alt Hacker NewsIt's a good article, but I think the "it's not culture, just good governance" idea is a little hand wavy. The two bleed into each other greatly. The fact that houses are more disposable and wealth is less intergenerational in Japan does a lot to tamp down the NIMBY issues that plague e.g. the UK.
The UK is so far gone that the transport authority in it's largest city can't revamp stations or do add-on development without literal years of hand wringing. And even then it's often rejected or reduced in the end.
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The idea that culture can be divorced from other aspects of society seems like one of the biggest misconceptions of the 20th century.
>The UK is so far gone that the transport authority in it's largest city can't revamp stations or do add-on development without literal years of hand wringing. And even then it's often rejected or reduced in the end.
They just finished a line that traverses the whole city. It's 73 miles from end to end and carries one seventh of the UK's rail journeys (600,000 trips per day).
London is probably the worst-governed, or worst-planned, city of its peers. NYC has famously bad governance but at least it actually has its own government.
The national government controls all London budgets, the Mayor has no power, there's no legislative body for the city (GLA is not one), and there are 33 different borough councils that don't owe the Mayor anything.