Tokyo Has the BEST Streets in the World
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Date: 2024-08-01
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Comments and reviews: 20
riroo8275
I live in Tokyo, in one of the shitamachi wards not all that far from Taito-ku (where you were. Some useful notes:
- Bike dodging is a rather irritating fact of life while walking along some of the main streets. The vast majority of cyclists prefer biking on the sidewalks, especially on the busier stroads where the carriageway feels markedly less safe. This often leads to conflicts when the sidewalks aren't wide enough
- The mamachari, an ebike usually with a basket attached to the front and a child seat behind, is by far the most common bike type in Tokyo. You showed several in your video. They should be imported to the US, ideally with ebike subsidies (a policy I've heard quite a bit of advocacy for in place of electric vehicle subsidies)
- While improvements are being made to the bike network at a surprisingly rapid pace, Tokyo has quite a lot of poorly designed stroads with ped/bike conflicts and too much space given over to cars. The other day I was walking in a crowd to the subway station and noticed that it had a real New York vibe, where the too-narrow sidewalk was full to bursting but there were hardly any cars on the street. (By the by, Osaka and Kobe are much better at crowd management than Tokyo IMO; Kyoto is the most Tokyo-like city in Kansai and it's also the least pleasant to walk around in. A place where Tokyo can really learn from the Netherlands is being much more aggressive in separated networks for peds, bikes, and cars
- Land use in Tokyo is very much dictated by transportation. You'll find the highest density nodes along JR, followed by the private railways, followed by the subway lines. In addition, most (but not all) Tokyo rail alignments have been repurposed for passenger use, and even the most adorably dinky passenger services like the Tobu Kameido Line have 10-minute all-day headways. This shows the wisdom of safeguarding old rail alignments and planning for them to be put back into service, and upzoning around rail corridors with this intention in mind
- Most Tokyo stations have bike parking garages! They can be tucked out of the way, but once you know what you're looking for, you'll find them easily. This is also an important demonstrator of how bikes are a walkshed multiplier in extending station reach
- Long-term I suspect the most important lesson Tokyo provides is that the feeling of being on a narrow street is the most important part of a narrow street. Liberalizing American land use policies so owners can use more of their property and rethinking street design to achieve this sense of pedestrian safety are long term the most important lessons Tokyo offers to the US
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I live in Tokyo, in one of the shitamachi wards not all that far from Taito-ku (where you were. Some useful notes:
- Bike dodging is a rather irritating fact of life while walking along some of the main streets. The vast majority of cyclists prefer biking on the sidewalks, especially on the busier stroads where the carriageway feels markedly less safe. This often leads to conflicts when the sidewalks aren't wide enough
- The mamachari, an ebike usually with a basket attached to the front and a child seat behind, is by far the most common bike type in Tokyo. You showed several in your video. They should be imported to the US, ideally with ebike subsidies (a policy I've heard quite a bit of advocacy for in place of electric vehicle subsidies)
- While improvements are being made to the bike network at a surprisingly rapid pace, Tokyo has quite a lot of poorly designed stroads with ped/bike conflicts and too much space given over to cars. The other day I was walking in a crowd to the subway station and noticed that it had a real New York vibe, where the too-narrow sidewalk was full to bursting but there were hardly any cars on the street. (By the by, Osaka and Kobe are much better at crowd management than Tokyo IMO; Kyoto is the most Tokyo-like city in Kansai and it's also the least pleasant to walk around in. A place where Tokyo can really learn from the Netherlands is being much more aggressive in separated networks for peds, bikes, and cars
- Land use in Tokyo is very much dictated by transportation. You'll find the highest density nodes along JR, followed by the private railways, followed by the subway lines. In addition, most (but not all) Tokyo rail alignments have been repurposed for passenger use, and even the most adorably dinky passenger services like the Tobu Kameido Line have 10-minute all-day headways. This shows the wisdom of safeguarding old rail alignments and planning for them to be put back into service, and upzoning around rail corridors with this intention in mind
- Most Tokyo stations have bike parking garages! They can be tucked out of the way, but once you know what you're looking for, you'll find them easily. This is also an important demonstrator of how bikes are a walkshed multiplier in extending station reach
- Long-term I suspect the most important lesson Tokyo provides is that the feeling of being on a narrow street is the most important part of a narrow street. Liberalizing American land use policies so owners can use more of their property and rethinking street design to achieve this sense of pedestrian safety are long term the most important lessons Tokyo offers to the US
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cmdrls212
Amsterdam is the worse city to look at for reference. Main reasons are obvious. First, flat and criss crossed with canals means easements for bike trails are trivial as waterways serve dual purpose when they carry bike trails on the edges. That's not common in North America. Second, temperate weather makes year round cycling possible unlike in much of the US where scorching heat and blizzards make biking a health hazard. And lastly, Amsterdam is ridiculously small for a major European city. Cities of comparable size in the US don't have anywhere near the importance of Amsterdam and the federal dollars won't be prioritized there. The US is better suited looking at solutions that work here first and ignore the Amsterdam distraction as it is unhelpful and nonsensical to treat Phoenix, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston in the same way. The main thing Japan teaches the US is that small cars should not be illegal. That's one thing you failed to mention but the reason these small cars and trucks are not common in the US is because they don't pass crash safety ratings. In fact many states actively ban japanese k trucks for this reason.
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Amsterdam is the worse city to look at for reference. Main reasons are obvious. First, flat and criss crossed with canals means easements for bike trails are trivial as waterways serve dual purpose when they carry bike trails on the edges. That's not common in North America. Second, temperate weather makes year round cycling possible unlike in much of the US where scorching heat and blizzards make biking a health hazard. And lastly, Amsterdam is ridiculously small for a major European city. Cities of comparable size in the US don't have anywhere near the importance of Amsterdam and the federal dollars won't be prioritized there. The US is better suited looking at solutions that work here first and ignore the Amsterdam distraction as it is unhelpful and nonsensical to treat Phoenix, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston in the same way. The main thing Japan teaches the US is that small cars should not be illegal. That's one thing you failed to mention but the reason these small cars and trucks are not common in the US is because they don't pass crash safety ratings. In fact many states actively ban japanese k trucks for this reason.
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faenethlorhalien
Tokyo' streets are utter crap. They're much, MUCH dirtier than the streets in literally any other Japanese city, mainly because it's hard to keep them clean when over one third of the nation's population lives and works in the area.
They7re poorly designed, as in ZERO design: McArthur, after WW2, had to rebuild the capital and they needed housing and businesses PRONTO, so the puppet Japanese regime basically allowed for construction everywhere, in any nook and cranny. That's why you have really narrow streets aligned in a way that makes no sense. Do you want good streets that feel like Tokyo's, but are slightly wider, slightly cleaner and are aligned in a grid Go to Osaka. or Kyoto. Or even Kobe. Or even Nagoya.
Source Lived in this beautiful nation for almost half of my life and have lived or visited extensively all the places cited above, including Tokyo. Tokyo is by far the worst of those places in terms of urbanism. It's only that they manage to mask it up with massive beautification projects and modern buildings because that's where most of tax money in Japan ends.
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Tokyo' streets are utter crap. They're much, MUCH dirtier than the streets in literally any other Japanese city, mainly because it's hard to keep them clean when over one third of the nation's population lives and works in the area.
They7re poorly designed, as in ZERO design: McArthur, after WW2, had to rebuild the capital and they needed housing and businesses PRONTO, so the puppet Japanese regime basically allowed for construction everywhere, in any nook and cranny. That's why you have really narrow streets aligned in a way that makes no sense. Do you want good streets that feel like Tokyo's, but are slightly wider, slightly cleaner and are aligned in a grid Go to Osaka. or Kyoto. Or even Kobe. Or even Nagoya.
Source Lived in this beautiful nation for almost half of my life and have lived or visited extensively all the places cited above, including Tokyo. Tokyo is by far the worst of those places in terms of urbanism. It's only that they manage to mask it up with massive beautification projects and modern buildings because that's where most of tax money in Japan ends.
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GuidingOlive
My sister and I visited Tokyo and Kyoto in December. It's incredible how much we were able to see and do while using the metro and our lamborfeeties. And he's right it was so very quiet. Some of that has to do with tall buildings everywhere but you also would not see many cars on side streets, maybe 1 a minute. On the other hand, you can only have so many people in a given area and Shibuya Crossing Shinjuku Station were very cramped. But Ginza was absolutely fantastic and Ueno Asakusa (outside Senso-ji) were much less crowded.
The US would have to do seismic shifts in culture to adopt JP urban living, but I could see places like San Francisco and L. A. that would be vastly improved by moving toward their model. But I don't think it's reasonable to convince some people to give up their cars without first having that alternative. Which is why we're probably in a cycle of inaction. Hopefully, if progress continues, we can get some high speed rails set up that will ease people away from wanting cars for longer domestic trips.
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My sister and I visited Tokyo and Kyoto in December. It's incredible how much we were able to see and do while using the metro and our lamborfeeties. And he's right it was so very quiet. Some of that has to do with tall buildings everywhere but you also would not see many cars on side streets, maybe 1 a minute. On the other hand, you can only have so many people in a given area and Shibuya Crossing Shinjuku Station were very cramped. But Ginza was absolutely fantastic and Ueno Asakusa (outside Senso-ji) were much less crowded.
The US would have to do seismic shifts in culture to adopt JP urban living, but I could see places like San Francisco and L. A. that would be vastly improved by moving toward their model. But I don't think it's reasonable to convince some people to give up their cars without first having that alternative. Which is why we're probably in a cycle of inaction. Hopefully, if progress continues, we can get some high speed rails set up that will ease people away from wanting cars for longer domestic trips.
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deathpyre42
I think the thing people forget about Japanese streets is that the people are a huge factor in their success. Like. if you drove a truck on an Amsterdam bike path you'd barely make it 10 ft, but a road the same size does triple duty for cars, pedestrians and bikes because everyone sort of naturally dodges. With no explicit rule on who's turn it is, if two cars heading opposite directions on a 2-way one lane street meet with no room on the shoulder, one will reverse until the next available space so that the other can pass. Also there are definitely a lot of large car friendly streets in Tokyo, it's just that wide streets are used mainly to head between neighborhoods, with narrow 1-lane streets within the neighborhoods themselves. So GPS systems are actually designed to avoid narrow neighborhood streets when possible even if the overall route is longer.
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I think the thing people forget about Japanese streets is that the people are a huge factor in their success. Like. if you drove a truck on an Amsterdam bike path you'd barely make it 10 ft, but a road the same size does triple duty for cars, pedestrians and bikes because everyone sort of naturally dodges. With no explicit rule on who's turn it is, if two cars heading opposite directions on a 2-way one lane street meet with no room on the shoulder, one will reverse until the next available space so that the other can pass. Also there are definitely a lot of large car friendly streets in Tokyo, it's just that wide streets are used mainly to head between neighborhoods, with narrow 1-lane streets within the neighborhoods themselves. So GPS systems are actually designed to avoid narrow neighborhood streets when possible even if the overall route is longer.
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memostothefuture
Interesting coincidence, I also just returned from Tokyo and Fuji Rock Festival. Unlike you I had a rental car. I never found parking to actually be a problem - there always are a few parking lots and they nearly always had an empty space. You are right though, the small streets are lovely.
I wanted to add something your notion that cars are loud. They are, of course, but I was struck by how quiet the trucks in Japan were. Literally five times quieter even when idling directly next to you. I could not fathom how, if this is possible, that is not required of trucks in other countries.
Anyway, I am back to Shanghai, where the streets are fairly quiet as well because we have so many electric cars, which sadly isn't the case in Tokyo yet. Will be back to Tokyo soon though.
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Interesting coincidence, I also just returned from Tokyo and Fuji Rock Festival. Unlike you I had a rental car. I never found parking to actually be a problem - there always are a few parking lots and they nearly always had an empty space. You are right though, the small streets are lovely.
I wanted to add something your notion that cars are loud. They are, of course, but I was struck by how quiet the trucks in Japan were. Literally five times quieter even when idling directly next to you. I could not fathom how, if this is possible, that is not required of trucks in other countries.
Anyway, I am back to Shanghai, where the streets are fairly quiet as well because we have so many electric cars, which sadly isn't the case in Tokyo yet. Will be back to Tokyo soon though.
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kanojo1969
One of the reasons Tokyo is laid out like this is that their auto companies never bought themselves the political power to demand all construction favored cars over anything else. That period in the early 20th century when GM and Ford were such huge companies that they deliberately changed America's physical landscape to suit their own purposes, from making jaywaking illegal to buying entire bus and train companies and then shutting them down, they did everything possible to make cars the single viable form of transport. And because it was America, they were allowed to.
They changed America's culture for their own ends, but now that entire car-centric mentality is baked-in to everything in the US. It's going to take a lot more than clever design to change this.
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One of the reasons Tokyo is laid out like this is that their auto companies never bought themselves the political power to demand all construction favored cars over anything else. That period in the early 20th century when GM and Ford were such huge companies that they deliberately changed America's physical landscape to suit their own purposes, from making jaywaking illegal to buying entire bus and train companies and then shutting them down, they did everything possible to make cars the single viable form of transport. And because it was America, they were allowed to.
They changed America's culture for their own ends, but now that entire car-centric mentality is baked-in to everything in the US. It's going to take a lot more than clever design to change this.
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chat-1978
USA doesn't generally have cities with some exceptions, at least not how cities are understood in places that were established before colonialism. They are just geographical designation. For example, go to where maps shows Phoenix Arizona and there is no difference with the rest of the area. Just a junction with some business buildings. My unscientific understanding is that the term city is misused in USA, which also creates a lot of wrong expectations, lets attribute them to cultural differences.
Call me a heretic, but for me even New York doesn't have a city center with the traditional sense. Boston has more of a city center than New York, always based on the traditional understanding of a city.
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USA doesn't generally have cities with some exceptions, at least not how cities are understood in places that were established before colonialism. They are just geographical designation. For example, go to where maps shows Phoenix Arizona and there is no difference with the rest of the area. Just a junction with some business buildings. My unscientific understanding is that the term city is misused in USA, which also creates a lot of wrong expectations, lets attribute them to cultural differences.
Call me a heretic, but for me even New York doesn't have a city center with the traditional sense. Boston has more of a city center than New York, always based on the traditional understanding of a city.
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paulkemp6057
While I agree the streets may be fantastically pedestrian friendly and walkable, I can't watch film or video footage of Tokyo without being totally put off by the vast majority of the built environment, which to my eye is awful lowest common denominator, cut-and-paste banal Modernism at it's most uninspired and uninspiring worst.
In my opinion, for any city to justify the adhective beautiful, it needs a wealth of beaitiful, inspiring architecture every bit as much as it needs walkable streets.
I've seen a LOT of videos about Tokyo, and it strikes me as one of the ugliest cities in the developed world.
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While I agree the streets may be fantastically pedestrian friendly and walkable, I can't watch film or video footage of Tokyo without being totally put off by the vast majority of the built environment, which to my eye is awful lowest common denominator, cut-and-paste banal Modernism at it's most uninspired and uninspiring worst.
In my opinion, for any city to justify the adhective beautiful, it needs a wealth of beaitiful, inspiring architecture every bit as much as it needs walkable streets.
I've seen a LOT of videos about Tokyo, and it strikes me as one of the ugliest cities in the developed world.
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shiina29
Living in Tokyo is incredibly convenient, and yet it has a small-town-like, relaxed feeling within the neighborhoods because of the small streets with few cars. Just about everything I need is within walking distance - even gyms, a library, all kinds of doctors, bakeries, shoe shops, etc. We even have dozens of orchards and small farms that have fresh produce all year-round. Everything else requires just a short train-ride on a clean train that's always on-time and comes every 10 minutes. And I just want to add that the average rent of a studio apartment is just $600 bucks. Living here on a budget is not a problem.
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Living in Tokyo is incredibly convenient, and yet it has a small-town-like, relaxed feeling within the neighborhoods because of the small streets with few cars. Just about everything I need is within walking distance - even gyms, a library, all kinds of doctors, bakeries, shoe shops, etc. We even have dozens of orchards and small farms that have fresh produce all year-round. Everything else requires just a short train-ride on a clean train that's always on-time and comes every 10 minutes. And I just want to add that the average rent of a studio apartment is just $600 bucks. Living here on a budget is not a problem.
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tom_rodriguez
The most important ingredient which allows for the success of Japan’s urbanism is their culture. Japanese people behave as a community by taking their role as a responsible neighbor seriously. What I mean by this is that the typical Japanese person acts neighborly. This is why you will rarely see litter on any street, observe how respectful people are of laws and norms (e. g. on Tokyo escalators, stand right-walk left, and never hear of violent crime or theft. If Americans living in urban centers started acting more neighborly just like the Japanese, we would see amazing communities everywhere.
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The most important ingredient which allows for the success of Japan’s urbanism is their culture. Japanese people behave as a community by taking their role as a responsible neighbor seriously. What I mean by this is that the typical Japanese person acts neighborly. This is why you will rarely see litter on any street, observe how respectful people are of laws and norms (e. g. on Tokyo escalators, stand right-walk left, and never hear of violent crime or theft. If Americans living in urban centers started acting more neighborly just like the Japanese, we would see amazing communities everywhere.
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seaotter42
We loved visiting Japan, and Tokyo is amazingly easy to get around in. I credit the train system. yes there are also buses, but we spent over a week in Tokyo and only traveled by foot and train (including the metro/subway. The trains were always clean, safe, and on-time. If we could replicate the transit system from Tokyo in other places in the world, density would be easier to accept (I'm a suburban guy myself, but if I had to live in a big city, I'd pick Tokyo over any other city I've visited. Ueno is really beautiful, I love how there's a mix of parks and temples to break up the big buildings.
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We loved visiting Japan, and Tokyo is amazingly easy to get around in. I credit the train system. yes there are also buses, but we spent over a week in Tokyo and only traveled by foot and train (including the metro/subway. The trains were always clean, safe, and on-time. If we could replicate the transit system from Tokyo in other places in the world, density would be easier to accept (I'm a suburban guy myself, but if I had to live in a big city, I'd pick Tokyo over any other city I've visited. Ueno is really beautiful, I love how there's a mix of parks and temples to break up the big buildings.
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mrggy
Part of what allows the streets to he so narrow is that not just emergency vehicles, but regular cars are also smaller. I had a friend in Japan who drove a Honda Fit and that was on the larger end by Japanese standards.
It's not just Tokyo that has super narrow streets either. I used to live near Hakodate, where most people have cars. Residential streets in Hakodate are also quite narrow (though I'll point out the the narrowest streets you showed are one way for cars, so even with high car ownership rates, you can have narrower streets if you just have smaller cars
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Part of what allows the streets to he so narrow is that not just emergency vehicles, but regular cars are also smaller. I had a friend in Japan who drove a Honda Fit and that was on the larger end by Japanese standards.
It's not just Tokyo that has super narrow streets either. I used to live near Hakodate, where most people have cars. Residential streets in Hakodate are also quite narrow (though I'll point out the the narrowest streets you showed are one way for cars, so even with high car ownership rates, you can have narrower streets if you just have smaller cars
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Eggmancan
I lived in Japan 10 years ago, and one of the first things to blow my mind was diversity of land use. Across from my apartment, there was a stretch that went: Buddhist Temple, 10 story apartment, single family house, 10 story apartment, tiny Shinto Shrine, 2-story building with a bakery on the first floor and a house on the second. As an American, I had never seen such a eclectic use of urban space, and ever since then, I've been a huge advocate of wiping out the strict zoning laws that strangle American cities. Let the people build what they want!
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I lived in Japan 10 years ago, and one of the first things to blow my mind was diversity of land use. Across from my apartment, there was a stretch that went: Buddhist Temple, 10 story apartment, single family house, 10 story apartment, tiny Shinto Shrine, 2-story building with a bakery on the first floor and a house on the second. As an American, I had never seen such a eclectic use of urban space, and ever since then, I've been a huge advocate of wiping out the strict zoning laws that strangle American cities. Let the people build what they want!
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dougbrowning82
These streets look like the back lanes in the older neighbourhoods here in Winnipeg, Canada. There is no parking, and garbage and utility trucks use them, as well as pedestrians, cyclists, and people who park their cars in the back yard. These lanes are just wide enough for two vehicles to pass, and there are usually utility poles along the sides. Our front streets are wider. Usually with parking on one side, and room for two cars to pass. They often have sidewalks separated by grass strips. Our suburbs are like most in the US, though.
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These streets look like the back lanes in the older neighbourhoods here in Winnipeg, Canada. There is no parking, and garbage and utility trucks use them, as well as pedestrians, cyclists, and people who park their cars in the back yard. These lanes are just wide enough for two vehicles to pass, and there are usually utility poles along the sides. Our front streets are wider. Usually with parking on one side, and room for two cars to pass. They often have sidewalks separated by grass strips. Our suburbs are like most in the US, though.
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TheDanEdwards
Preferred the Osaka subway system: more logical and friendlier to the visitor. And Osaka is friendlier too for many foreigners, even though it is just as dense as Tokyo. My experience is that Japanese cities are more human friendly than US cities, the latter being designed for automobiles (outside of the old American towns on the eastern seaboard) Still, living in Japan has other challenges and difficulties and I think the typical American will not want to put up with the tradeoffs necessary to live in such dense communities.
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Preferred the Osaka subway system: more logical and friendlier to the visitor. And Osaka is friendlier too for many foreigners, even though it is just as dense as Tokyo. My experience is that Japanese cities are more human friendly than US cities, the latter being designed for automobiles (outside of the old American towns on the eastern seaboard) Still, living in Japan has other challenges and difficulties and I think the typical American will not want to put up with the tradeoffs necessary to live in such dense communities.
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MrSomethingdark
A city needs tight verticality, something most of Europe fails to understand, especially modern Germany and France. And the building need nice repetitive motifs on the facades andnot by just color rather also reliefs and bumps. Germany's flat modernist cities make me literally sick. I am not even joking. Every time I have walked in Munich for instance the sidewalks are always sloping so much while the flat building facades made me feel like I was boxed in in a prison. Honestly an awful feeling.
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A city needs tight verticality, something most of Europe fails to understand, especially modern Germany and France. And the building need nice repetitive motifs on the facades andnot by just color rather also reliefs and bumps. Germany's flat modernist cities make me literally sick. I am not even joking. Every time I have walked in Munich for instance the sidewalks are always sloping so much while the flat building facades made me feel like I was boxed in in a prison. Honestly an awful feeling.
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dtape
1: 54 You should have mentioned in the video how in Tokyo they don't even let you buy a car unless you can prove that you have a dedicated parking spot for it. In contrast to how in America the government doesn't care if you have a proper place to park your car and allows people to hoard cars if they want regardless if they have parking spots for them.
America encourages parked cars to spread like locusts across streets in contrast to these mostly car-free streets you're showing in Tokyo.
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1: 54 You should have mentioned in the video how in Tokyo they don't even let you buy a car unless you can prove that you have a dedicated parking spot for it. In contrast to how in America the government doesn't care if you have a proper place to park your car and allows people to hoard cars if they want regardless if they have parking spots for them.
America encourages parked cars to spread like locusts across streets in contrast to these mostly car-free streets you're showing in Tokyo.
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city_beautiful
I wish the US would switch its funding for police departments with its funding for fire departments. Spend money on people who actually do dangerous work that makes us safer.
Man, everyone's going to Japan lately. I've never been particularly interested in doing so until the last year or so. FOMO I don't know. There's definitely some cool looking places to visit. I'm just a big, loud, slow-witted brute, though. So I'm not sure Japan is all that interested in me visiting.
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I wish the US would switch its funding for police departments with its funding for fire departments. Spend money on people who actually do dangerous work that makes us safer.
Man, everyone's going to Japan lately. I've never been particularly interested in doing so until the last year or so. FOMO I don't know. There's definitely some cool looking places to visit. I'm just a big, loud, slow-witted brute, though. So I'm not sure Japan is all that interested in me visiting.
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danpro4519
I used to live in South Korea, and it's a similar story. I literally couldn't return to the US without shaking my head at how disconnected we all are from each other. Soulless, is the word that often jumped into my head. The convenience and connection I felt walking in a true urban environment in Korea is almost totally unknown in America. Sure, there are trade-offs, but it's not even like America is a step behind in urbanism, we're practically in last place.
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I used to live in South Korea, and it's a similar story. I literally couldn't return to the US without shaking my head at how disconnected we all are from each other. Soulless, is the word that often jumped into my head. The convenience and connection I felt walking in a true urban environment in Korea is almost totally unknown in America. Sure, there are trade-offs, but it's not even like America is a step behind in urbanism, we're practically in last place.
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