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Comment by austinl | Hacker News Reader

One thing that struck me when visiting Tokyo (as an American living in San Francisco), was that it was not uncommon to go to a restaurant or bar on, say the 3rd or 4th floor of a building.

In America and Europe, restaurants and shops are basically all zoned to be on the ground floor, with residential or office units above. This gives the density a different feeling, because commercial/dining space extends upward.

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In the US, Chicago is also like this. I've been to a "shopping mall" that had ten stores but was spread among four floors.

Makes it hard to believe Americans when they claim their city is "very dense" when it is mostly single story buildings surrounded by parking lots.

Right? Our only truly dense city seems to be New York City. Almost everything else is not even close.

Manhattan is dense. The city is still a wide area with many low density apartments and single family homes.

In the US, Chicago is also like this. I've been to a "shopping mall" that had ten stores but was spread among four floors.

Chicago used to have a number of "vertical malls." I think Water Tower Place (7 floors) and The Shops at 900 (7 or 8 floors, IIRC) are the only ones left. Unless you also count smaller places like Block 37 (4 floors).

Some are now shadows of their former selves. Some sit empty (Chicago Place), or in various stages of redevelopment.

THIS! I was just talking to a city council member about my trip to Japan and how this level of density (multiple stores in the same location vertically but not horizontally) Had some interesting effects on walkability, sales tax revenue per sq mile, and mixed use residential.

ADA law in the US financially prohibit this. Once you need an elevator, the costs go though the roof for the building. Elevator design, installation, inspection and repair are incredibly expensive and eat up a lot of square footage on every floor.

Have you been to Japan? Elevators are quite common, and in most of the buildings with multiple levels and restaurants on higher levels.

Elevators are smaller there. But I think the cost of building is lower there, for a variety of reasons, which makes this more feasible.

Oh, interesting point. So when I see a marker on every block in places, that doesn't mean you can just walk off the street into them, they might be upstairs?

Convenience stores are almost always ground floor. I can only think of times where there is a mezzanine or similar that they might be on an upper floor. They are always placed to have high foot or vehicle traffic.

Exceptions would be places like railway stations, where there might be more people on a different level.

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