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Comment by zemvpferreira | Hacker News Reader

At the risk of repeating myself in every thread about urbanism, in asian megacities like Tokyo nature is a train ride away, at any time, any day. In Europe we've just been bad about planning and building infrastructure.

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The US is even worse. It was entirely planned for people with cars. Some stores you don't even have a way to get to go in by walking, you have to go on the road at some point.

I don't claim to know all the Europe but I would disagree at least when it comes to countries I know pretty well - Czechia and Spain. Maybe not as great as Tokyo (where I've never been) but pretty decent. Comparing Czechia (where I currently live) to the US is not fair because we are much smaller and densely populated but one thing I like here is that I do not need a car - public transportation is great (incomparably better than in the US) and I can easily get anywhere I need. Sure, I cannot go to every small village at 3am but I have never needed that - the things I actually need require very little planning. Even the random unplanned trips the parent mentions; when the weather is nice and I have nothing to do, I just look at my phone while eating breakfast and look up the connection to where I want to go - usually there is a bus or train in an hour and I have just enough time to finish eating and go to the station.

>> in asian megacities like Tokyo nature is a train ride away

Only if you consider nature to be like a city park crowded with people. Real nature doesn't start at train stations.

The Tokyo area has fabulous public transit that will take you halfway up a mountain. It's usually a bus, though.

We went mountain hiking every second weekend or so when I lived there. We always took transit.

That's nice, but you still only saw a small bit around that particular mountain of of thousands that exist in japan, and you probably weren't exactly alone if there is a bus route from the city to there. It is not what I image when somebody says nature.

We typically went 100 - 200km on those bus routes, so we covered a few hundred square kilometres. Sure the start & end of those routes was more populated, but they drove through lots of unpopulated areas. Being mountainous Japan has lots of those.

We often went without seeing a single person once we got off the bus until we got to our destination (usually an onsen).

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