Tokyo: A big city that is also pleasant to live in

Post by ciphol » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 8:06 PM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #105

bedobi wrote: post #8

Having lived in Tokyo for years, the elephant in the room is "cars". The whole city is full of pleasant mixed use neighborhoods that are more or less car-free, and centered around public transport hubs that have everything you need around them. People, including unaccompanied children, can and do safely walk and ride bikes everywhere at all hours of the day, including when grocery shopping etc. The world can learn a…

I live in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and while it has many issues the general "not designed around cars" makes everything feel much more human scale which is something I miss when I visit the US. Unfortunately, cars are a status symbol and becoming increasingly prevalent, which then puts pressure on government officials to design around them. It doesn't help that government officials all have cars and clearly see car…

Post by mymythisisthis » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 8:08 PM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #203

aurelianito wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need for door bells. No need for street signs. No need for taxi stops. No need for privately owned cars (rent via phone app or use Uber like service). Those things affect urban planning a lot.

I don't think we're ready for all those things to disappear. The only thing that really has gone since mobile phones are phone booths. But the thing is Street signs and door bells don't take up any space. There's no real benefit in removing them anyway. Private cars are a big issue but the problem is people commuting from outside the city and shared car schemes are too expensive for that.

Post by bch » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 8:10 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #291

tsunamifury wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know I used to believe that for many years and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is just a “bike-city” circle jerk scapegoating Robert Moses in order to ignore our deeper problem: Americans don’t like each-other. We would have built better cities if we wanted carless communities. But we didn’t and still don’t. We want this. This is what we like. We are a sick people. And it isn’t Robert Moses and GMs fault, t…

This is inaccurate. The GM conspiracy bought streetcar companies to replace them with buses, not to eliminate public transportation. The reality is that streetcar companies were already unprofitable, killed by infrastructure cars and poor urban planning. So it was already easy for GM to buy these companies.

Post by golemiprague » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 8:16 PM UTC

flor1s wrote: post #190

discordance wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan as a whole may not be bicycle friendly, but you can get across all the major cities on bike quite easily without interacting with high speed cars. There are either bike lanes on main roads or back streets with no traffic to circumvent interaction with cars. Have done this in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya and they have been fantastic cities to bike commute in.

There are definitely some areas were biking is amazing, such as Shimanami kaido, Biwa lake and Kasumigaura. Cycling in Tokyo is a bit of a mixed bag in my experience, some streets have bike lanes, some have a bicycle strip on the main road (though this is often shared with temporarily parked cars), sometimes bicycles need to share space with pedestrians. Signage is often unclear. I guess calling it bicycle unfriendly…

Post by thehappypm » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 8:17 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #322

thehappypm wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really true though? Every infrastructure project in cities seems to cost billions of dollars (Boston’s Green Line Extension, New York’s 2nd Avenue Subway). It would take quite a lot of suburban road, gas, electric etc infrastructure to add up to anything close to that.

The infrastructure costs in cities are more expensive but service many more people and economic activity, they are amortized much more efficiently than a suburban bridge to nowhere.