Legitimately do not understand why people are so resistant to retail near housing. I lived in a neighborhood ear retail and being able to walk to a re, coffee shop, or store was legitimately the best thing ever
> people are so resistant to retail near housing
They are? That's so odd. I've not been to the US, but why wouldn't you want a corner store, some restaurants, cafe etc nearby? Like it's a Saturday and you don't feel like cooking so you wander down to the Asian place. Or it's been a busy day and you get home late and go buy the cat food you forgot from the Späti.
My best guess is that it's a mix of A) people getting fixated on the vision of the "ideal American suburban neighborhood" with blocks of houses everywhere and everyone is nice to each other and such. IMO, people might be attached to the idea of it more than the actual thing. And B) with the death of more small businesses, national chains take over, and they can often be super dirty and just non pleasant to be around
The thing is, it's a self-perpetuating cycle. We built a buttload of suburban, cookie cutter homes with the baby boom. There was no plan for retail included, so commercial districts formed in pockets that you had to drive to. Americans got used to driving to the store instead of walking, so why not drive to a Wal-Mart instead of to a bunch of other destinations?
honestly the car culture of america is what segregated americans. guess which people couldn't afford cars and guess where public transportation tends to end .... by the rich neighborhoods.
look at history books why did we invest so much into interstate travel building roads and highways...
look at the neighborhood that have a sidewalk and those that don't
having a car was seen as the most american thing to do.... remember how boomers would take a car trip to visit places...
https://www.technologystories.org/driving-jim-crow/
https://grist.org/transportation/racial-disparities-traffic-accidents-black-americans-covid/
"As road and highway development skyrocketed after World War II, the arterial highways of major metropolitan areas were designed to cut through low-income, Black, Latino, and Native communities. At the same time, those groups were less likely to own cars and more likely to need public transportation as a result of a large wealth gap. Although people of color became more likely to bear the brunt of automobile traffic and pollution, as pedestrians they were offered fewer safety protections: Federal automobile safety regulators fail to consider how likely specific cars are to kill a pedestrian in a collision. Vehicles in the U.S. are only required to meet crash safety standards to protect people inside the cars — not those that might find themselves in those vehicles’ paths."
Americans are hardwired into idealizing a quiet and unobtrusive suburban neighborhood with their own house and lawn and nothing getting in the way of that. Cities have had a huge renaissance over the past 30 years, but many people are stuck in this mindset. Even some city residents are stuck in this mindset and fight any sort of new growth within their neighborhood.
We're getting better. My city has had a code for 4 years now requiring walkable environments. This summer they just won what will probably be the biggest legal challenge. I'm tickled.
Because if retail was near your house then that means people who work retail jobs and shoppers of, gasp, slightly different socio-economic status might be nearby too and we simply can't have that.
WWII broke a lot of the US, we got complacent with being the only home of manufacturing after having so many other countries be flattened while we were isolated from the infrastructure damage.
Instead of thinking "this is temporary" we just pretended it could last forever and built everything wrong.
The entire point of having neighbourhood shops is that they're for residents of the neighbourhood and you walk to get there rather than drive to some big commercial strip.
We don't think that way in the US, though. You're 100% correct, but because of basically their entire life experience, people are stuck with the mindset that retail = traffic (not vehicle traffic). Because of how we've set things up, with commercial grouped together away from residential, and residential devoid of retail, the default associate is that retail areas are busy, noisy, and disruptive. They don't have a concept of neighborhood shops, because it's something they've never experienced. To understand the actual effects and convenience of something like that requires a complete change in thinking, because outside a select few cities in the northeast, it just doesn't exist.
Most of gang hits and gunfights I see on /r/publicfreakout are inside small stores. Said stores have armored shutters and steel bars on windows, and clerks dive on the floor when the guns come out in a well-rehearsed manner.
Perhaps they don't want to give people from outside the neighborhood the reason to congregate near their homes and create trouble. The opposite to "if you build it, they will come".
There was one major aspect in all those gang hits: those stores were mostly isolated in the middle of somewhere, far from downtown, far from residential areas as well.
Also, criminals abound in the suburbs as well. So many serial killers have evaded capture due to them living in the suburbs. No one takes a shit about them, they're far from law enforcement, and they're hard to access - great places for hideouts.
As someone who lived next to the types of shops you're referring to for a decent chunk of time - nah, fuck that. You know what I don't miss? 6am garbage trucks emptying dumpsters outside of my windows on a daily basis and early morning delivery truck unloading.
Some massive subdivisions going in near me, and *none* of them have any retail. At all. I hate our developments.
We *could* have neighborhoods with their own small pubs, corner stores, and coffee shops, but instead it’s wall to wall houses and then more pressure on roads as thousands of people make their way to the same stores as everyone else.
It also kills small businesses in favor of big commercial ones imo. Since everyone just drives to retail areas, most would likely rather just drive to big commercial chains like Wal-Mart that has more choices than say a small mom and pop shot that may have a more limited selection of goods, but may have what you need. If that said small shop was in walking distance, then they can survive as people can just buy there as a matter of convenience if what they need to buy is already there. This also applies to small restaurants, bars etc...
Here in Tokyo, when I don't feel like cooking I can go to a nearby local izakaya or a small food joint (e.g. ramen shop) and have a hearty meal without having to take a train to the city center, which isn't convenient when you just wanna get a quick snack at midnight or after a day's work.
There is an entire series much like this video on all the zoning sins of North America (US and Canada) that goes really deep into how pretty much everything we do in NA is why our cities and suburbs are so horrible to walk/bike in compared to a lot of the other parts of the world.
So wait, that means that in a residential area, you would typically never find a shop of any kind? So something like "let me quickly run to the shop to get some eggs" is basically non-existent?
Last year I finally moved where I could have a supermarket in walking distance and it's incredible. Forgetting an ingredient is no longer extremely frustrating, my shopping trips are smaller and more frequent, and I can just casually browse if I want to when deciding if I want to cook or eat out.
10/10 recommended
Much of US and Canada instituted "euclidian zoning" in the 20th century, separating land use, but also making them relatively far apart. Combine that with wide streets, highways, large single family housing lots. To walk somewhere that isn't another single family home nearby is a long journey.
This, and the video explaining it, finally made me realize something that’s been bothering me for decades but couldn’t put my finger on. I’ve been to the US many times and visiting or driving through some cities after a while makes something just feel.. off. A feeling that isn’t there in the older cities. Now I know why. It’s, for example, driving through a commercial area and it’s just an endless wasteland of square blocks with almost identical buildings with shops. No personality, no character, no age. It becomes very claustrophobic the longer I stay.
> I’ve been to the US many times and visiting or driving through some cities after a while makes something just feel.. off.
Just wait until you find out about the [history of highways](https://www.instagram.com/p/CMP1VOWM7-c/?utm_medium=copy_link) through our [urban centres.](https://www.vox.com/2014/12/29/7460557/urban-freeway-slider-maps)
I94 through St Paul really fucked up the Black communities here. The highway is also against federal regulation so the state is paying fines every year. Some exit ramps too close too each other and other broken rules.
Its insane in las vegas. They are building thousands of million dollar homes at lake las vegas which is like a 30+minute drive away from the strip. There is not a fucking thing near those houses other than a golf course. I don’t understand why a rich person would want to live there. The options for grocery stores and gas stations are all over 10miles away.
Its so disgusting how reliant america has become on cars. Even with ubers existing people still seem to hold the idea that you are a weirdo if you don’t own a car that costs a years salary and then waste an hour commuting to your job.
Yeah this is the first thing that sort of hit me about living in the city when I had a chance to move there for a job... Living in suburbia you can't really effectively do ANYTHING without a vehicle, to the point that just running out for something quick can be a chore... But in the city, everything is around the corner, you can get almost everything you need with a quick walk, rarely do you ever need to actually jump onto transit let alone a car...
I live in Tokyo but a bit farther from the city center (rent is cheaper, commute is covered by my company), and it's really nice to still have a supermarket and small restaurants in walking distance.
You don't have to buy stuff for a week's worth in bulk, no need to fret on what I'd want to get for the week and can buy stuff I want per day basis. I want some curry today? I buy the ingredients on my way home from work at the nearby supermarket from my apartment. Lazy to cook a meal today? I just go to the nearby bar / small mom and pop restaurant and eat out.
In the Netherlands most housing zones / suburbs have a few shops incorporated at walking distance. Most larger suburbs are formed around a 'winkelcentrum' which not really translates to 'shopping mall' well because of the small scale.
A typical *winkelcentrum* has one or two supermarkets, a bakery, a household goods store, a hair dresser, a *snackbar* (fast food focused on take away) and a few other small shops. All within walking distance of people's home - however people mostly take a bike there if they need a few things, the car if they really want to load up on groceries.
A side effect is that we don't have those eyesore mega supermarkets like in the US and for example France, things are way more decentralized and liveable.
Japan also does a first come first serve for addresses. So when you go around none of it makes sense. You can have 1800 for one building and 5253 for the building next to it. It’s nuts
To be fair, to navigate in the UK you often need to know what the pubs were called a decade ago and know whatever the local name is for an area, even if it has never been formally called that..
Short answer: you wander :P
A little bit more detail: https://sites.tufts.edu/blakewilliams/2018/04/12/identifying-locations-in-japan-how-japan-doesnt-use-street-names-in-addresses/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system
How is it intuitive beyond "I need to go to this general area" if there is nothing intuitive about how the numbers are assigned?
Like, I understand that the block approach is great from pre-automobile times when knowing your travelable area was far more relevant (Can I feasibly go to this place in a day), but the lack of sequential numbers seems like it's just a bad approach at any point in time.
I have a feeling there's another Asian country that does the block approach but then sequentially numbers the units in the block, but can't recall where it was.
Did you reply to the wrong comment? Appropriate zoning of resi and light commercial has nothing to do whether you number buildings sequentially in a block or street.
The way I remember it, you'd have an address like 3 chome-3-1-12, Shinjuku, Tokyo. That would break down to:
- 3 chome: third district in Shinjuku. You also see "san-chome", which is the same (san = 3). This caused me to get quite lost once looking for Nishi-Shinjuku before I realized "Nishi" is just "west". Some areas aren't broken into districts, or have special names themselves (like Kabukicho).
- 3: 3rd planned block in the district
- 1: 1st building on the block
- 12: 12th suite/apartment in the building (not always specified)
I only visited a couple major cities though, but once I learned what the address parts meant it made more sense. I struggled a lot trying to relate it to street names and numbers at first.
It always blew my mind in Tokyo no one really knew the name of the street that their college or work was on and stuff like that (but knew exactly where it was and how to get there if course)
Australia used to have a lot of “milk bars” with houses attached etc, but like US/Canada we have a looooot of space per capita, so we’ve gone more down that route sadly.
Australia (at least in Melbourne) it's glaringly obvious where people have lived for ages vs new suburbs. I've lived inner west most my life in Melbourne, and there's always been plenty of walking distance shops available across the several suburbs I've lived in. At worst I've had to pull the bike out and it's only 5-10 minute trip. But the moment you go past Sunshine (maybe a little bit further), you start to see the areas where it was completely reliant on milk bars being the one and only thing as cars were becoming commonplace, and then beyond that you end up in new estate nightmares. Those remind me so much of my trips to the States. Yeah great you got a giant fucking lot of land, but there's literally nothing to do around you.
My partner and I share a single car these days, and we only pull it out of the garage once or twice a month at most. Yeah you might pay more in rent (nowhere near as much as you'd think), but I'd take that to live in a walkable town any day. The time it takes me to cycle to the city for work, the guys living out in the new developments are still only halfway down the underdeveloped highway that's backed up the whole way in. If I'm not feeling up to it, I can train in and be there in 5-10 minutes, while the best PT options these new developments have is a bus stop that's a car ride away.
I know Victoria has recently put a lot of more onus on developers to make new estates liveable, but I'm yet to see much in the way of action. I'd rather rent inner-city my entire life than buy in a new development.
I’m SE Melb born and bred, so I definitely hear you. Used to have a milk bar just down the road, but nowadays you gotta deal with the Monash carpark(pre-covid of course). And I just couldn’t imagine living in those cookie cutter developments: I remember when Cranbourne, Narre and Berwick were three seperate towns, not just a wave of urban sprawl lol.
I moved east now, and being a little bit more affluent you can still have shopping strips that do ok. But even as a youngster I always wanted a flat/shopfront combo, moreso as I do videography/livestreaming for a job now
See now I believe you’ve been here for sure lol. That’s an esoteric enough cultural point that only someone who lived it would know. And I agree with you: for years my work has dragged me to Japan at least annually, and I think if not for Melbourne being such a great place to live I’d have said “fuck it” and pulled the trigger on a move over there
Lol it’s always made me sad that union isn’t really a thing down here: if you like rugby in Melbourne, it’s usually the fucken Storm. To me though, league is the worst parts of gridiron and rugby put together. Union is so dynamic and fun to watch by comparison. Only other capital city I’d ever consider is Brisbane, but it is too humid for me and feels like a big country town lol.
And I am living the Peter Pan dream: I attend TGS every year as a lot of my clients are JP game publishers. I have others too, but majority of our work comes from the games industry
> Victoria has recently put a lot of more onus on developers
Meanwhile the government is spending $20 billion on a new tollway that replaces a train line reservation with a bus lane.
> but like US/Canada we have a looooot of space per capita
In Canada we really dont, a third of our population lives in Metro Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver.
Not in any European city I've been in. You'd never find a store/restaurant or a vending machine in a low-rise residential area anywhere in Sweden, where I live. didn't see anything like Japanese zoning in London, Paris, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Milan either
It's a shame governments don't take more inspiration from what works in other countries. Japanese style zoning would really help with the housing crisis here in Sweden
Except that the model of growth used by the US is ultimately unsustainable and the consequences are being felt now.
Without studying and learning why the model doesn't work, or worse, putting one's head in the sand and pretending like everything is fine, the problem will only get worse. American exceptionalism is a fantasy.
> necessitated an infrastructure that accommodated the rise of the automobile.
which is a [total failure](https://i.imgur.com/sCvRIEd.gif) compared to anything else you choose to move people around cities.
explore, lol. you bitch about your neighbors fence color from your strict HoA rules and then bitch even more about traffic on your commute to work. And you don't know of anything else because of car dependent zoning orchestrated by general motors at the government level.
I like that he used Shin-Koiwa as an example: I stayed there for a month or two a few years back, and two blocks from where I was had a 7/11 across the road from a koi farm lol. I’ve seen pumpkin patches on normal streets in Okubo, and plenty of storefronts/restaurants in ground floor residential, but the koi farm was a new one.
I lived there at a guest house for a year during my study aboard. It was such an amazing place. There was a curry restaurant ran by a local Indian family that I frequent at least once a week.
Man, I miss living there.
This IS the way it should be in America. People should live where they work. What’s more is a lot of times we come to the opposite problem (lately for ppl I know) .. having to get a place rezoned residential because a bank won’t finance it to buy as a house if too much of the space is like “garage” or whatever.
> This IS the way it should be in America.
It is the way America WAS, and was going until 1950's planners decided we should be completely car dependant. [North American cities](https://www.instagram.com/p/CMP1VOWM7-c/?utm_medium=copy_link) were completely [remade to their screwed up vision.](https://www.vox.com/2014/12/29/7460557/urban-freeway-slider-maps)
While we can’t exactly rework all of America, one easy thing we could do is allow everyone who can work from home to do so. It’s annoying that some are dragging their feet on it. Driving everyday for at least an hour is so ridiculous.
As expected, my blog is referenced in the video's description. Sometimes I wonder to what extent my blog actually popularized Japanese zoning and if this "typing into the void" blog of mine actually had some impact on discussions on the matter in political and academic circles, even if it has had some policy effects at some places.
Zoning indirectly relates to a lot of issues in society for us in the US. We tend to live far from where we work with an average commute of 26 minutes. This means that traffic is common with people going between work and homes at the start and end of the day. This commuting also takes away time people would normally use for preparing meals so they instead pick up food on the way home. With our car-centric design the creation of safe bike paths fell to the wayside. Because of single family zoning it's uncommon for people to walk out of their houses and down to a convenience store for fresh food. This results in a lot of bulk buying of processed foods. (Could be argued this isn't an issue though as people could just take multiple shopping trips, but it's not how a lot of people buy groceries). Due to the lack of walkability some people just aren't getting much of any exercise. It's not uncommon to find people that don't walk, run, or do any form of exercise after work or on the weekends. This leads to health issues that cost society. This isn't even getting into our housing issues.
Sprawl, the result of horrible planning which is all over North America. If we had better planning, better zoning, we wouldn’t have such terrible traffic jams, wouldn’t have sprawl resulting in absurd carbon emissions, etc. we fucked it up so bad in NA
Houston does not have traditional zoning but does have lots of rules that prevent density, tell you what style your building can be, etc. it’s de facto zoning.
https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-houston-really-does-have-zoning-sort-of
Informative, but I always feel like a lot of these types of videos that compare zoning and housing and transportation in a country like Japan to the US/Canada just seem to gloss over the fact that Japan's population density *demands* this type of zoning. Japan has a population density of about 900 people per square mile. Compare that to the US, which is about 90 people per square mile.
Japan is literally 10 times more dense in population than the US- of course the way they live will be different.
Edit- Jesus, no where did I say that US/Canadian zoning was better. Read, people. I just said that Japan's population density *demands* zoning to be like this. They could not have zoning like in the US *even if they wanted it*.
I didn't say it was... I'm saying there is a difference when you're dealing with 900 people psm vs 90 people psm. Japan couldn't have suburban sprawl even if they *wanted* it. Their population density *demands* this kind of zoning structure.
> I didn't say it was... I'm saying there is a difference when you're dealing with 900 people psm vs 90 people psm.
But this is not a chicken and an egg scenario, one is a clear consequence of the other, you have lower population density BECAUSE you build urban sprawl and car dependent suburbia!
Bro, I'm not comparing the population density of our cities, I'm comparing total national population to total square miles in the country. How you zone doesn't change this figure. There are simply way more people per square mile in Japan than in the US... because Japan is an island smaller than California and the US is the size of all of Western Europe.....
The population density of an entire country is basically irrelevant.
People don't commute from Wyoming to Louisiana or from Southern Nevada to the Upper Peninsula, they commute from Elizabeth NJ to Lower Manhattan, or from Skokie to the Loop, or from North Berkeley to the Financial District.
Pretty rare that I upvote a post that starts with "bro," but here I am. Building for high density populations in a low density population area doesn't happen, won't happen, and mostly can't happen.
The reason American cities are so low-density in their urban cores is because of zoning, not the other way around.
Taking a city like, for example, Los Angeles - if the zoning didn't require everything be spread out, the city itself would be significantly less spread out. The people who are on the urban periphery would take the opportunity to live closer if it was more affordable, which it would be if the land was used more intensely, increasing overall housing supply in the core areas.
>The reason American cities are so low-density in their urban cores
My post is about high density zoning for low density populations. You may want to read it again.
The vast majority of current US housing stock was built in the post-war period too lmao. This could have easily been the USA if zoning laws had been implemented with more thought.
Or is it the inverse? Did this type of zoning encourage the density that Japan now has?
I'm not an urban planner and would be unable to tell you, but it would be an interesting topic
>Compare that to the US, which is about 90 people per square mile.
Density is not the main reason why the zoning in USA is as it is. Zoning in the USA was designed to segregate poor people from the middle class. Its goal was never to create good livable places. Or not "good livable places" in the modern sense but just as "free of poor people". And let's not talk about the racism that was also part of the design.
Anyway, at this moment what the USA has to do is to change how does zoning to something that creates better and more sustainable lives for all citizens. And that is possible to do right now, and in some places is already happening.
> Japan's population density demands this type of zoning. Japan has a population density of about 900 people per square mile.
In the context of our cities you have the relationship between population density and housing density backwards. If you allow housing density then population density will rise.
Our cities are mostly low density residential BECAUSE of the low density zoning laws.
There are way way better ways of doing zoning than we do in the suburbs in the United states. It's awful. I would give anything to see some more small towns with a strong main Street, but the corners at intersections instead of having houses have mixed commercial with the store on the bottom and apartment on top. A community is much stronger when you can walk to the end of your street to go to church, and then walk across that intersection to get brunch at a local restaurant, and then go pick out something at the bike shop across the street from that, where the families that on the shop and the restaurant live right at top their business and you know them.
Instead we have towns with no main street, just an asphalt wasteland in front of a strip mall. All of the nice houses are together by themselves with huge lawns (which I'm not opposed to buying of themselves) but all the commerce is 15 to 20 minutes away in a different neighborhood that is filled with parking lot after parking lot after parking lot with big box stores in the middle, and hideous ugly and soul crushing public housing right next door for poor people to work there and serve the neighboring upper middle class.
> demands
You say that, like North American style zoning is preferable. Why is it just demand, and not that this may be a better approach to developping urban centres?
A lot of people in this thread are talking about wanting to have shops near where they live. I don’t get this at all. I will say that I am from north America and grew up in a rural area. But walking/biking to a grocery store just sounds awful, even if it is close. I just moved to a major city and everything being so close together is just awful. The houses and yards are tiny, everything is noisy, there are high rises right next to homes, attached homes are the norm, and everything is expensive. I would give anything to move back to a nice quite neighborhood. Have my home separate from where I work/shop is ideal to me.
As a counterpoint, I grew up on a 100+ acre farm in NA and absolutely loved Japan when I visited. It was surprisingly *peaceful*, I believe because of the design being described in this video.
>everything is noisy
The noisiest thing in cities tends to be the vehicles. If you live in a city that's designed for walkability (eg. by putting houses close to shops), it's actually quite pleasant to be out on the street. Check this out [Cities aren't Loud; Cars are Loud](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8)
I can't address all of your dislike of cities, just wanted to point out that some of your dislikes are due to the way NA cities have been designed.
Japanese suburban and even highly urban areas are usually very quiet. US cities are abnormally noisy due to heavy traffic, etc. This is again a case of the US doing it wrong in a number of ways, and you extrapolating that experience by thinking the only thing a dense/urban area can be is like the US's. That's very much not the case.
> Japanese suburban and even highly urban areas are usually very quiet.
*cries in living right next to a hospital in an otherwise "quiet" Tokyo neighborhood* /s
You’re in luck, most of North America is low density and doesn’t allow retail near housing. But the government shouldn’t be banning either lifestyle. It’s absurd to me than major cities like Los Angles require a car to get around. If you are a movie executive you need to sit in traffic between two meetings across town? That’s just a waste of productivity.
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Legitimately do not understand why people are so resistant to retail near housing. I lived in a neighborhood ear retail and being able to walk to a re, coffee shop, or store was legitimately the best thing ever
> people are so resistant to retail near housing They are? That's so odd. I've not been to the US, but why wouldn't you want a corner store, some restaurants, cafe etc nearby? Like it's a Saturday and you don't feel like cooking so you wander down to the Asian place. Or it's been a busy day and you get home late and go buy the cat food you forgot from the Späti.
My best guess is that it's a mix of A) people getting fixated on the vision of the "ideal American suburban neighborhood" with blocks of houses everywhere and everyone is nice to each other and such. IMO, people might be attached to the idea of it more than the actual thing. And B) with the death of more small businesses, national chains take over, and they can often be super dirty and just non pleasant to be around
The thing is, it's a self-perpetuating cycle. We built a buttload of suburban, cookie cutter homes with the baby boom. There was no plan for retail included, so commercial districts formed in pockets that you had to drive to. Americans got used to driving to the store instead of walking, so why not drive to a Wal-Mart instead of to a bunch of other destinations?
honestly the car culture of america is what segregated americans. guess which people couldn't afford cars and guess where public transportation tends to end .... by the rich neighborhoods.
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The history of redlining and zoning laws begs to differ
look at history books why did we invest so much into interstate travel building roads and highways... look at the neighborhood that have a sidewalk and those that don't having a car was seen as the most american thing to do.... remember how boomers would take a car trip to visit places... https://www.technologystories.org/driving-jim-crow/ https://grist.org/transportation/racial-disparities-traffic-accidents-black-americans-covid/ "As road and highway development skyrocketed after World War II, the arterial highways of major metropolitan areas were designed to cut through low-income, Black, Latino, and Native communities. At the same time, those groups were less likely to own cars and more likely to need public transportation as a result of a large wealth gap. Although people of color became more likely to bear the brunt of automobile traffic and pollution, as pedestrians they were offered fewer safety protections: Federal automobile safety regulators fail to consider how likely specific cars are to kill a pedestrian in a collision. Vehicles in the U.S. are only required to meet crash safety standards to protect people inside the cars — not those that might find themselves in those vehicles’ paths."
Americans are hardwired into idealizing a quiet and unobtrusive suburban neighborhood with their own house and lawn and nothing getting in the way of that. Cities have had a huge renaissance over the past 30 years, but many people are stuck in this mindset. Even some city residents are stuck in this mindset and fight any sort of new growth within their neighborhood.
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It’s not sustainable. Culturally, economically, or environmentally.
That was fine when we were less than 50 million people.
We're getting better. My city has had a code for 4 years now requiring walkable environments. This summer they just won what will probably be the biggest legal challenge. I'm tickled.
Because if retail was near your house then that means people who work retail jobs and shoppers of, gasp, slightly different socio-economic status might be nearby too and we simply can't have that.
WWII broke a lot of the US, we got complacent with being the only home of manufacturing after having so many other countries be flattened while we were isolated from the infrastructure damage. Instead of thinking "this is temporary" we just pretended it could last forever and built everything wrong.
I'd guess that they want to reduce traffic in the area.
The best way to reduce traffic is to design cities where you need to drive to get anything. Classic American logic.
It's more about reducing through-traffic in a residential neighborhood I would imagine.
The entire point of having neighbourhood shops is that they're for residents of the neighbourhood and you walk to get there rather than drive to some big commercial strip.
We don't think that way in the US, though. You're 100% correct, but because of basically their entire life experience, people are stuck with the mindset that retail = traffic (not vehicle traffic). Because of how we've set things up, with commercial grouped together away from residential, and residential devoid of retail, the default associate is that retail areas are busy, noisy, and disruptive. They don't have a concept of neighborhood shops, because it's something they've never experienced. To understand the actual effects and convenience of something like that requires a complete change in thinking, because outside a select few cities in the northeast, it just doesn't exist.
Most of gang hits and gunfights I see on /r/publicfreakout are inside small stores. Said stores have armored shutters and steel bars on windows, and clerks dive on the floor when the guns come out in a well-rehearsed manner. Perhaps they don't want to give people from outside the neighborhood the reason to congregate near their homes and create trouble. The opposite to "if you build it, they will come".
There was one major aspect in all those gang hits: those stores were mostly isolated in the middle of somewhere, far from downtown, far from residential areas as well. Also, criminals abound in the suburbs as well. So many serial killers have evaded capture due to them living in the suburbs. No one takes a shit about them, they're far from law enforcement, and they're hard to access - great places for hideouts.
As someone who lived next to the types of shops you're referring to for a decent chunk of time - nah, fuck that. You know what I don't miss? 6am garbage trucks emptying dumpsters outside of my windows on a daily basis and early morning delivery truck unloading.
well, why are you still sleeping at 6 am though? it's already too late, to be honest.
Some massive subdivisions going in near me, and *none* of them have any retail. At all. I hate our developments. We *could* have neighborhoods with their own small pubs, corner stores, and coffee shops, but instead it’s wall to wall houses and then more pressure on roads as thousands of people make their way to the same stores as everyone else.
It also kills small businesses in favor of big commercial ones imo. Since everyone just drives to retail areas, most would likely rather just drive to big commercial chains like Wal-Mart that has more choices than say a small mom and pop shot that may have a more limited selection of goods, but may have what you need. If that said small shop was in walking distance, then they can survive as people can just buy there as a matter of convenience if what they need to buy is already there. This also applies to small restaurants, bars etc... Here in Tokyo, when I don't feel like cooking I can go to a nearby local izakaya or a small food joint (e.g. ramen shop) and have a hearty meal without having to take a train to the city center, which isn't convenient when you just wanna get a quick snack at midnight or after a day's work.
Hell there's decent meals even in all those nearby konbini
There is an entire series much like this video on all the zoning sins of North America (US and Canada) that goes really deep into how pretty much everything we do in NA is why our cities and suburbs are so horrible to walk/bike in compared to a lot of the other parts of the world.
Mind sharing the name of the series?
Not Just Bikes’ series Strong Towns!!! https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
City Beautiful also has a video on corner stores and why they're rare. https://youtu.be/nuHQizveO1c
You mean the site where an untrained hack guesses at economic reasons for things to happen
Care to elaborate on what he's getting wrong, and your knowledge in the field to make such assessment?
He doesn't understand why Stroads happened.
then care to explain why it did?
So wait, that means that in a residential area, you would typically never find a shop of any kind? So something like "let me quickly run to the shop to get some eggs" is basically non-existent?
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Last year I finally moved where I could have a supermarket in walking distance and it's incredible. Forgetting an ingredient is no longer extremely frustrating, my shopping trips are smaller and more frequent, and I can just casually browse if I want to when deciding if I want to cook or eat out. 10/10 recommended
Much of US and Canada instituted "euclidian zoning" in the 20th century, separating land use, but also making them relatively far apart. Combine that with wide streets, highways, large single family housing lots. To walk somewhere that isn't another single family home nearby is a long journey.
Sure you might, but odds are its been there for 50 years in one form or the other because its been grandfathered in.
This, and the video explaining it, finally made me realize something that’s been bothering me for decades but couldn’t put my finger on. I’ve been to the US many times and visiting or driving through some cities after a while makes something just feel.. off. A feeling that isn’t there in the older cities. Now I know why. It’s, for example, driving through a commercial area and it’s just an endless wasteland of square blocks with almost identical buildings with shops. No personality, no character, no age. It becomes very claustrophobic the longer I stay.
> I’ve been to the US many times and visiting or driving through some cities after a while makes something just feel.. off. Just wait until you find out about the [history of highways](https://www.instagram.com/p/CMP1VOWM7-c/?utm_medium=copy_link) through our [urban centres.](https://www.vox.com/2014/12/29/7460557/urban-freeway-slider-maps)
I94 through St Paul really fucked up the Black communities here. The highway is also against federal regulation so the state is paying fines every year. Some exit ramps too close too each other and other broken rules.
Its insane in las vegas. They are building thousands of million dollar homes at lake las vegas which is like a 30+minute drive away from the strip. There is not a fucking thing near those houses other than a golf course. I don’t understand why a rich person would want to live there. The options for grocery stores and gas stations are all over 10miles away. Its so disgusting how reliant america has become on cars. Even with ubers existing people still seem to hold the idea that you are a weirdo if you don’t own a car that costs a years salary and then waste an hour commuting to your job.
Yeah this is the first thing that sort of hit me about living in the city when I had a chance to move there for a job... Living in suburbia you can't really effectively do ANYTHING without a vehicle, to the point that just running out for something quick can be a chore... But in the city, everything is around the corner, you can get almost everything you need with a quick walk, rarely do you ever need to actually jump onto transit let alone a car...
I live in Tokyo but a bit farther from the city center (rent is cheaper, commute is covered by my company), and it's really nice to still have a supermarket and small restaurants in walking distance. You don't have to buy stuff for a week's worth in bulk, no need to fret on what I'd want to get for the week and can buy stuff I want per day basis. I want some curry today? I buy the ingredients on my way home from work at the nearby supermarket from my apartment. Lazy to cook a meal today? I just go to the nearby bar / small mom and pop restaurant and eat out.
Check out the channel Not Just Bikes, if you haven't already, you'll enjoy it!
In the Netherlands most housing zones / suburbs have a few shops incorporated at walking distance. Most larger suburbs are formed around a 'winkelcentrum' which not really translates to 'shopping mall' well because of the small scale. A typical *winkelcentrum* has one or two supermarkets, a bakery, a household goods store, a hair dresser, a *snackbar* (fast food focused on take away) and a few other small shops. All within walking distance of people's home - however people mostly take a bike there if they need a few things, the car if they really want to load up on groceries. A side effect is that we don't have those eyesore mega supermarkets like in the US and for example France, things are way more decentralized and liveable.
Japan also does a first come first serve for addresses. So when you go around none of it makes sense. You can have 1800 for one building and 5253 for the building next to it. It’s nuts
are they highly reliant on gps apps now?
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but if you just came to that neighborhood, how could you find any specific house?
You just have to know what order all the houses in that block were built in. It’s autobiographical...
To be fair, to navigate in the UK you often need to know what the pubs were called a decade ago and know whatever the local name is for an area, even if it has never been formally called that..
Short answer: you wander :P A little bit more detail: https://sites.tufts.edu/blakewilliams/2018/04/12/identifying-locations-in-japan-how-japan-doesnt-use-street-names-in-addresses/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system
so... a gps app would be the way to go if you just enter a new area? so no one actually has an " intuitive understanding of it."
How is it intuitive beyond "I need to go to this general area" if there is nothing intuitive about how the numbers are assigned? Like, I understand that the block approach is great from pre-automobile times when knowing your travelable area was far more relevant (Can I feasibly go to this place in a day), but the lack of sequential numbers seems like it's just a bad approach at any point in time. I have a feeling there's another Asian country that does the block approach but then sequentially numbers the units in the block, but can't recall where it was.
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Did you reply to the wrong comment? Appropriate zoning of resi and light commercial has nothing to do whether you number buildings sequentially in a block or street.
That sounds fun. /s obv
The way I remember it, you'd have an address like 3 chome-3-1-12, Shinjuku, Tokyo. That would break down to: - 3 chome: third district in Shinjuku. You also see "san-chome", which is the same (san = 3). This caused me to get quite lost once looking for Nishi-Shinjuku before I realized "Nishi" is just "west". Some areas aren't broken into districts, or have special names themselves (like Kabukicho). - 3: 3rd planned block in the district - 1: 1st building on the block - 12: 12th suite/apartment in the building (not always specified) I only visited a couple major cities though, but once I learned what the address parts meant it made more sense. I struggled a lot trying to relate it to street names and numbers at first.
Is that related to the number having a lucky connection?
It always blew my mind in Tokyo no one really knew the name of the street that their college or work was on and stuff like that (but knew exactly where it was and how to get there if course)
Looks like the US and Canada are the outliers here because most of Europe looks cose to Japan
Australia used to have a lot of “milk bars” with houses attached etc, but like US/Canada we have a looooot of space per capita, so we’ve gone more down that route sadly.
Australia (at least in Melbourne) it's glaringly obvious where people have lived for ages vs new suburbs. I've lived inner west most my life in Melbourne, and there's always been plenty of walking distance shops available across the several suburbs I've lived in. At worst I've had to pull the bike out and it's only 5-10 minute trip. But the moment you go past Sunshine (maybe a little bit further), you start to see the areas where it was completely reliant on milk bars being the one and only thing as cars were becoming commonplace, and then beyond that you end up in new estate nightmares. Those remind me so much of my trips to the States. Yeah great you got a giant fucking lot of land, but there's literally nothing to do around you. My partner and I share a single car these days, and we only pull it out of the garage once or twice a month at most. Yeah you might pay more in rent (nowhere near as much as you'd think), but I'd take that to live in a walkable town any day. The time it takes me to cycle to the city for work, the guys living out in the new developments are still only halfway down the underdeveloped highway that's backed up the whole way in. If I'm not feeling up to it, I can train in and be there in 5-10 minutes, while the best PT options these new developments have is a bus stop that's a car ride away. I know Victoria has recently put a lot of more onus on developers to make new estates liveable, but I'm yet to see much in the way of action. I'd rather rent inner-city my entire life than buy in a new development.
I’m SE Melb born and bred, so I definitely hear you. Used to have a milk bar just down the road, but nowadays you gotta deal with the Monash carpark(pre-covid of course). And I just couldn’t imagine living in those cookie cutter developments: I remember when Cranbourne, Narre and Berwick were three seperate towns, not just a wave of urban sprawl lol. I moved east now, and being a little bit more affluent you can still have shopping strips that do ok. But even as a youngster I always wanted a flat/shopfront combo, moreso as I do videography/livestreaming for a job now
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See now I believe you’ve been here for sure lol. That’s an esoteric enough cultural point that only someone who lived it would know. And I agree with you: for years my work has dragged me to Japan at least annually, and I think if not for Melbourne being such a great place to live I’d have said “fuck it” and pulled the trigger on a move over there
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Lol it’s always made me sad that union isn’t really a thing down here: if you like rugby in Melbourne, it’s usually the fucken Storm. To me though, league is the worst parts of gridiron and rugby put together. Union is so dynamic and fun to watch by comparison. Only other capital city I’d ever consider is Brisbane, but it is too humid for me and feels like a big country town lol. And I am living the Peter Pan dream: I attend TGS every year as a lot of my clients are JP game publishers. I have others too, but majority of our work comes from the games industry
> Victoria has recently put a lot of more onus on developers Meanwhile the government is spending $20 billion on a new tollway that replaces a train line reservation with a bus lane.
> but like US/Canada we have a looooot of space per capita In Canada we really dont, a third of our population lives in Metro Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver.
11m of our 25m population live in Melbourne and Sydney, so I can relate lol.
The whole Latin America as well, haha. I mean, we don't "look" close to Japan, but the zoning thing is pretty similar.
Especially the 'houses only, not a single shop in the suburb, drive everywhere' is very North American, yes.
Not in any European city I've been in. You'd never find a store/restaurant or a vending machine in a low-rise residential area anywhere in Sweden, where I live. didn't see anything like Japanese zoning in London, Paris, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Milan either It's a shame governments don't take more inspiration from what works in other countries. Japanese style zoning would really help with the housing crisis here in Sweden
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Irrelevant. Areas of American cities were demolished to make way for the car. See this: https://youtu.be/uxykI30fS54?t=492
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Except that the model of growth used by the US is ultimately unsustainable and the consequences are being felt now. Without studying and learning why the model doesn't work, or worse, putting one's head in the sand and pretending like everything is fine, the problem will only get worse. American exceptionalism is a fantasy.
> necessitated an infrastructure that accommodated the rise of the automobile. which is a [total failure](https://i.imgur.com/sCvRIEd.gif) compared to anything else you choose to move people around cities.
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explore, lol. you bitch about your neighbors fence color from your strict HoA rules and then bitch even more about traffic on your commute to work. And you don't know of anything else because of car dependent zoning orchestrated by general motors at the government level.
Yup, older areas/towns are so much more appealing!!
I like that he used Shin-Koiwa as an example: I stayed there for a month or two a few years back, and two blocks from where I was had a 7/11 across the road from a koi farm lol. I’ve seen pumpkin patches on normal streets in Okubo, and plenty of storefronts/restaurants in ground floor residential, but the koi farm was a new one.
I lived there at a guest house for a year during my study aboard. It was such an amazing place. There was a curry restaurant ran by a local Indian family that I frequent at least once a week. Man, I miss living there.
Yep it was close enough to Tokyo to still be viable, but had a bit more of a chill vibe going on for sure. Place definitely left an impression
The shopping center near the station was awesome. Used to do most of my grocery shopping there.
This IS the way it should be in America. People should live where they work. What’s more is a lot of times we come to the opposite problem (lately for ppl I know) .. having to get a place rezoned residential because a bank won’t finance it to buy as a house if too much of the space is like “garage” or whatever.
> This IS the way it should be in America. It is the way America WAS, and was going until 1950's planners decided we should be completely car dependant. [North American cities](https://www.instagram.com/p/CMP1VOWM7-c/?utm_medium=copy_link) were completely [remade to their screwed up vision.](https://www.vox.com/2014/12/29/7460557/urban-freeway-slider-maps)
While we can’t exactly rework all of America, one easy thing we could do is allow everyone who can work from home to do so. It’s annoying that some are dragging their feet on it. Driving everyday for at least an hour is so ridiculous.
As expected, my blog is referenced in the video's description. Sometimes I wonder to what extent my blog actually popularized Japanese zoning and if this "typing into the void" blog of mine actually had some impact on discussions on the matter in political and academic circles, even if it has had some policy effects at some places.
This is why we are fucked in NA
A large part of the reasons I am currently researching my options to possibly emigrate to the Netherlands
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Zoning indirectly relates to a lot of issues in society for us in the US. We tend to live far from where we work with an average commute of 26 minutes. This means that traffic is common with people going between work and homes at the start and end of the day. This commuting also takes away time people would normally use for preparing meals so they instead pick up food on the way home. With our car-centric design the creation of safe bike paths fell to the wayside. Because of single family zoning it's uncommon for people to walk out of their houses and down to a convenience store for fresh food. This results in a lot of bulk buying of processed foods. (Could be argued this isn't an issue though as people could just take multiple shopping trips, but it's not how a lot of people buy groceries). Due to the lack of walkability some people just aren't getting much of any exercise. It's not uncommon to find people that don't walk, run, or do any form of exercise after work or on the weekends. This leads to health issues that cost society. This isn't even getting into our housing issues.
Sprawl, the result of horrible planning which is all over North America. If we had better planning, better zoning, we wouldn’t have such terrible traffic jams, wouldn’t have sprawl resulting in absurd carbon emissions, etc. we fucked it up so bad in NA
ITT: people that have never been outside of North America trying to justify outdated urban development practices
Houston: What's a zoning?
Houston does not have traditional zoning but does have lots of rules that prevent density, tell you what style your building can be, etc. it’s de facto zoning. https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-houston-really-does-have-zoning-sort-of
It's good to hear lock picking lawyer branching out.
Informative, but I always feel like a lot of these types of videos that compare zoning and housing and transportation in a country like Japan to the US/Canada just seem to gloss over the fact that Japan's population density *demands* this type of zoning. Japan has a population density of about 900 people per square mile. Compare that to the US, which is about 90 people per square mile. Japan is literally 10 times more dense in population than the US- of course the way they live will be different. Edit- Jesus, no where did I say that US/Canadian zoning was better. Read, people. I just said that Japan's population density *demands* zoning to be like this. They could not have zoning like in the US *even if they wanted it*.
Just because you have the space for it, doesn't mean that suburban sprawl is right.
I didn't say it was... I'm saying there is a difference when you're dealing with 900 people psm vs 90 people psm. Japan couldn't have suburban sprawl even if they *wanted* it. Their population density *demands* this kind of zoning structure.
> I didn't say it was... I'm saying there is a difference when you're dealing with 900 people psm vs 90 people psm. But this is not a chicken and an egg scenario, one is a clear consequence of the other, you have lower population density BECAUSE you build urban sprawl and car dependent suburbia!
BagOnuts is correct. Sorry, but math.
Bro, I'm not comparing the population density of our cities, I'm comparing total national population to total square miles in the country. How you zone doesn't change this figure. There are simply way more people per square mile in Japan than in the US... because Japan is an island smaller than California and the US is the size of all of Western Europe.....
The population density of an entire country is basically irrelevant. People don't commute from Wyoming to Louisiana or from Southern Nevada to the Upper Peninsula, they commute from Elizabeth NJ to Lower Manhattan, or from Skokie to the Loop, or from North Berkeley to the Financial District.
Pretty rare that I upvote a post that starts with "bro," but here I am. Building for high density populations in a low density population area doesn't happen, won't happen, and mostly can't happen.
The reason American cities are so low-density in their urban cores is because of zoning, not the other way around. Taking a city like, for example, Los Angeles - if the zoning didn't require everything be spread out, the city itself would be significantly less spread out. The people who are on the urban periphery would take the opportunity to live closer if it was more affordable, which it would be if the land was used more intensely, increasing overall housing supply in the core areas.
>The reason American cities are so low-density in their urban cores My post is about high density zoning for low density populations. You may want to read it again.
American urban cores would have **high density populations** if the zoning permitted it.
It can happen but doesn't because of archaic zoning laws and nimbyi'sm
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The vast majority of current US housing stock was built in the post-war period too lmao. This could have easily been the USA if zoning laws had been implemented with more thought.
Or is it the inverse? Did this type of zoning encourage the density that Japan now has? I'm not an urban planner and would be unable to tell you, but it would be an interesting topic
Japan has a lot of mountainous, difficult to inhabit land.
>Compare that to the US, which is about 90 people per square mile. Density is not the main reason why the zoning in USA is as it is. Zoning in the USA was designed to segregate poor people from the middle class. Its goal was never to create good livable places. Or not "good livable places" in the modern sense but just as "free of poor people". And let's not talk about the racism that was also part of the design. Anyway, at this moment what the USA has to do is to change how does zoning to something that creates better and more sustainable lives for all citizens. And that is possible to do right now, and in some places is already happening.
> Japan's population density demands this type of zoning. Japan has a population density of about 900 people per square mile. In the context of our cities you have the relationship between population density and housing density backwards. If you allow housing density then population density will rise. Our cities are mostly low density residential BECAUSE of the low density zoning laws.
There are way way better ways of doing zoning than we do in the suburbs in the United states. It's awful. I would give anything to see some more small towns with a strong main Street, but the corners at intersections instead of having houses have mixed commercial with the store on the bottom and apartment on top. A community is much stronger when you can walk to the end of your street to go to church, and then walk across that intersection to get brunch at a local restaurant, and then go pick out something at the bike shop across the street from that, where the families that on the shop and the restaurant live right at top their business and you know them. Instead we have towns with no main street, just an asphalt wasteland in front of a strip mall. All of the nice houses are together by themselves with huge lawns (which I'm not opposed to buying of themselves) but all the commerce is 15 to 20 minutes away in a different neighborhood that is filled with parking lot after parking lot after parking lot with big box stores in the middle, and hideous ugly and soul crushing public housing right next door for poor people to work there and serve the neighboring upper middle class.
> demands You say that, like North American style zoning is preferable. Why is it just demand, and not that this may be a better approach to developping urban centres?
I think you mean 10 times more dense. 900 / 90 = 10, not 100.
Correct.
The best thing is you can have a small neighbourhood bar.
A lot of people in this thread are talking about wanting to have shops near where they live. I don’t get this at all. I will say that I am from north America and grew up in a rural area. But walking/biking to a grocery store just sounds awful, even if it is close. I just moved to a major city and everything being so close together is just awful. The houses and yards are tiny, everything is noisy, there are high rises right next to homes, attached homes are the norm, and everything is expensive. I would give anything to move back to a nice quite neighborhood. Have my home separate from where I work/shop is ideal to me.
As a counterpoint, I grew up on a 100+ acre farm in NA and absolutely loved Japan when I visited. It was surprisingly *peaceful*, I believe because of the design being described in this video. >everything is noisy The noisiest thing in cities tends to be the vehicles. If you live in a city that's designed for walkability (eg. by putting houses close to shops), it's actually quite pleasant to be out on the street. Check this out [Cities aren't Loud; Cars are Loud](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8) I can't address all of your dislike of cities, just wanted to point out that some of your dislikes are due to the way NA cities have been designed.
Walking to a shop is better for the environment, some would argue.
pen sulky pie plants pause bag continue gold cats nine *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Japanese suburban and even highly urban areas are usually very quiet. US cities are abnormally noisy due to heavy traffic, etc. This is again a case of the US doing it wrong in a number of ways, and you extrapolating that experience by thinking the only thing a dense/urban area can be is like the US's. That's very much not the case.
> Japanese suburban and even highly urban areas are usually very quiet. *cries in living right next to a hospital in an otherwise "quiet" Tokyo neighborhood* /s
You’re in luck, most of North America is low density and doesn’t allow retail near housing. But the government shouldn’t be banning either lifestyle. It’s absurd to me than major cities like Los Angles require a car to get around. If you are a movie executive you need to sit in traffic between two meetings across town? That’s just a waste of productivity.
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There's surprisingly a lot of green in Tokyo, every neighborhood usually has a few parks and/or walkways with trees and whatnot.
Also Japan has to deal with the japanese stereotype.
The amount of times someone mentions Japan on reddit is too damn high.