America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws

I serve as a planning commissioner for my city, and my city just recently tried to overhaul our zoning code to allow for more affordability and better economic outcomes for our citizens and future as a city. Here is what I have learned:

In the US, few people participate or care about local laws, zoning, and elections, or even understand why participation may be important. In a citizen ballot to determine if we should cap housing construction, 10% of the population voted. 5.1% were in favor of a limit on housing construction, and it passed before later being made illegal by the state. Among those voters, most have rose tinted glasses of better economic times from the past, and want to recreate the past instead of learning from it and using it to make the future better for future residents and businesses.

Most people do not realize how zoning impacts the daily life of everyone in an area, and how it impacts personal finances, which businesses will thrive, and public finances. Where I live, we have an absurd number of chains, and local businesses struggle. Part of this is out of our control, but the part that is (minimum parking requirements, single use zoning, etc) continuously gets upheld against changes that would help local businesses.

I think we need to figure out how to get young people engaged locally. Many young people will protest national or state policies and be engaged at those levels, which is great, but very little time/energy is spent where they could directly see meaningful impact on their lives.

>Individual regulations, each reasonable in isolation...

Every single one of these rules that amounts to death by a thousand cuts preventing these sorts of businesses (as well as many others) will be rabidly defended by many/most if presented in the abstract. That sort of inability to reason about the forest based on what you're doing to the trees is the root problem. And it's a social/ideological/moral one, even if it expresses itself via governments.

It's no more "reasonable in isolation" to peddle rules than it is to justify littering in the park because they don't take effect in isolation. If everyone does it everything goes to crap and we all know it so we don't let anyone justify littering in the park using the effect in isolation.

The key point here (and biggest advantage of Japanese cities) is that nearly every building is mixed-use by default, regardless of local density levels. This post does a great job illustrating the difference this makes: https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.htm...

For comparison, even our best-case scenarios for urbanism here in the states (like NYC) have incredibly convoluted zoning rules, which in turn make it impossible to build anything new without intervention from the city/state: https://zola.planninglabs.nyc/about#9.72/40.7125/-73.733

So many odd questions raised in this article. Literally each section seems to just hand wave a lot of things.

And, look, I am all for attacking some regulations; but I have to confess the requirement for multiple sinks is going to be far down my list of regulations that have to go. Odd to see it be one of the top mentioned ones, here.

The biggest question, for me, is raised when the complaint is dropped that we spend about an hour in the kitchen. I cannot believe that that is an meaningful number to compare between city and urban/rural living. Which, at large, is a big part of the problem with looking at anything from places like Tokyo. They have density that many in the US just don't understand.

The article even largely acknowledges this by comparing Manhattan pizza shops. A business model that you just can't magically make work in less dense cities.

What a trash article. Why is the only photo, used to illustrate the point about narrow buildings, a photo of Manhattan instead of anything in Japan? When "our zoning laws" are enumerated, where are they talking about? Last time I checked there were no US federal rules on parking spaces. At least they acknowledge that multiple jurisdictions exist when talking about health codes. And as per usual when talking about Japan, they ignore the fact that Japan also has car-dependent suburbs and rural areas, where it is quite common for restaurants outside of city centers to need to balance costs with the need for a larger footprint and a parking lot. The role of culture in eating habits is also ignored, Americans take more pride in the self-reliance of cooking their own meals.

Not convinced, plenty of countries (e.g. UK) don’t have such stringent don’t have strict zoning laws and also don’t have $4 food

Japanese fans also will stay to clean up a stadium after the game so I'm not sure how many examples from Japan can be applied to the US without taking step #1 of changing the entire culture, character, and conscientiousness of American society.

Missing from the article that also plays a role:

* optimizations. Some of these restaurants don’t have a counter, or any customer facing staff. Select your meal and pay at a vending machine, get your ticket number, wait for your order to be called. * onsen/community center: it’s entirely feasible to own less things and have fewer sq/ft at home if you can go to your local rec center to shower/spa, watch tv, sit on the couch, eat dinner, hang out with friends, etc. as a tourist my meal+spa+etc was maybe $10? * public transit: a lot of these shops are viable in Tokyo because rails move people en masse quickly

Zoning performs some important functions, but is often used to set up barriers-to-entry. I somewhat doubt that zoning is the problem here because there were plenty of cheap restaurants before the recessions, covid, and trade-war inflation. The US population is low-density, low-engagement, and low on disposable income. The food service industry has adapted by targeting the wealthiest, who have plenty of disposable income and are much more willing to spend than low-wage workers who can barely afford eggs and milk from a grocery store.

I have been living in Japan for years and I would like to know where you can find a lunch bowl for 600 yen which is not a company cantine or industrial konbini shit.

If you want a fast, healthy, balanced meal for $4 or less, the obvious choice in America is a frozen meal (aka TV dinner).

You can microwave it in 4-6 minutes; ingredients are often flash-frozen, locking in nutrients; and food-safety concerns are addressed at scale, rather than in a hit-or-miss way in a tiny storefront.

So perhaps, instead of advocating for more tiny restaurants that would likely need to skimp on safety considerations, we should be advocating for more microwaves available in grocery and convenience stores, so people can select a frozen meal, heat it up, and be on their way.

Why does the article start talking about Japan, then show some photo of Koreatown Manhattan?

I've been to the US a couple of times and most restaurants I visited did not have any parking spots at all. I have also seen plenty of food-carts operated by a single person, comparable to the Japanese mini-restaurants described here.

Visited Japan for the first time in December. I stayed at Airbnb's in Tokyo and Kyoto.

There were no $4 lunch bowls nearby, but I didn't need that to appreciate that I could walk to six restaurants, two wine shops and three cafes in less than three minutes. It was wonderful.

We're working on re-legalizing neighborhood businesses here in Bend, Oregon:

https://www.centraloregonlandwatch.org/neighborhood-commerci...

The city council just had a work session and was quite supportive of the idea.

It probably isn't as simple as the writer thinks. Houston, for example, has no zoning laws and no $4 lunch bowls.

America is going in the opposite direction with instant food delivery. Your $11 meal is delivered to your house within 30 minutes. But, there's a service fee of $5, a delivery fee of $6, and a 20% gratuity.

reducing everything to zoning laws is lazy analysis. nobody will ever sell $4 lunch bowls in SF because the rent is too high. so these market incentives will influence/force the proprietor to sell them for more!

The parking thing caused us not to buy a building. Not enough spots, not enough handicap spots too.

The annoying part is that we lived 4 houses down from the building. We would never drive there ofc. The other thing is that the parking lot was so small, all spaces could be seen as Handicap accessible.

Instead we rented in a different area and the handicap spaces are significantly further from the building.

Maybe it ended up working out since our company grew and I know that space would not have been big enough.

Just having visited Japan, another thing that's immediately apparent though is that there are other well-intentioned laws that prevent this from happening. My favorite breakfast was like $8 (which was better than American breakfast by an order-of-magnitude) was in a tiny shop that had a tiny curved staircase that could scarcely fit tall people, definitely not obese people, and don't even pretend handicap people.

Frankly I think alternative laws should be applicable (you don't need to be able seat wheelchair people if you're willing to bring the food to them to-go) since I just think it's not worth losing that efficient density and cost-effectiveness for a tiny tiny fraction of the population.

I have heard that there are no zoning laws in Houston, Texas.

Are there $4 lunch bowls there?

I wonder if you could partially get around this by using the "ghost kitchen" model. Offer food only for delivery, but then "hire" customers to deliver their own meals if they want it cheap.

The article's diagnosis just doesn't seem connected to the facts. It has nothing to do with "restaurant tiers"; as the first link describes, the "healthy lunch bowls" are provided by the fast food chain Yoshinoya, which sells the same bowls in their US locations for $9.

Honestly, at this point, may be someone can collect a bunch of like minded individuals and build a city from scratch that ticks all the boxes instead of fighting existing vested interests. Then, hopefully it can be a model for others to review and check.

The problem with US or any other country is that too many things that should not be ideological become ideological. So many people would be happy to live in a 1400 sq ft 3 bedroom house over 2500 sq ft single family homes if a lot of other things were provided.

Restaurants will charge what people are able to pay. My office is on the third floor of a century-old parisian building, in the heart of the city. The street is filled with tiny restaurants, some of which serve these "healthy lunch bowls" that the US apparently lacks. Except they're 14€ here (without drinks or desserts), because people have the money to pay for it, and do so. You can relax zoning laws, but no one will price their bowls at $4 in the richest country on Earth, obviously.

Ok… if this is the case, then why are food trucks charging $18 for a burger and fries now?

It isn’t all zoning laws.

Pay Japanese salaries, get Japanese prices [0]. That $4 kombini bento feels like a $13 burrito or Cava bowl when on a Japanese salary.

Japan only appears cheap if you earn in USD, GBP, and Euros. For most Japanese households, costs have risen higher than salaries [1][2] and they are now facing inflation due to tourist spending [7][8][9].

It also doesn't help that the median household income in Japan is around $25,000 [3] compared to $83,000 [4] in the US. Even Koreans (who used to be Japan's "Mexicans") now earn more in Korea than in Japan, which is a massive psychological shock in JP.

This is why you've starting seeing the rise of populist far right parties like 参政党 in Japan campaigning on an anti-tourist and anti-foreigner plank - it's overwhelmingly young Japanese (18-34) who are facing the brunt of tourism-induced inflation and a bad job market, and have as such shifted right [5][6]. And mainstream Japanese parties like the LDP have had to shift further right as a result.

[0] - https://www.nippon.com/ja/japan-topics/c14023/

[1] - https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/apac/en/insights/markets-an...

[2] - https://www.iima.or.jp/docs/newsletter/2025/nl2025.48.pdf

[3] - https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/mro/2029703?display=1

[4] - https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-28...

[5] - https://asia.nikkei.com/opinion/sanseito-brings-far-right-po...

[6] - https://asia.nikkei.com/politics/japan-election/nostalgia-an...

[7] - https://asia.nikkei.com/business/travel-leisure/japan-s-tour...

[8] - https://therobinreport.com/japans-backlash-on-luxury-tourism...

[9] - https://www.princetonpoliticalreview.org/international-news/...

This is missing the forest for the trees a bit. Our zoning laws do prevent lower footprint businesses, but in reality the problem is less zoning laws and more landlords and rent. If you compare city to city (ignoring other societal issues), cities in Japan have a far lower vacancy rate compared to cities across America.

In Seattle I've seen a ton of smaller spaces become vacant and stay vacant for years because landlords aren't interested in lowering rent prices; they're holding onto the building/land itself because it'll appreciate over time and there's little to no cost to them to hold onto empty space. Roosevelt Square here is a great example of what I'm referring to, because you've got prime restaurant and retail space located right next to public transit that's increasingly going empty.

No one sells $4 lunch bowls in the US because no one wants to work for minimum wage for 12 hours a day. The article makes it seem like a great idea, but people in Japan who run these stores work like dogs and live in poverty for their whole lives.

You’re not getting $4 lunch bowls in Seattle when minimum wage is more than $20/hr. You aren’t getting affordable anything when labor is so expensive. (You also aren’t getting your 16 year old their first job either when labor costs more than your kid is worth but that is another topic entirely)

Zoning is only one tiny piece of the puzzle.