Comments by "mindstalk" (@mindstalk) on "Why Tokyo Has the BEST Streets in the World" video.

That's not just Tokyo, that's all of Japan. Goes hand in hand with the national ban on overnight street parking.
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@kaymiller77 Yeah, even without trees (and the one drawback of those 16 feet streets is being too narrow for trees), being able to nearly hug the building provides some shade for much of the day. For wider streets, another East Asian thing is "five foot way" (look it up on Wikipedia), basically mandated covered arcades.
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Japanese land use is a lot closer to "free market" than the US is. Even in the most restrictive zone you can have a small shop in your house, or build rental housing, or yeah a commercial parking lot, and switch between them pretty much at will.
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@kaymiller77 Yeah, I'm newly a fan of balconies and awnings (or other forms of shade, like Bermuda shutters.) A/C is magic but it'd be great to not need it as much, or to have housing that's habitable even in a power outage.
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@stevieinselby Well for existing cities, streets came first. If your pre-modern property lines and buildings are already only 5 meters apart, it would be devastating to widen the streets. Granted that doesn't stop people, apparently including even some parts of Japan, but it's significant. Japan is unusual in apparently keeping narrow streets even in newer development.
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@Homer-OJ-Simpson Boston North End. Chicago went big on big streets even before the cars. Local streets are 66 feet, I think that's right of way rather than just curb to curb, but still.
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" it is cramped and chaotic. " I agree it's not the prettiest, especially in Street View photos. The big drawback of the narrow streets is no room for trees, though some streets are lined by people's potted plants. On the other hand, actually walking around wasn't bad, and I lived there for three months. And there are tradeoffs: the narrow streets means a very high ratio of taxpayer to street, and thus great maintenance. Building design is up to the owner, no aesthetic commissions, which can mean uglier and more chaotic buildings, but also cheaper ones with faster construction, and also quirkier buildings.
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Cheap bikes; no way to quietly truck stolen bikes off to Eastern Europe; registered bikes; and maybe Japanese culture too. Supposedly a lot of "bike theft" is some drunk businessman 'borrowing' an unlocked mamachari and leaving it somewhere, with the police finding and returning it later.
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@TheDanEdwards Yeah, that.
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@buddy1155 "crime ridden ghetto hell holes" The US has some of these, like in the North End or Beacon Hill of Boston, or some old alleyways of Philadelphia. They're high-value, expensive neighborhoods. Many places have somewhat wider streets: sidewalk, parking, one travel lane, parking, sidewalk. They're fine, not ghettoes.
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East Asia seems to really love building balconies, which breaks up much flatness. Less obviously used for pleasure liking hanging out, more for drying laundry and putting out plants, and having access to the mini-split A/C compressor unit outside.
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They do!
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I lived in Osaka for 3 months, and took away all the same lessons and impressions (many of which I've been sharing in youtube comments for the past 5 years.) Osaka does even better, 25% of trips by bike. And note that this is with much worse weather than the Netherlands, also larger cities (so home-to-job distance will be bigger) and public transit that isn't bike friendly. Your Tokyo 'wide sidewalks' actually looked pretty narrow to me; I think the standard for arterials is supposed to be around 4 meters, or 13 feet or so. And in Osaka, most bikes along arterials were on the sidewalk/multi-use path (though many stayed on the local streets, too, of course.) Cynically, one reason more people don't look to Japan is that it's distant and more foreign; some would even invoke racism. But to be fair, I'm not sure how much we can learn from Japan's streets, except for new development. There's no quick path for turning a Chicago local street of 66 feet (right of way) into Tokyo street of 16 feet. For existing cities, streets are laid in already. We can re-arrange the asphalt easily, but I'm told moving curbs is expensive, and when buildings are already 80 feet apart wall to wall, there's not much we can do... unless we start building small buildings in the middle, creating two narrow streets out of one wide one. Density: NYC has a lower density of 10,000/km2 due to State Island and outer Queens. 15,000 is right there with Brooklyn and the Bronx or inner Queens. Paris France is 21,000. Also, I feel you should credit NJB a bit for title and "cities aren't loud" meme drop. :)
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Yeah, about the same as Brooklyn and Bronx, really.
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@pleappleappleap IIRC both are around 14,000/km2, similar to his Tokyo neighborhoods, which was my point.
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@Rubicola174 Yeah, that was part of the spark. Thanks!
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Got stats?
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Osaka, too. I lived at the intersection of a narrow street (one lane, one way for cars) and an even narrower one (cars probably driving very carefully to not scrape the sides.)
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@bubbathedm No one's making that argument except in your paranoid, persecution complex, imagination.
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@R_V_ The US has higher crime rates than Western Europe, and yet most Americans are in far more danger from cars and drivers than we are from crime. Yet people are afraid of 'crime' and 'immigrants' like much of the media tells them to be, and not of the cars far more likely to kill them. What keeps people off the street is the fear of being run down by traffic.
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