cities in our analysis. That is also just nine minutes slower that the average commute time for drivers, the fifth-smallest difference." [2]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_... [2]: https://smartasset.com/mortgage/best-cities-for-public-trans...
edit: formatting
> The never-used formal dining room found in US homes would look bonkers to a visiting Japanese.
there’s always the never-used huge tatami room at grandpa’s house in the countryside
To be fair, I'm not sure how common this is with new/remodeled construction in the US. Entertainment pattens have changed for the most part and layouts tend to be a lot more open. In particular, you don't see the hard demarkation between dining area and kitchen area which dates to when the "help" worked in the kitchen and served in the dining room.
Here’s a 10 year old, 18,000 sq ft house in Ibaraki prefecture (same prefecture as Tokyo Llama’s house) for about $220k USD. It’s not large by US standards, but definitely sufficient for a family of 4 IMO. And with interest rates in Japan being about 1%, the monthly mortgage payment would be about $625.
https://www.athome.co.jp/kodate/1039825842/
This location looks pretty rural, but similar homes can be found all over Japan.
Here in the UK, it really feels like every business is taking my money and spitting me out as fast as possible (except pubs, which... are good if you want to get drunk I guess...). Vs in Japan where services felt cheap, trustworthy, and welcoming (such as clean toilets).
I personally would vastly prefer a walkable, affordable, safe, dense urban region over a lawn, a 2 car garage, and a backyard. But not everyone would agree with me, particularly for some who would say that dense and walkable is a negative rather than a positive.
I grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood, and every other house has a bench and some weights. Many of the families saved up for a treadmill or elliptical, and woe betide the child who thought they could use it. Someone on every block(usually more wealthy than the area average) had an above ground pool, and the neighborhood kids would go over and hang out there all summer.
I grew up in suburban Indiana, and when I went home to visit my parents, I counted it up and literally over 1/3rd of the houses I could see from their front porch had a basketball hoop in the driveway.
In general it seems very accepting if you fit in and very hostile if you don't, which is shown in a high suicide rate in school age children.
It's also worth noting that while stressors from gender norms exist in Japan, the idea that their suicide rate is extremely high is somewhat outdated. Its been decreasing over the last few decades, while countries like the US and many European countries have increased, to the point where there isn't that much of a difference between the regions.
Someone from BC and someone from Texas actually have a lot in common - both are from immigrant societies and both speak the same language. Can't say that for someone from Kerala, India and Punjab, also in India.
Plenty? Name five, other than isolated microstate islands. I can think of very few modern homogeneous ethostates.
The key point being that ethnically homogenous societies tend to work well. It isn't guaranteed but it does contribute because everyone is the same or similar. Similar ideals, similar goals and so on. The feeling one gets in these societies is stifling. We have nice things but they are for us, not for you.