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Comment by gessha | Hacker News Reader

Japan has a very natural reason to build and rebuild - earthquakes and fires. This is part of their culture.

Their buildings are meant for 30 years of use after which they hold no value and need to be rebuilt based on government recommendation. [1] The government may revise this number but it stands as of recently.

They have temples that have been built and rebuilt many times due to weather and nature. [2]

[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/03/31/how-tos/ja...

[2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-japanese-shri...

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There's also the Grand Shrine of Ise which has been deliberately rebuilt every twenty years for the last thousand plus years. Constantly rebuilding it was the only way to ensure that there is always a crew who knows how to rebuild it.

I think the whole "teardown and rebuild after 30 years" thing is much less common now, since repeated updates to the building code that made buildings more earthquake-resistant, and therefore built to last longer.

California suffers earthquakes and fires, yet we persist in our refusal to make our cities denser.

California doesn't have 800+ years of cultural experience tearing down and rebuilding earthquake or fire damaged buildings.

800 years is enough time for a badger to evolve to correct behaviour through natural selection and random chance.

I thought that the whole point of homo sapiens is to use intelligence and draw conclusions quickly. Maybe I was wrong.

What does this even mean? My point is that Japanese society has a lot of old institutions and practices that accommodate rebuilding and revitalization. California was largely built up after WWII and has a lot of institutions that favor suburban development and have a status quo bias.

Doesn't Japan see homes as a depreciating asset while America's economic treats homes as a persistent or appreciating investment asset? Wouldn't this be one of the big reason affluent companies and people are buying up homes in the USA and turning them into rentals?

*Edit, fixed wording.

Yes, exactly. Our natural environment is similar, but our monetary and economic policies support different priorities.

Their cities are also much older. Tokyo is like 400-600 years old.

They ran out of undeveloped land long ago and were forced to increase density.

At least in California, cities are like 50-150 years old at best. Lots of cities are only running out of land now. In 300 years, I'm sure somewhere like LA will be dense.

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