Comments by "thomas grabkowski" (@thomasgrabkowski8283) on "Why Japan is Giving Away 8 Million Free Houses" video.

@JEBavido Yet Houston is still a sprawling city where you need a car, and things tend to be far away, and mostly made up of single family homes. Only US city that's similar to Japanese city in terms of zoning is NYC
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It's because Japan's population has declined significantly from its peak, thus their housing supply, is designed for a significantly larger population than now
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And its those remote villages where Japan's population decline is hitting hardest
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@NeovanGoth Well both Japan and Italy are struggling with shrinking populations and have housing supply designed for a higher population than now
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@goclick And they tend to be located in the Rust Belt region, which is seeing population decline and has a housing supply designed for a higher population than now, similar to Japan
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@daeseongkim93 Yep, very difficult to move there and almost impossible to become a naturalised citizen there I've heard
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Well it's different urban planning practice. Japanese cities are far older than US cities, and built long before the car thus things need to be close by to houses. Furthermore, in the 20th century, Japanese suburbs, instead of being built around freeways, were built around train lines(post WW2, Japan invested in trains instead of cars like the US), thus continuing to build dense neighbourhoods. Furthermore, Japan's population density as a whole is far higher than the US, and full of mountains, thus they have to build things packed together
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@kyh148 Suburbs in Europe and Japan are still dense and made up with apartments rather than single family homes. Plus, they are built around railways rather than highways
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@zUJ7EjVD Well housing costs are a lot more affordable in Houston than in most other major cities. Why it has fewer homeless and higher home ownership rate
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Zaydan Alfariz Brunei is oil country. More cars=more oil revenue
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