211–220 of 448 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do mobile phones affect city planning?
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.
> Tokyo comes joint fourth, but its population is larger than the combined populations of the others (Adelaide, Auckland, Osaka and Wellington). Having lived in Adelaide and visited Toyko, Osaka and a bunch of other Japanese cities, I can take a crack at the difference: Adelaide is a great lifestyle city, if you don't actually want to live in a city, love car enabled lifestyles and the outdoors. Tokyo would be great…
I honestly don't understand how "cities" like Adelaide, Auckland and Wellington keep making these lists of "most liveable cities". Their low populations mean they just don't have much of the things that make cities desirable. (like, lots of culture, lots of diversity, lots of options for dining and activities etc etc) Granted, that can make them comparatively pleasant and peaceful, with good access to outdoors and fr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Japanese houses are quite different from US ones. My in-laws live in a house in suburban Chiba well outside Tokyo, but it has literally no garden space and the neighborhood is so densely packed a taxi can't even pull into the little laneway it's in. Within a 100 meter radius there's a grocery, a drugstore, several restaurants and more, and everybody gets around on foot, by bicycle or by bus.
tbh a yard seems less necessary when you can walk everywhere
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't really have real cities in the US = there are a few exceptions but most of the time it's just a very tiny center and a lot of people living away from the center. That's not what a traditional city looks like.
Why does the US need to have traditional cities? I grew up in a high density city overseas and I can see the appeal of both types of city. I personally prefer low density, car centric cities (obviously we need to finish solving the emissions problem from cars, but that's separate).
Where does my comment imply that the US needs anything?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is honestly the thing that bothers me most about cities the US. Having grown up in Europe, I find many (I'm sure there are exceptions) US cities to be plain ugly and unlivable. The reason is obvious to me. It's that they are designed around cars. It makes such a huge difference.
After moving to Europe (and Eastern Europe), I can't really consider those places in the US "cities" and get an uneasy feeling that something is off when I'm back stateside.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
tbh a yard seems less necessary when you can walk everywhere
And kids can actually walk places by themselves, have social lives and develop some independence instead of being stuck in the backyard.
Anyway, it’s been over 20 years since I visited Tokyo, and I’ve been to many major cities since. Tokyo remains my favorite.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. The US has very few cities proper, and a lot of huge suburbs that sometimes feature a city-like downtown (L.A., Houston), and sometimes don't (most of the Silicon Valley). The real honest dense US cities, such as NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and a few others, were built large and dense before the advent of the car, and had entrenched public transportation system before 1930s. Those that were not as lu…
Many European cities were also constrained by city walls. Land may have been available but it wasn't necessarily defensible.
I’d always wondered what would happen if the US had a city with an UGB and very unrestrictive zoning.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the things you mentioned here is why I like Japan more han the Western world. To be fair, Japan isn’t perfect. But a lot of things make sense for us. Are you a westerner? It seems that your way of thinking is just different than ours. We value things differently. For example, have you ever stopped to consider that maybe Japanese woman prefer to be in traditional role? The western world has a lot of problems t…
Please don't misunderstand me. Maybe I wasn't precise enough with my thoughts. My main point was: Western people are often pro Japan but anti China. If people would apply the same norms, this wouldn't be possible as there is clearly a double standard. My wish is that Western people (i am one of then) stop apply their world view, norms and values to everyone else on this planet. We believe that so many things that def…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cities with shittier weather, e.g. in the Northeast or upper Midwest, don’t seem to have this problem as much. Much less antisocial behavior than in California cities, which seem uniquely bad in this respect.
You would think so, but we still get plenty. What used to be a nice, safe neighborhood near uptown no longer is. Leave your car doors unlocked if you park on the street overnight, or else you'll find the windows broken by morning by kids looking for stuff to steal (happened to a coworker, the one night her husband forgot to not lock the doors). In the last two years, theft of catalytic converters from cars, as well a…
The northern east coast is what I believe the GP was referring to. We don't really have homeless people. I've honestly never seen a homeless person before, until I left. Neither has anyone tried to "get something" out of me, until I went down south or out west.
I think it's cultural. The people who had moved out West were those that weren't necessarily successful or prosperous in their homelands (e.g. Britain, Russia, or the original 13 colonies, comprising mostly of the propertied class). So what you get is a bunch of grifters, drifters, and people who didn't "fit."
And well, if that's what your communities are comprised of, I expect them to be antisocial.
The saddest thing is I have family there, who have children; and seeing those children slowly take on the typical West Coastian attitude (and believe that property, violent, and sexual crimes are simply the way the world is), has been heartbreaking. I'm sure they will perpetuate the cycle of shit, in their own unique way -- even if it is minor.
Many posters have already mentioned some of the great things about Japanese cities: walkable neighbourhoods, good public transport, life without cars. I agree with all of these. However, you can't get something for nothing. Even in the suburbs there are essentially no gardens (a friend of mine lives way out of town and has a 10m by 10m garden which is enormous and unusual). Houses and apartments are significantly sma…
One more drawback to mention (Having lived in Tokyo a few years) it’s worth pointing out its not exactly kid friendly. I really don’t think most big cities are tbh.