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Can Tokyo’s charms be replicated elsewhere?

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Re: Can Tokyo’s charms be replicated elsewhere?

#121

Post by User23 »

largepeepee wrote: post #70
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore's achieves "harmony" in their diverse city-state through severe authoritarian control. There's harmony because the state dictates their vison of harmony which all must abide by.

Maybe at first. Singapore had to make lots of tough decisions early on, and they fixed it early. Problems which still plague their neighbors to this day. I say today, the base economic situation of the people and the disparity of wealth is a bigger factor to what makes a country -overall safe or unsafe, which is what the thread is about and what I was replying to. Safety first.

Singapore was also blessed with an extremely capable leader in Lee Kuan Yew[1].

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

Re: Can Tokyo’s charms be replicated elsewhere?

#122

Post by deltaseventhree »

mxkopy wrote: post #102
deltaseventhree wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make no mistake. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. Eventually the outcome of authoritarian harmony comes actual harmony as people become used to the rules and follow those rules regardless of whether or not they exist. The freedom to shit on the street in San Francisco shouldn't be a freedom that is valued At all.

Let's not conflate people being clean because the government is notoriously lethal and is tracking your social standing with people being clean because they've been taught from a young age to be respectful to the environment. Authoritarian 'harmony' doesn't imply any sort of longevity.

Sure. But make sure you also conflate freedom with people dying from the opioid epidemic, the huge drug problem in San Francisco and homeless encampments everywhere and the complete and utter failure to build one rail line connecting LA and SF.

All of these problems occur because the US values individual freedoms over central authority. You will note:

Freedom doesn't imply any sort of longevity Either.

The problem with the west is that freedom is viewed as a sort of moral truth.

People assume that an authoritarian society is bad and that a society with freedom is good.

The truth is far more complex. What I say is an aspect of the truth, as is what you say.

What truly should absolutely never be conflated is the idea that one of these truths overrides the other.

Re: Can Tokyo’s charms be replicated elsewhere?

#124

Post by deltaseventhree »

astrange wrote: post #96
deltaseventhree wrote: post #86

It's not crime. It's cleanliness. Japanese people are really clean. That's really the main reason why things everywhere are charming. There are cities with similar layouts to Tokyo but they aren't charming simply because those alleyways get really dirty. The griminess influences everything including the businesses and the crowds it attracts. It ends up influencing the whole flavor of the city.

Dirty cities aren’t a matter of people cleaning them so much as industrial processes and car fumes not dirtying them. There’s also the different materials they use - everything in Tokyo is covered in concrete (not sure if that’s good or bad) but buildings also strangely tend to be covered in what I’d describe as bathroom tiles. I wondered about this, but realized it’s just so humid they’d be growing mold otherwise. A…

I'm comparing to SF and NYC. It's definitely the cleanliness. If it wasn't for residents cleaning it up, those tiny alleyways in tokyo would just accumulate shit to the point where it's disgusting to even walk through it.

Residents in SF and NYC don't bother so it all goes to shit.

In terms of pollution, LA probably has the worst pollution but it's cleaner then SF and NYC. So it doesn't correlate. It's not the pollution. Pollution correlates more with car usage, of which LA takes the cake.

Griminess more has to do with population density, Of which, Tokyo takes the cake and also bucks the trend.

Re: Can Tokyo’s charms be replicated elsewhere?

#125

Post by afo3 »

astrange wrote: post #101
Konohamaru wrote: post #19

Betteridge.

Not in this case. Fire your urban planners and get a national zoning code and you can do it.

This. Zoning is a huge reason Tokyo feels amazing to us Americans. The ability to have micro-stores and restaurants in every back alley and other unconventional spaces allows innovation that isn’t possible in the US cities where viable commercial spaces for a restaurant start at $20k per month. Zoning also enabled more home based businesses, particularly in many of the smaller Japanese cities. Good luck getting any city in the US to let you run a yakitori restaurant out of your house.

Re: Can Tokyo’s charms be replicated elsewhere?

#126

Post by astrange »

quantumwannabe wrote: post #105
astrange wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not showing it to you. They keep it private but it’s still there. (that’s called “honne and tatemae”) You’re welcome to look through used fashion/music stores in Tokyo if you want to see how good their soft power is. Meanwhile the stereotypical suburban American thinks every nearby city is a hub of crime and won’t let their children walk anywhere until they’re 25. Vs: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/159632…

You should read the replies to that tweet: https://twitter.com/keccers/status/1596324554095595521 https://twitter.com/robinkunde/status/1596325433653559298 It is very common for American schools to have student art shows. I don't know where you get your perception of the US from, but it sure isn't reality. Your other two "observations" are similarly divorced from the real world.

I read them. I think the point being missed there isn’t that it happens at all, but that US schools would be expecting that out of much older children. (My critique here would be, if you ask elementary schoolers to do a project, you might just get what their parents can do for them.)

Re: Can Tokyo’s charms be replicated elsewhere?

#127

Post by johnfernow »

Kranar wrote: post #97
freddie_mercury wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that unique? I just looked up the Czech Republic to find that it is 95% Czech[1] but nobody goes around writing articles about whether it is possible to replicate how safe, clean, and functional the Czech Republic is. Finland also appears to be about 90% Finnish (with 5% Swedish). Portugal appears to be 95% Portuguese. South Korea is also over 90%. Ireland is 85% Irish. I'm tired of Googling but the more…

Finland and South Korea are absolutely held as a model of civilized society. Very low crime rates, very clean and very orderly. Don't know about Czech but it's possible that being culturally homogeneous is a necessary but insufficient condition, after all I'm sure most of us can name some very homogenous countries that are an absolute nightmare to live in. That said, Dubai and Singapore are also very safe and orderly…

> Does anyone know what Australia is like? I hear good things about it, and it is very homogeneous.

Never been there, but Australia has a very low murder rate (0.9 homicide victims per 100k people). But it's also not what I'd call homogeneous, as 30% of residents there were born overseas, higher than the US (14%). Not as much ethnic diversity nationwide, but some of its cities are extremely diverse. 43.2% of Sydney is foreign-born, the 3rd highest percent of any city in the world, with there being Chinese, Indian, Lebanese, Fijian, Korean, Nepalese, Ghanaian and several other communities located inside it.

Canada is another very safe place (murder rate is 2.0 per 100k) and 23% of residents are foreign born. It's also somewhat ethnically diverse as well, with 30.2% of the population being visible minorities. There's also linguistic fractionalization between Quebec and the rest of the country. 49.0% of Toronto is foreign born, the 2nd highest percentage in the world, and Vancouver's not far behind at 42.5% (4th highest in the world).

So Singapore, Australia and Canada are 3 examples of diverse countries with incredibly little violent crime (Singapore actually has slightly less murder per capita than Japan). That's not to say diversity can't result in conflict, but those examples do show that it doesn't have to result in it, and that diverse, peaceful societies can and do exist.

Re: Can Tokyo’s charms be replicated elsewhere?

#128

Post by ckw »

version_five wrote: post #103
diob wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met multiple individuals on my last trip to Australia who commented on how they felt extremely unsafe in the USA (hearing gunshots at night, seeing shootings on the news). Some were native Australians, others were from places abroad, such as Japan.

Have you been to the US? Do you feel that way? Definitely the news tries to frightened everyone into watching more. I don't think that's too reflective of reality.

The intentional homicide rate in the US is 7 times that of Australia (6.3/100k population vs 0.9/100k), and 21 times that of Japan (0.3/100k).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intenti...

Re: Can Tokyo’s charms be replicated elsewhere?

#129

Post by cercatrova »

diordiderot wrote: post #119
llanowarelves wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't like to hear it, but a high-trust society is enabled by homogeneity. Look at Japan's demographics, and opposition to foreign religions, languages, etc. They don't allow "the world" to recreate itself inside them, and the conflict and distrust (Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam) that that brings.

I hope you don't mean racial homogeneity, because that would be a load of _equine excrement_ If you didn't, homogeneity really isn't the best word to convey the idea that social trust comes from long-standing, slow moving cultural traditions. Even then there are counter examples but it could be one of those 'necessary but not sufficient' situations

Like it or not, racial tensions fuel a lot of conflict inside nations. America itself has had a lot of racial tension based conflict in its short lifespan than many other countries much older than it. I'm not condoning it of course, just explaining it.

Re: Can Tokyo’s charms be replicated elsewhere?

#130

Post by JasonFruit »

gamblor956 wrote: post #84
JasonFruit wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're describing the Midwest. People clear sidewalks and driveways for each other after a snow, unasked and uncompensated. People let each other off public transportation before crowding on. And... there are drunks everywhere. So two out of three. But what I'm aiming at is this: in less urbanized areas of the United States, the sort of shared ideas that allow successful coexistence exist. It's largely the ma…

Doesn't describe any part of the Midwest I'm familiar with...

It is possible that we're both right. Do you mind sharing where in the Midwest you have experience?
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