alt Hacker News“Japan’s liberal land use regulation makes it straightforward to build new neighborhoods next to railway lines, giving commuters easy access to city centers. It also enables the densification of these centers, which means that commuters have more places they want to go.”
This is the most important paragraph in the article. It can’t be overstated how ingenious Japan’s system of zoning is and how much this has benefitted their society in ways we can only dream about here in the West.
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One thing that is critical is that the country hasn't turned home ownership into an ever growing financial asset that is meant to carry the majority of one's wealth into perpetuity
A great video on the zoning laws in Japan if anyone wants to nerd out on them
>how ingenious Japan’s system of zoning is
I'm only barely familiar with it so I ask this in good faith: is it really ingenious or is it just more permissive? My bias/priors are that the simpler and truer statement is: it can't be overstated how beneficial more permissive zoning laws are to a society.
Ingenious? It's a system that endorses hyper-capitalism through sub-9m² kyosho jutaku.
That isn't ingenious, it's battery farming.
> new neighborhoods next to railway lines
> ingenious Japan’s system of zoning
These two sentences don't fit together. Living next to major sources of pollution - and yes, noise is pollution as well - has been shown numerous times to be bad for the health of the people [1], leading to increased costs for healthcare systems [2], and to make it worse living near noisy traffic infrastructure (both rail and road) is closely correlated to poverty [3], which means poorer people are (as usual) being punished for being poor.
And on top of that, densification leads to worse mental health for the inhabitants [4] - particularly in Japan it's undeniable given phenomena such as "hikikomori".
Fight densification wherever someone tries to push it. People aren't poultry, and even in poultry or pig herds we know it's bad for their mental and physical health, why should humans be different?
[1] https://www.vrso.de/de/verband/veroeffentlichungen/veroeffen...
[2] https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/17/026/1702638.pdf
[3] https://www.rnd.de/mobilitaet/teure-mobilitaet-wie-armut-die...
[4] https://www.aerzteblatt.de/archiv/risiko-fuer-psychische-erk...
"West" when we talk about urban spaces, walk-accessible cities and public transportation is, IMHO, the wrong category. Europe and USA are very far apart.