Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities | Hacker News Reader

Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities

bbc.com

143 pointstchalla178 comments

> It's a concept that's difficult to replicate elsewhere, but Lydon compares it to what made old Main Street America so special. Designing at a people-first scale pays off. "The smell of fried croquettes drifting onto the streets, small shops run by the building owners, easy public transit access, a feeling of safety and community for all ages… it's hard to overstate how well this all works."

Honestly, even though I love the idea of Japan and the idealized vision of Japan that's often presented in the media, I can't help thinking that a lot of this stuff can be found much closer to home in Europe. The BBC didn't need to go all the way to Tokyo - they could find this in pretty much any Spanish city.

That kind of thing is extremely rare in the US sadly.

Nowadays. The last 50 years haven't been kind to people in the US.

I'd feel more sorry if they hadn't voted for it every two years for the last 50.

And outside of a handful of New England towns, wherever that kind of city planning exists in the US, those parts of town are inhabited by half-dead zombies on meth whispering threats at you as you walk by. Not a pleasant experience. That's why sane people in the US usually move to suburbia as soon as they can afford a car.

That's probably because the US said that meth addicts aren't allowed to exist indoors. So instead they exist outdoors. Who would've expected that?

> smell of fried croquettes drifting onto the streets, small shops run by the building owners, easy public transit access

The genius of the BBC is to gloss over that in a culture that isn't Japanese these things all easily become negatives.

Who wants the smell of other people's food, maybe from a cuisine you hate? Or new local businesses cannot start because they can't buy property limiting options for consumers? And public transit stops become noise and litter parties.

I can tell you haven't been to japan, the noise and litter issues aren't as much of a problem there.

Get to the bottom of why that is and you'll probably have a good understanding where the problems to address are.

Is it the monoethnicity?

Do you think being prosocial is genetic?

I have no idea. You clearly do, because you know an answer you're inviting all of us to guess.

Exactly what I was thinking. In Europe (e.g. UK or Germany) people often complain when chip shops or other fried food establishments open below them, because of the constant smells.

All of your complaints sound like someone who is projecting American values and behavior onto another culture.

> Or new local businesses cannot start because they can't buy property limiting options for consumers?

Are a lot of new local businesses starting up in America's suburbs? Is it a problem to have the same shops operating in the community for decades if they serve the community's needs?

Even in Manhattan I saw 'shops' which seemed to have a similar square footage to my bathtub; if there's an opportunity people will find a way.

> And public transit stops become noise and litter parties.

If you have garbage cans at your transit stops and your populace are respectful towards each other then this is also not a problem. If your idea of a transit stop is somehow also some kind of rowdy social event then the problem is not urban planning.

Fundamentally though this is a common American attitude. Look at something that's new and different and say "This would be bad for these reasons", ignoring the fact that dozens of other Western and Eastern countries with dozens of different cultures and behaviors all do these things and it all works out fine.

It's the same as the argument about health care. Socialized medicine would be bad for reasons X, Y, Z, even though if you look at countries which have socialized medicine and a similar standard of living you'll see that not only do those countries not have those problems but also those countries have better health outcomes, longer life expectancy, and more efficient healthcare.

You say that none of this stuff would work in "a culture that isn't Japanese", but what you really mean is that it wouldn't work "in a culture which is American", so maybe that's a good place to start looking for things to change.

> Fundamentally though this is a common American attitude. Look at something that's new and different and say "This would be bad for these reasons"

Among the other bits of wrongness in your comment this is spectacular. Americans are utterly addicted to novelty.

Japan being a well functioning society is not "new and different".

Initially I didn't mind those smells and sounds in Asia (it's anywhere not just Japan). But unless you're born there they become annoying quickly, especially if you can smell things and hear public transit in your flat. And because it's a BBC report it's for sure for western audience who was not born there.

TFA explains that Japan is unusual as being the only country in Asia with two cities in the top 10 most liveable cities in the World. That's why they wrote the article. If Spain had been the only country in Europe with two cities in the top 10, they might have done it in Spain.

plus it's the BBC, plenty of UK-ians living in Spain. No need to highlight that when a solid chunk of the readership are in or will go to Hispania

Or come to downtown Vancouver. I live in a small apartment, but within four blocks I have a community centre with gym, a pharmacy, a post office, a grocery store, a small bakery, the best liquor store in the city, three banks, a hot pot restaurant, a physiotherapist/massage therapist office, a vet, a dispensary, multiple hairdressers, an optometrist, several restaurants, two places to get gelato, a public plaza with a weekly farmer's market, a walking/cycling route along the waterfront, a car wash, a sports bar with arcade machines, skeeball, and pinball, an enclosed pollinator meadow, a science museum/IMAX theatre, two separate public "subway" lines (though one is elevated and one is below-grade), and two private but inexpensive water taxi services.

I can leave my house at 6 AM and go get fresh bread or baked goods and go sit by the water, or I can leave the house at 7 AM to get groceries if I'm out of something and be back by 7:10.

American cities don't want this because having a huge empty house with a huge empty yard and having to drive 90 minutes to get to work or 30 minutes to get groceries is the American Dream and no one who's been sold this dream wants to believe that there are so many better and more efficient ways to live.

One key difference that jumps out at me between various cities in Japan and Vancouver is that the COL seems significantly better in Japan. When I visited Vancouver I couldn't afford to stay in or even near the city, I had to find a place about 20 minutes away and even then it was pricey. Whereas in Japan I had no problem finding affordable stays in city centers in all of the major cities I visited, including Tokyo.

I will admit my ignorance here however and acknowledge there are likely myriad other variables at play here that I'm not considering.

As a visitor, it's probably impossible to know the real cost of living is in different areas, because you're not employed locally, paid local wages, or paying rent and utilities. You are a foreigner with foreign money staying in hotels.

Affordable to you or affordable to the locals? The yen has devalued a lot in the past decade or so, giving foreigners a lot more spending power in Japan and causing the current tourism boom and backlash.

The weak yen has certainly made Japan feel much cheaper for foreign visitors in recent years. But even before that, the general price level was lower than in many Western cities.

Also, if you're trying to save money as a local, moving just 3–4 train stops away often makes a noticeable difference in rent or hotel prices.

Still affordable to locals. The yen has devalued, and the cost of mansions (condos) have gone up, but single family homes, small apartments, etc are still similarly priced to buy, and rent is generally stable. A major difference is that if you are OK with a tiny apartment, you can get one, and it'll be something you can pay.

You can definitely see affects of the poor economy lately (lots of pawn shops popping up, replacing expensive cafes/restaurants), but housing is still reasonable for now.

Affordable to everyone.

While you are correct about Vancouver downtown, once you get o suburbs like Langley, Coquitlam, they are no different that what you are calling out American cities for.

If we limit this to downtowns, there are several cities in America that are similar (Boston, Seattle, SF, SanDiego, Austin, NYC to name a few).

I think OP must be in their early 20s and has not experienced much of life yet.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

That would imply they created their hacker news account when they were 3-8 years old. Seems unlikely.

Its more likely that they simply value all the convenience they listed over having their own backyard, larger living space, living in a quiet safe neighborhood for kids to run around in, and being surrounded by nature.

> there are several cities in America that are similar (Boston, Seattle, SF, SanDiego, Austin, NYC to name a few).

Worth noting the US does not have a single city in the top 20 worlds most livable. Honolulu is #25, Atlanta gets #35

That tells you something.

Yes, it tells me the methodology is biased.

Hahaha. Absolutely on point. Don’t like the outcome? Methodology is bad.

Never mind this has been around for decades.

It actually makes perfect sense. In every metric that impacts a persons everyday life the us is almost always dead last among OECD countries. So of course the cites are too.

As someone who lives in Atlanta I can't imagine any way it's the second most livable city in the country.

Honolulu and Atlanta are the most livable cities in the US? Give me a break. It doesn't pass the smell test at all. The methodology is obviously biased. No matter if it has been around for years or not.

It tells me the way they measure 'livable' is wrong. Given the choice, most people would choose to be in any one of those over where ever they are now, and the cities on 'most livable' lists.

Those top 20 livable lists are always pretty narrowly defined though. They’ll mention some pricey cities in Switzerland for sure, and for forget the poor slouches that have to commute into Bern from Freiburg.

> They’ll mention some pricey cities in Switzerland

The thing is that these cities aren't pricy for swiss people, with a swiss pay-cheque (err, direct bank-to-bank money transmit). It's all a result of decades long higher inflation there, that now has this extreme price difference. And with prices did their wages increase ... but not yours, visiting Switzerland. At least the country is so small you can just drive through. You don't need to go into one of their supermarket and see that all the stuff is 2x as costly as north, east, west or south of it ...

But yeah, prices play probably a huge role in this "livability" index.

Zürich (Zurich) is at place 3, while Wien (Vienna) is at 2. And I guess this has something to do with the spectacular low flat rents in Wien. They have lots of non-profit cooperatives that own the houses and take rent so that they can refurbish the houses and build new ones (1/4 of all flats in Austria is build by such cooperatives). All over Austria, 16% of all flats/houses are owned by them. But I guess in Wien it's even higher.

There are comparison sites that say that in München (Munich) you pay in average 1249 € for rent, while in Wien it is 872 €. Okay, I select the most expensive german town, so maybe this is rigged. But even with capital vs. capital Wien is cheaper.

https://stadtkosten.de/vergleich/munchen-vs-wien

https://stadtkosten.de/vergleich/berlin-vs-wien

The nicest town isn't "livable" if people can't live there because it's only for DINKS.

Those deals are only for locals though. If you move to Switzerland you need to pay. Actually, the same is true of any place with any kind of public housing or rent control, it’s a sticky advantage. Having been subjected to the Swiss rental market before, it is stressful for outsiders.

I wonder if the USA will go down the same route eventually.

How'd you measure 'livable'? 1. income, 2-n crickets?

That isn’t anywhere close to the definition of livable though

Coquitlam is slightly better than American suburbia, I had plenty of parks and restaurants in walking distance, there’s skytrain and BRT now too

It's because living in downtown Vancouver is expensive. Your rent probably comes close to covering the mortgage on one of those huge empty houses in the suburbs. That fresh baked good is probably ~$4 while the equivalent at Walmart is $1. No doubt it's a great lifestyle for well off DINKs. A lot harder to make it work for a family of 5 on 50k a year.

I don't think there really _is_ an equivalent at Walmart?

Walmart bakes fresh bread too. I get it Walmart sucks but they do have everything that a normal supermarket has, including fresh hot food, bakery, deli.

Yeah, something that bothers me is that there is such a tradeoff between affordability and walkabiliy. Most of the walkable cities/towns I would imagine being able to afford living in later in life I would imagine will no longer be affordable when I eventually make money (even on a dual income). Granted, I also don't want to live in dense areas but also want walkability.

I can find affordable walkability across the US - if we define affordability as "not that much more expensive than the new McMansions outside of the smallish town" - the usual downside is you have to accept whatever that small town offers in its two mile radius.

You're not getting affordable NYC or SF.

It shouldn’t be, and certainly doesn’t have to be. Logically it should be cheaper to live in an apartment than an entire house - obviously.

Suburbs are subsidized by economic centres. And the state of affairs in North America - Vancouver included - is we’re not building housing to match demand. That’s true purely in terms of individual units but it’s also true for types of units. Like apartments that aren’t luxury units, but that can fit a family. They don’t build those anymore because city council makes it completely unprofitable for developers.

If you think that apartment living is inherently more expensive I’m sorry to tell you that you have it completely backwards.

I would suggest that if every practical example contradicts your logic it is your logic that is wrong.

This 20-minute video argues that downtowns subsidize suburbs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1G3D55LD-E. I found the arguments pretty persuasive. I'd love to hear counterpoints to them, though.

I live in an American city. I have a yard large enough to play frisbee with my dog. I walk downstairs to go to work. I can walk to a good taqueria and take pole dancing classes a few doors up (someday). There is an evil bank that I could walk to but don't. Cafe, Thai, Soul Food, Vietnamese, Pizza. Closer than all of the walking distance I mentioned is light rail that goes downtown and further. Someday it might even go to Vancouver (the other one sadly :( )

I live in a US city.

I have a nature area, gym, pharmacy, grocery store, numerous restaurants, bar, and a bunch of other amenities you just listed. I live basically on the rail line so I can get to the rest of the city in 30 minutes (with more of said amenities) and am at the intersection of two major highways which means I have even more travel options. I'm 2 train stops from a smaller downtown which has every botique shop you can imagine.

I do live in a place that was specifically designed for this but these places are designed and aren't that unheard of in US cities. When I lived in the suburbs I had similar options a few minutes walk from my house.

Plenty of American cities have this. I have three big grocery stores within a 2-7 minute walk. Myriad restaurants, bakeries, and cafes literally on the same block and within walking distance of me.

Vancouver is great, just wanted to call out the bias and massive overgeneralization in your statement.

What a shame you don’t have good public transit, horrible crime and pollution, poor schools and a police force that is actively against you.

The US does not have a single city in the top 20 worlds most livable for a reason. (Many, actually)

And yet many people continue to choose to live in the US or actively try to immigrate here. "Most livable" is highly subjective and such rankings are but one lens to evaluate where to live.

Unfortunately there is no such thing as utopia and there are always pros and cons.

It's a big country. Even today there are wonderful places to live in the USA, and also terrible places.

Absolutely. And even the wonderful places don’t make the top 20 in the world.

> Plenty of American cities have this. I have three big grocery stores...

Yeah this is precisely the exact opposite of what the article is talking about.

America is too big to compare it with one single city of Canada.

Canada wins either way. You can notice this on reddit discussions too - they are absolutely upset about the orange king. And that motivates Canadians to do better than Americans now - after all you don't want the orange king to be able to ruin Canada here.

The single most frustrating thing about being in Canada is they can't even work out how to use their current grievances to deal with, you know, getting out of our own way like the crazy inter provincial trade restrictions. And yet the complex remains.

One of the insane aspects of this is it's genuinely easier to deal with foreign countries than other parts of the same country . . . but I digress.

> Or come to downtown Vancouver

In the last ~20 years Vancouver has almost always been the number one or number two worlds most livable city, so this makes perfect sense.

Vancouver dream, not achievable with a median income

I live in Ballard Seattle, we have most of that except the hot pot place (we are getting a Korean BBQ someday soon though). Ok, no imax (you have to take the bus to Seattle center for that). And…no subway-like mass transit until 2065 it seems.

But you can get that in the states, you just need to pay for it, although the prices are something Vancouverites can surely emphasize with. And frankly, Vancouver area has some wicked unhappy commute opportunities as well.

The nice thing about living in China was that it was easy and cheap to live urban.

> The nice thing about living in China was that it was easy and cheap to live urban.

It is not that cheap when you adjust for the average hourly salary.

and imported goods are disproportionly expensive when you need them

It really isn’t that bad even if you do adjust for local salaries, but only to a point. Still have lots of people commuting in from the suburbs and that can be a brutal 2 hour commute each way.

America's greatest achievement is to last as long as it has while inverting all common sense. What is the fatal seed, I often wonder. I think this article suggests what it is. The role of the car in its fabric suggests it's hyper-individualism: a myth that the more untethered the self it, the more it will thrive. Hogwash

Probably goes back to the Roman idea of ownership + dominion; you're legally allowed to neglect your property. Compare this with some American tribes, during the same time period, where property ownership was shared and based on who were the best stewards of the land (neglect your space, and you lose standing in the community).

Vancouver is SF-level drug disorder paired with Detroit salaries, in no way is it more "livable" than a nice US suburb.

99% of Vancouver by area does not have anything resembling 'SF level drug disorder', and if your 'nice US suburb' didn't just punt all of its fucking problems into its nearest downtown, it too would have an East Hastings, or three.

It probably has a lower homicide rate (and a vastly lower vehicular homicide rate) per capita than your 'nice US suburb'.

That same 'nice US suburb' is also, for some reason, packed to the gills with terrified people who have an inexplicable desire to own guns for 'self-defense'. Self-defense from what..?

Having been to quite a number of what I would call 'nice US suburbs', and knowing people from them, a significant fraction of them act like they are living in some lawless Mad Max hellscape. How do you square this circle?

This makes me think you haven't spent time in any of these cities.

Are you implying “nice” US suburbs don’t have drug disorders?

  > The smell of fried croquettes

I have this on my way back how, well, fried potatoes/chips actually, and I hate it.

But yeah, this description matches the city I live in here in France.

> ... they could find this in pretty much any Spanish city

That's a horseload of bullcrap. For a start there are plenty of pickpockets in many spanish cities (not just Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia). Then there are people visiting houses: don't tell me it doesn't happen for I had my house visited by thieves the one time I forgot to put the alarm on (because I had to run to the ER for my daughter was between life and death).

I happen to know both Spain and Japan very well (I've got family in Japan): there's not anywhere near the level of safety you have in Tokyo in spanish cities.

Not even close.

It's funny how these articles always conveniently skip over the most important point: you first have to fill your city with Japanese people.

I don't think this is as absurd as it sounds. Come to the US Midwest. "Wisconsin nice" is a stereotype, and makes us seem a little bit like hicks, but it's real. People really are polite to one another. A friend from one of the coasts observed after a long trip through rural areas by bike: "Nobody tried to kill me."

Sometimes our infrastructure and zoning are awkward, and we're too reliant on cars, but I still think there's hope.

But nobody in Japan is actually living.

They are all in a rush to get home or work or school.

I feel sorry how little time they actually get to do things they want to do on their own schedule.

Japanese live for the afterlife, but know there isn't one, so it's coming apart.

You can live a decent life in the Netherlands with working 36 hours a week. And you can also be an individual- there still isn't a real gay pride in Tokyo.

On the other hand Spanish trains don't need women only cars due to the massive amount of dirty chikan ojaji (old guys that love groping women, even underage schoolgirls). Japan is not a paradise either.

> That's a horseload of bullcrap.

I agree it'd be hard for almost any other country to match that general sense of "safety" in Japanese society - we've probably all read the stories about wallets full of cash being dutifully handed in to the lost property office, and so on.

But the idea that Spanish towns are seething with pickpockets and everyone is creeping around in fear is also "bullcrap", imo.

My family is from Spain and I've spent a lot of time living and visiting there. Before she passed away, my 90+ year-old mum was out with her friends every single evening - playing cards, walking around the streets, mixing it up with families and small children strolling and playing outside long into the night.

I'm pretty amazed some robbers somehow knew your alarm was off that one time you had to rush out. That was pretty bad luck.

> The BBC didn't need to go all the way to Tokyo - they could find this in pretty much any Spanish city.

This. When my Japanese girlfriend finally visited my small hometown in Spain, she was surprised how lively the city was. Not Madrid or Barcelona, but just a small 100k city. In Japan the big cities are cool, but small cities are ugly and boring.

I had to laugh when they put a quote from a wheelchair user at the top of the article. Japan is many good things, but friendly to wheelchair users is not one of them.

As western tourists always seem to find out when they land with their gigantic suitcases, many Tokyo train stations require stairs to enter or exit.

on tokyo train and subway stations specifically: maybe in the past they weren't accessible, but at least since the olympics, they've become so. i believe they're closing in on 100% now.

Not even close. They're better than they used to be, and the major stations that tourists go to are mostly kinda-sorta OK, but the median station has 1 elevator if you're lucky, and probably around the same number of accessible entrances.

...and we haven't even discussed the fact that riding the train with a wheelchair typically involves reservation of a staff member on each end of the journey, to help you get on and off.

i'd be interested learning how you've come up with that - it's disinformation. i'm speaking from extensive, direct experience.

> I'd be interested learning how you've come up with that - it's disinformation. i'm speaking from extensive, direct experience.

I live here and have eyes. But tell me more about "disinformation."

Tokyo metro's standard for accessibility is to have one route that is accessible from street level to the platform. That's fine, but it's a far cry from every entrance being accessible, or even just ensuring that you don't require staff support to make it through that route. Consider Takadanobaba [1] -- a major transit point that I know well. Yes, it's technically "one route", but just taking into account subway station exits (and not Seibu or JR line transfers, which are harder), it qualifies only because it has a single elevator that goes to ground. Literally every other exit is inaccessible.

[1] https://www.tokyometro.jp/lang_en/station/takadanobaba/index...

i use the subway here nearly everyday - many different routes, not just touristy areas, often to small stations on the outskirts of the city, or other places i haven't been, just for fun. i don't think i've ever seen a station with only one elevator, it's always at least one platform-to-ticket-gate, and one ticket-gate-to-ground (maybe that's what you meant). the worst i've experienced has been a wheelchair-accessible stair lift or escalator (a bit dreadful, but they do work). if you want to do some random sampling, pull up a random station map and check the accessible routes.

(i use a wheelchair.)

> I don't think i've ever seen a station with only one elevator, it's always at least one platform-to-ticket-gate, and one ticket-gate-to-ground (maybe that's what you meant).

Well, first, I'm talking not just about the subway, but all rail lines, which is a higher bar.

Setting that aside, what I meant was what you've inferred -- there's typically one elevator path that will get you out of an "accessible" station. Yes, that (usually) requires one elevator per platform to work at all, but it still leaves most exits inaccessible in the average case.

I started this subthread only by saying that Tokyo is not particularly wheelchair friendly. If you use one, I don't know how you could possibly dispute this. It's a land of staircases, and I've been repeatedly foiled just trying to move heavy luggage.

I grant you that in Japan they will usually bend over backwards to make something work, but I really feel for disabled folks here.

i can't speak for all rail lines through tokyo - the ones i've taken have been fine. quick searching suggests they're probably mostly fine. the standard for me is not "is it easy?" but "is it possible?" or maybe "is it not a huge pain in the ass?" - it's always cleared that for me. signage could often be better, i'll definitely say that.

tokyo more broadly: it's improving, but yeah, it's nowhere close to 100%. obviously i won't disagree with you there.

and i didn't mean to come off as too harsh. but i imagined someone reading your comment and being deeply discouraged (as i might have been, many years younger) when in reality tokyo has possibly one of the best and most accessible subway systems in the world.

it's not all roses, but outside of the US, most of the world is not so wheelchair-friendly (in my experience and talking to disabled folks, at least). (and don't get me started on NYC, which is just wheelchair-hostile.)

> and i didn't mean to come off as too harsh. but i imagined someone reading your comment and being deeply discouraged (as i might have been, many years younger) when in reality tokyo has possibly one of the best and most accessible subway systems in the world.

Fair point. And I should apologize for being a bit snarky in response -- I get prickly when accused of "disinformation".

I admit that I'm used to the US ADA version of things, and that colors my views. But yeah, by the standards of the rest of the world, that's probably a pretty high bar.

> (and don't get me started on NYC, which is just wheelchair-hostile.)

Oh, definitely.

yeah, that's mostly correct, but i don't see it as a barrier. i don't think an elevator needs to be slammed down next to every staircase. if there's a way in, and a way out, i consider that a win. will i lose maybe 5 minutes because the accessible entrance is not in the most convenient location that day? perhaps. but it's just that - an inconvenience.

on the staff support: i don't really see any problem here at all. in fact, i think the service that the staff provides is truly excellent. most lines have nearly level train-to-platform gaps, but if i feel like i need a ramp, i can ask the attendant at the gate, and they will arrange for someone to quickly unfold a portable ramp when the train arrives, and for someone to do the same at the destination, exactly where i arrive. (coming from the US, can i imagine this level of service at any US city? uh, yeah, no.)

> if there's a way in, and a way out, i consider that a win. will i lose maybe 5 minutes because the accessible entrance is not in the most convenient location that day? perhaps. but it's just that - an inconvenience.

I get that, and I also don't think they need to plop an elevator at every staircase, but there are so many stations where they could have ramps or some other minor improvement to make more exits accessible. And if the one path drops you on the wrong side of the tracks from your destination, that's often more than a five-minute problem -- my own home station has one elevator on the north side of the tracks, but if your destination is on the south, you must exit, cross a busy intersection, and cross the tracks at grade.

> on the staff support: i don't really see any problem here at all. in fact, i think the service that the staff provides is truly excellent.

I agree. I just made a similar comment on your other response. Compared to many places in the world, they're at least trying.

(just curious if you're willing to share which station that is. i'm sincerely interested in checking it out.)

Not publicly. Send me an email.

Nowhere close to 100%. Even on the Yamanote Line (Tokyo's central loop) you will find stations with stairs only exit A, and one elevator that goes to exit B, leaving you in a part of town where you can't get to A without using stairs outside the station.

Greater Tokyo area resident here. Agreed, and I think exit count is the mechanism. The standard is one accessible route from street to platform, so a station with twelve exits satisfies it with one, and your Yamanote case is what that compliance looks like from the ground. On weekends with a stroller I can always get out, just often not where I needed to be, and once you are outside the gates that gap is a lot more than five minutes.

In fairness to Japan, (unfortunately) most transit systems are not friendly to wheelchair users.

Many comments point to "monoculture", but I think that a more useful lens to look at this is "the importance of maintaining society vs the importance of individual rights". In Japan, if you maintain society, my experience is that everyone is welcome (in my experience).

It seems like many times "society vs individual" discussion comes down to a cartoon like straw man discussion, but, living in Japan a long time, the difference in balance point feels quite tangible every day. I won't claim that this is a good tradeoff for everybody, but each society has quite serious benefits as (at times grating) restrictions.

It can be quite difficult to do something too outside the norm in Tokyo, but I am always surprised by the kindness, thoughtfulness and humane-ness I have been shown over the years. In places like San Francisco, a wild variation of individual expression is encouraged, but it sometimes interactions with other people can feel quite jarring and little recognition for simple, calm coexisting humanity.

It really comes down to personal preferences.

Japanese cities are livable in large part because Japanese people are socialized against behaviors that are not conducive to living in close quarters with other people. If you ask them they’ll tell you that.

I have watched a few videos on YT of people riding or walking around Tokyo and other cities. I think its a good example of what life there is really like in terms of seeing the environment, cleanliness, beauty, nature, buildings and more.

The only people in the background that I could see were people, young and old, travelling to and from school, offices, workplaces and so on.

The video was long and if i were to travel one day to Tokyo i would definitely follow the same route. Fresh air, nature, backstreets, all sorts of engineering and views.

How is it possible that a city of 35M in the heart of Tokyo, he barely passed a few bicycles and people outdoors enjoying life during a trip that went all over the place for hours ?

Is that living ?

#4 "Maintain Manners" is hardly simple.

simple and easy aren't synonyms. It's a simple rule, but very difficult to implement.

It's brief but it's not simple. "Manners" is an extremely complicated concept.

What qualifies as good manners varies from situation to situation, but the concept of acting with good manners is hardly complicated (conform to the expected behavior of the situation).

Enforcment is a matter of encoding the rules and then applying a carrot and/or stick -- same as any other rule.

"Conform to the expected behavior of the situation" is incredibly complicated. What is the situation? How do you determine what the expected behavior is? What exactly does conforming consist of?

It takes humans years to learn how to do this. Entire books are written on the subject. A major medical disorder affecting millions of people includes a persistent difficulty doing this specific thing. Even normal people have to put serious effort into this if they visit a place where societal norms are different from what they're used to.

If it's not complicated, then I'm sure you can write down the rules for some specific situation real quick. Go ahead....

"Stand to the right on an escalator"

"Put trash in a trashcan and not on the ground"

That wasn't complicated. And took 30seconds. Are there a lot of rules? Of course. Is knowing them all in advance possible? Of course not. Don't confuse that with 'complicated'.

Fine people who litter. Have an ai voice chide people who stand on the wrong side of an escalator. Both simple.

Do I really have to stand to the right on an escalator? I think the nearest one is a mile away, that seems really inconvenient and unnecessary, and it's going to be hard to get my work done.

I'm surprised to find this sentiment on a site filled with computer programmers. The most important and difficult lesson of computer programming is that simple-sounding rules have a lot of details that we take for granted.

> I think the nearest one is a mile away, that seems really inconvenient and unnecessary

I think this way of thinking, being obtuse on purpose to try to win an internet argument (without a prize, no less), is the more unnecessary thing. What point does that argumentation try to prove other than that a hypothetical version of you, as opposed to most humans who live in large cities, are an inflexible idiot?

Most people are not 100% unaware of the context in which they are engaging. We know to apply escalator rules when we're at an escalator. We know to put things in bins when we have things to put in bins. What we don't know, we can learn through observation, reading the atmosphere, and making at least a minimal effort not to showboat our individualism and, apparently, any obtuse refusal to engage with our context.

(By the way, I don't actually think you are an inflexible idiot.)

That's my point. It's a lot more complicated than "stand to the right on an escalator." You have to learn through observation, read the atmosphere, and engage with context.

There are some less obtuse issues with your universal pronouncement. There are escalators where it's too narrow to pass. There's no need nor expectation to stand to one side on these. The same goes for escalators that are so long that nobody's walking up them to accelerate their progress, or when nobody is around, or when it's so crowded nobody's able to pass anyway. And, at least in the places I'm familiar with, it doesn't apply in places where people aren't going to be in a big hurry. Stand right, pass left applies to subway stations but not malls.

Maybe this all seems obvious. Well, go to a tourist-heavy place with escalators and observe how much of this is learned behavior that takes repeated long-term exposure to understand.

Manners are really complicated. The escalator thing is a relatively simple example compared to something like, say, paying for a meal in a restaurant with a group, and it's already pretty deep when you dig into it.

> That's my point. It's a lot more complicated

It's not so complicated that you assume you need to run out at this very moment to find the nearest elevator just to prove a point. That's moronic.

> There are escalators where it's too narrow to pass

So you see what everybody else is doing and do that. Presumably, if it's that narrow, everybody's just standing in the centre.

> The same goes for escalators that are so long that nobody's walking up them to accelerate their progress

The fact the staircase is so long is exactly why people would be walking up an escalator, to save the most time.

> or when nobody is around

Then it clearly doesn't matter.

> or when it's so crowded nobody's able to pass anyway

If everybody's on one side, it's not too crowded.

> it doesn't apply in places where people aren't going to be in a big hurry

Alright, that's fine for where you are familiar. It won't take long at all to notice that's not the case in Japan, there are enough elevators all around the place.

> Manners are really complicated

If you're completely unobservant yet somehow think you need to be on edge at all times, which seems contradictory, I'm sure it is.

Or if you think that they're inflexible edicts without nuance. They're manners, not morals.

Nuance is another way of saying complex.

All you’re really saying here is that our big brains are sufficiently capable to make sense of the complexity, which I mostly won’t argue with.

Fwiw escalator standing rules depend on where you are in Japan.

https://myjrpass.com/ja/blog/Escalator_Rules_Japan

> However, each region in Japan has a different side to stand. In Tokyo, people stand on the left side and in Osaka, people stand on the right side.

In some places it is something sadly absent or overlooked...

And with countries with lots of newcomers it can take decades (well, generations) to take on the host countries manners rather than sticking to home country manners that may not mesh with host country’s manners/customs.

It's simple if your city is full of Japanese people.

I don’t know. I, the individual, can maintain a lot of manners fairly simply if I really wanted to.

I think they are saying that it's difficult to "maintain manners" for hundreds of thousands to millions of diverse "I, the individual" 's. It's great that you don't struggle with that yourself, but your manners can be made entirely irrelevant by 1 person in a public place who has anti-social behaviors (doesn't share the same set of "required" values for that society).

You're right, it can be read as it being difficult for society to maintain manners. I agree and I should have been clearer. But I also think you may be misunderstanding what I said to fit it into your own model. There is a difference between manners and what results from them. You can maintain (what you believe to be) good manners without it improving society to your liking. This is "irrelevant" in the sense of not changing things, but it is not irrelevant to maintaining your manners. Conforming to the bad manners is the more likely culprit to the bad outcomes anyway.

Caving on manners to avoid the "struggle", or rather, caving on manners because one benefits from doing so is just a reflection of how much one values the values. This is simply saying that more often than not we can maintain them, it just might not be worth it to us.

The actual question is if you could move to another country with a very different system of "manners" (read: culture) and throw out your learned behavior and adopt theirs.

My experience living in an incredibly multi-cultural immigrant dense area, is overwhelmingly "No". People like their "home" cultures (generally they believe its the best), and they tend to carry some degree of resentment for their new society for not recognizing that. It creates endless friction at the edges (whereas core values tend to be pretty similar globally).

Japan doesn't really deal with this at all, and what immigrant ingress they have is usually fueled by people trying to live a Japanese like life.

It needs critical mass, but then it cascades.

If you read through the description, what they talk about is that the culture is built around the idea of the individual being part of something bigger, and that consideration and respect for that something bigger (other people), is core to your own identity.

That's not hard for a lot of cultures, but it's almost impossible for most cultures in the Western hemisphere, and to change it would require a cultural reset that would run against the grain of many things that make those cultures what they are.

If it were possible though - and there are times when certain subcultures had standards of etiquette different to those widely accepted today in the West - it wouldn't need 100% of people to "sign up", just enough to make it ostracising to not conform. And then the outliers would conform.

We do this already: it's OK (albeit illegal), to cycle through a red light where I live, because lots of people do it, but if you were to try and get served ahead of your turn in a pub, you might get into an argument, because nobody does that without expecting a problem.

The cracks are already there though in Japan where this is starting to fall apart and has fueled a substantial rise in anti-immigration sentiment there. Particularly at specific groups that are not assimilating (but affecting basically every immigrant).

I feel like half your post is dancing around not saying this.

I'm not saying this, because I'm not aware of this. I have a friend who is enjoying living in Osaka, but I wouldn't feel qualified to talk about Japanese sentiment towards him or any other group of non-natives.

I'm saying that culture spreads through fear of being ostracized and the cost of not conforming to that culture. This is true in any country. It seems Japan has a "broader" and "firmer" culture that is rooted in respect to others, but it would take some serious effort for a similar culture to take hold in Europe or the US, I think.

A sense of "non conformity" leading to issues is not unique to Japan though, in Europe it is described as a problem with "multiculturalism".

The British (of which I am one), have spent thousands of years stealing the best bits of immigrant culture but seem to have forgotten that (or have been unable to absorb, for whatever reason), for the last ~60 years. That's leading to a rise in far-right sentiment and a growing desire for mono-culturalism. I can see evidence of that in Germany, France and other European nations. I could easily imagine it appearing more in Japan.

This is the flip side of East Asian societies where everything is polite and orderly: they're also extremely conformist (sometimes stifling so), and the conformity and good manners are maintained by strict social policing (it's not much fun to stand out and be different)

It only takes a small minority to ruin it for the rest of us. for example, bike theft

Fun fact: despite a national registry of bicycle serial numbers (and most people do this), the majority of Japanese people I know have had a bicycle stolen. Though it isn't unheard-of to get it back.

The West used to. It's not impossible.

It's been done before, and continues to be done in some places. It requires high group trust, and a strong group identity.

That's the key one -- it should be first and maybe the only one on the list. Japan is mono-culture and high-trust. They are all on the same page. You can't replicate that in western cities any more, such as the US or Europe. In some ways it's at odds with the idea of globalization and multiculturalism.

I have been living in the inaka for 8 years now and I always laugh at this kind of articles. They only focus on the core areas of Tokyo, Osaka, and a few big others cities, and forget to mention that outside of those areas the whole country is just endless urban sprawl of the ugliest, soulless cities you can imagine.

This article is specifically about its most livable cities. Why would you expect them to discuss the cities people don't want to live in? Every country has plenty of these. The point is to show the things that make a place livable, not to show all the ways a place isn't.

Because these articles always talk about the good parts and never mention the bad parts which make up the vast majority of the country.

I wouldn't say it's the vast majority if Tokyo/Chiba/Saitama/Yokohama holds like a third of the population. Add in those other cities you mentioned and the majority of the population lives in cities.

Of course in any developed country the majority of the population lives in cities. What I mean is that Japanese cities, outside of a few core areas, are really ugly and depressing.

Livable according to who?

People in Japan, especially those in the countryside, disdain Tokyo. If it was absolutely livable, this wouldn’t be the case.

Sure, Tokyo is relatively more livable than other urban centers.

just don't live in the countryside then, there's a reason their population is decreasing

Unfortunately my workplace is in the countryside. Someone decided it was a good idea to build a big international research center in the middle of nowhere. Which is now a liability for the project, as few people want to come work here.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/6Qf8EGk97jStkJFP7

People are forced to go to the big cities for economic reasons and not lifestyle reasons. Unlike America, it’s not just white collar office workers who must relocate to urban centers. This concentration forms a feedback loop.

> "Japan is built to work for everyone," says Josh Grisdale

Well - the article does not talk about the more recent hostility to gaijin in Japan.

Example (article) from a year ago:

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/09/21/j...

You can find similar articles by other media outlets. Japan has changed - and is changing. I've also noticed this on youtube, e. g. Paolo from Tokyo suddenly praising new restrictive laws. That was a strong indicator that Japan really fundamentally changed here. An old chinese stratagem is to hide the dagger behind the smile: https://www.echineselearning.com/blog/chinese-slang-hide-a-d...

I am not in any way applying that this applies to all japanese as such, of course; but I am more referring here to a trend where things are changing to the worse. Also, cost of living is high and there is an overcrowding problem in many of the cities. Even then I think the only city that would interest me is Tokio.

I feel sorry for nearly every one Paolo visits....

Its like those people have no life, it seems to be a self imposed volunteer prison.

Work, sleep, work, repeat until you die.

Looked at the report. They only show the top 10 and bottom 10 cities. Which has very limited use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Index#2026

Rule 1: be filled with Japanese people

Cities and any polity or group of people cannot be created by some abstract rules or enforced. You need it to be composed of individuals who are disposed to act harmoniously with each other and have a culture (which is basically a bunch of jigging to aid harmonious interactions, you cannot create top down the manners you don't want people to violate). Everyone acting in their own self-interest ends up creating a harmonious organization because all of their self-interest corresponds such that their self interest is reflected in the good of the whole.

Just as a feedback system, if there is something wrong in a city or organization if the person who encounters it sees it as contrary to their own self interest and is capable of dealing with it themselves they will.

If this internal principle does not exist you rely on top down surveillance and enforcement which is basically delusional if it works will only be through violent enforcement against the people. Again in terms of a feedback system, if the polity is constructed out of a bunch of individuals who have a self-interest that corresponds with the good of the whole, there is no need to propagate that information to some manager. The persons directly involved with it are capable of dealing with it mindful of it's impact on the good of the whole because it's good for them. If you do not have that you would need a system of management, evaluation, and enforcement which basically demands the disruption in question is something easy to communicate and form policies around. Anything that cannot be just cannot be dealt with and the system falls under it's own weight. That's why technocracy is a delusion that is always doomed to fail, if the individual units in a system are unable to deal with aberrations on their own it requires the whole mass of bureaucracy to evaluate, construct policies, enforce etc. That is only capable of handling anything which is understandable to that kind of system, which is a small fraction of actual disruptions.

I appreciate the efforts of people trying to emulate the positives of Japanese cities mimicking the externals of it and enforcing it on other people is the opposite of any actual organic system and itself prohibits the more dynamic system that is required for an actually stable polity. If someone sees a wallet on the street they have to see it as their own self-interest not to steal it. If people do not see themselves as having a shared self-interest with those around them there is no enforcement or rules or policies that can make that polity stable or harmonious.

Maybe people just want to prevent getting arrested for a crime.

Seems like the hardly arrest the innocent, even if they didn’t do it

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/11/04/inquiry-needed-japans-fl...

Singapore is a multi-culturial society and it is also known to be very safe and clean like Japan. You can definitely make people behave with top down rules, and eventually it just becomes 'culture'.

>You can definitely make people behave with top down rules, and eventually it just becomes 'culture'.

If by people you mean the particular type of people that live in Singapore, who are known across the world to be supple and tame. Now try this logic in the United States with certain subpopulations who are chronically misbehaved and see where it gets you. Hint: it's been tried for a long time and it doesn't work.

That was what singaporeans were like too when it split off from Malaysia, if enough people wanted to we could beat order and rule of law into the US. The problem is that too much of the US are bleeding hearts who oppose any law that even slightly inconveniences anyone unfortunate, and the other part of the US is stuck in a frontier mentality of the 1800s

They commonality is authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism has a bad connotation in Western societies based on individualism.

In Japan, the authority is the group and social norms. In Singapore, it’s the BDFL. This involve restricting individual freedoms for the greater good. This would never work in America.

> 4. Maintain manners in shared spaces

Before reading the article, I guessed that it would ultimately be about human cooperation. Most discussions about human activities seem to come back to how people work together and respect shared spaces.

I also think this idea extends to environmental problems. In the end, they still boil down to human cooperation. If we want to solve environmental problems, we first have to solve problems of human cooperation. Simply put, to reduce conflict between humans and nature, we must first reduce conflict among humans.

What do you call the many employees who dont go home at 5 but stay because the culture requires them to wait for the more seniors to leave first ?

Is that respect ?

I call it, "people who don't know better continuing to talk about this out-dated concept."

Yes, it still exists. It is also slowly going away, just like mandatory drinking parties.

Japan is a homogeneous country, their solutions are for all Japanese.

US's #1 priority is to separate out the undesirables from living next to you. This was accomplished by zoning (big lots, min construction size, HOAs, laws), suburbs, must have car, etc -- all of which are only accessible to the super rich.

> get to work without a car, do your shopping on foot

Some cities in Europe have town-centers in every neighborhood within walkable distance. This is extremely valuable for a livable city.

Getting to work without car requires good public transport. Again, some European cities very good at this.

Earlier on I posted the following comment which for some inexplicable reason got flagged:

The BBC forgot - or, as is more likely, refused to mention - rule #0: ensure a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour.

To the person or persons who flagged this comment, please explain. What is it that got you to flag this comment? If there is one thing Japan is known for it is for having a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour. Is the truth so hard to accept that it needs flagging? Those Japanese cities without Japanese culture would look totally different and in some ways not nearly as 'liveable', in other ways probably more interesting.

If you don't agree with a comment there is the reply link to let us know. This is a discussion site after all. If you just don't like a comment without being able to put into words why just give it some more thought, the words may come.

Probably the snide reference to what the BBC "refused to mention" rule #0. Afghanistan has an even lower immigrant population than Japan, and rather stringent rules around public behavior, and few would call Kabul liveable. In terms of immigrant population, Japan sits around #155 of the ~230 countries in the world. You take a gander at the 75-80 countries [1] with less immigrants percentage wise than Japan (for a combined total by the way of 2 thirds of the world's population), map it against your own "livability" or "social trust" metrics and then see if your rule #0 (that the BBC apparently studiously avoids mentioning) still holds much water.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_im...

I wonder how much of these architecture, building etc decisions are because of higher percentage of aging population. In the west, we see more anti-homeless designs (spikes, removing benches in train stations etc) which is sad

There are too many people that don't need taking elevators at busy stations. The amount of times I had to cary a pram up the stairs because waiting was too long.

The BBC forgot - or, as is more likely, refused to mention - rule #0: ensure a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour.

When I read comments like yours, I always read "homogeneous" as "ethnically pure", and judge the comment writer accordingly.

No debating about the stringent rules, which I'ver read comes from the Samurai times, but I think your projecting your idea of "racism works!"...

> When I read comments like yours, I always read "homogeneous" as "ethnically pure", and judge the comment writer accordingly.

followed by:

> but I think your projecting your idea of "racism works!"...

You're judging what you want to see which says a lot about you and nothing about the comment. Let me spell it out for you so that you may not make this mistake next time:

Culture [1]: the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time

Ethnicity [2]: a large group of people with a shared culture, language, history, set of traditions, etc., or the fact of belonging to one of these groups

Neither the word culture (which I used) nor ethnicity (which you used) are related to race or racism (which you used as well). As you see, your claims of racism are in the eyes of the beholder, i.e. yours.

Drop it already, stop thinking in terms of race and racism. Do better as 'progressives' like to say, or educate yourself or whatever terms you prefer to use. Accept that not everyone thinks like you, in terms of race. Accept that most people use words like culture in their original meaning as stated above. Accept, in other words, that most people are not as race-fixated as you seem to be judging by your comment.

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/culture

[2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ethnicit...

Fine, I'll consider anyone who uses "homogenous" a bigot from now on. Is that linguistically acceptable for you?

Freaking bigots, arguing about words rather than their bigotry...

I think you need to (un)learn a lot before your ideas are 'acceptable' to me. Start with realising you're projecting your own ideas - which you insist on calling 'bigoted' - on others. Look in the mirror and make an honest assessment on what you see, start from there.

You can get this in Morocco yet there's never any articles about that ... it's almost like they're leaving out a major reason why they like Japan and it's not that the cities are walkable.

this sets the bar very low. why would bbc not just go one of Europes many bicycle friendly cities?

See also Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Quaint article you won't see in a few years, when everything with be about weather and climate. Nothing else will matter. Welcome to the apocalypse

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