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0:00
There’s a meme among urbanists that you’re either radicalised by Tokyo, or by Amsterdam. Today I live in Amsterdam, but I visited Tokyo first, Which is probably why I’m Not Just Bikes. Now, there’s good reason for this: Japanese cities are incredible. They’re famous for having high quality mixed use neighbourhoods, vibrant public spaces, great land use, a wide range of housing options, tiny cars, highly efficient public transportation.
0:25
And a beautiful mix of the modern and the traditional All of these things are important and I’ll talk about them in a moment, but I think there’s one aspect that is often overlooked or at least, glossed-over, This kind of street, found all over Japan. These streets may not look like much at first glance, but the more you look, the more you uncover. And while there are many factors that make Japanese cities so good, they’re all tied together by these great streets. [NJB Intro]
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This is a typical Japanese street. The width can vary, but an average street like this one is about 5 metres wide, building-to-building. These kind of narrow Japanese street might be synonymous with busy urban areas in Tokyo, Or traditional cities bustling with tourists But streets like these are found all over Japan, in cities, towns, and suburbs of all sizes, Some of these narrow streets are covered with a roof to protect people from the rain. This might look like a shopping mall,
1:25
But it’s really just a street with a roof, in the middle of a walkable urban neighbourhood. This is one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Tokyo but despite having only large single-family homes, the street still has exactly the same narrow design. On a street like this, it feels perfectly natural to walk right down the middle of it. Which is so much better than being constrained to a tiny sidewalk. This makes these streets very comfortable for people walking,
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which should ultimately be the single most important aspect in the design of any city: how easy and comfortable it is to walk there. This is a suburban neighbourhood, But because the street is narrow, and there’s a good use of space, it means that even people living in suburban single-family homes can be within easy walking distance of a train station. As well as many other amenities, such as shops and restaurants.
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This is critically important for any human-scale liveable city, and what makes that possible is a sensible approach to zoning, the rules that every city has that determine what type of buildings can be built in a given area. Japanese zoning is specified at a national level, and while local governments do have some control over their local developments, the end result is a zoning code that is very permissible compared to most other countries.
2:40
The Japanese zoning code is made up of a series of different types of zones, like you would expect, but zones in a given category allow for every use below it. The most restrictive zone in Japan is called “Low-Rise Residential”, which you would think would be similar to the highly-restrictive single-family residential zoning common in American suburbia, but it’s not. It allows for detached housing of course,
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as well as schools and religious buildings. But it also allowes for apartment building up to two stories, mixed-use residential buildings, and home-based businesses. And this applies across almost the entire country. This means that houses and apartments of all different sizes can be built just about anywhere. Which is important, because people’s housing needs change throughout their lives. The needs of a single person
3:26
are different from those of a family and are different again to retired seniors. In fact, there’s a growing problem for seniors in the US and Canada whose children have moved out but they are still living in, and having to maintain, an enormous single-family home.- And this is even worse if these people lose their ability to drive as they get older, as these houses are typically found in car-dependent neighbourhoods.
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The elderly become trapped in their suburban McMansions until they are finally forced to leave their neighbourhood for a retirement home. But if there are many different housing options available in a given neighbourhood like in Japan, then an individual can move from a house to an apartment, or vice-versa, without ever having to leave their community. And if all of a person’s basic needs are easily accessible within a short
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walk of their home, people of all ages and abilities can retain independent mobility throughout their entire lives. This is one of many benefits of sane zoning laws. If you’d like to learn more, the channel Life Where I’m From has an entire video about Japanese zoning, and why it works so well. In addition to national-level zoning, Japan also has what they call Machizukuri, or “community building”, where local communities actively
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participate in urban planning decisions. This involves residents, local businesses, and community organisations working together to shape their neighbourhoods, and it includes everything from designing public spaces, to preserving local culture, and influencing local zoning decisions as well. It’s very similar to the “bottom-up” approach advocated for by Strong Towns. Machizukuri is a fascinating topic that deserves
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its own video, though I’m not sure I’m really qualified to make it, so I’ll leave some links in the description if you’d like to learn more. National zoning and Machizukuri both contribute to creating more livable, walkable neighbourhoods which are not just pleasant to live in, but also more efficient in terms of transportation and land use. Japanese streets and good land use work together to significantly reduce car traffic as well.
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The single biggest thing a city can do to reduce traffic congestion is to decrease the distance between where people live and the places they need to go on a daily basis. This allows people to walk or cycle for many trips, which significantly reduces the amount of cars on the road. The absolute worst-case scenario for inducing traffic congestion is the Euclidean zoning, common throughout the US and Canada. Euclidean zoning enforces a strict separation between where people live
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and where people shop or work, which ultimately means that almost every trip requires a car. So in car-dependent suburbia, everybody is funnelled down arterial roads like this one, which creates the ridiculous traffic congestion seen in these cities. Ultimately, there is no solution to car traffic, except viable alternatives to driving. But the only way to provide those viable alternatives is by bringing destinations
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closer to where people live, or closer to the rapid transit stops that people use. It is staggering to see the overhead view of a typical suburban train station in Japan Compared to one in Canada. The Japanese station has hundreds of shops, restaurants, and houses in the area that is used only for car parking in the Canadian example. Train stations in Japan have dozens of destinations within a short walk, making public transit so much more useful,
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and eliminating thousands of car trips every day. This is the epitome of what urban planners call “transit-oriented development,” or TOD. The land around a rapid transit stop is some of the most valuable land in the whole city, so it is where you should find dozens of shops, restaurants, and houses, not parking lots. I’ve said many times before that you can’t have good public transit without a good land-use plan. And there is no better land-use plan than Japanese
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zoning paired with Japanese streets. There are serious cost implications to this kind of design as well. I’ve made several previous videos about how car-dependent cities are bankrupting themselves by spreading everything out so thin that the tax base cannot support the replacement cost of the infrastructure. And you can watch those videos in my Strong Towns playlist if you’d like to learn more.
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Keeping streets more compact means that there are fewer water prices, sewage lines, electrical wires, and metres of asphalt per person, which makes Japanese cities more financially viable. You may also notice that many Japanese streets have their utilities on overhead poles. Which I personally think is really ugly, but it does mean that servicing and upgrading these utilities is extremely quick and inexpensive. When fibre optic internet came along,
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Japan adopted it rapidly, because it was so cheap and easy to deploy in this kind of environment. While these are pretty typical streets, there are of course variations. Some, like this one, are much smaller. This is not an alley, It is a street with the entrance to people’s homes on it. And these can be connected by pedestrianised paths Some of which also have people's houses on them. Others can be wider, though once a street is too wide it can start to feel barren.
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So in this case, the space can be further partitioned with bollards and street furniture. And a dedicated space for people to walk. Though even in this design, people are still able to walk in the middle of the street; they’re not only constrained to the sidewalks. For narrower streets, it’s very typical to have no sidewalks at all. There may be white lines on either side to specify where vehicles should drive,
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But this is not a “car space”. This street is for everyone, and there are important psychological impacts to this design. People immediately understand that they are free to walk anywhere here. They’re not constrained only to the sides. And drivers, even Mercedes and BMW drivers, immediately understand that they do not “own” the street, Which means that they’re less likely to bully everybody else out of the way. By comparison, a road like this one sends
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a clear message that this is a space for cars, and you will get honked at for standing in the middle of it, because Japanese society may be polite, but it’s not that polite. Of course, people will only feel comfortable walking in the middle of the street if car speeds are low. And one of the most effective ways to slow down cars is to narrow the street. On streets that are too wide, a common
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tactic is to place things in the roadway to purposefully reduce the width of the driving area. Because drivers will instinctively drive slower when the street is narrowed. Japanese streets accomplish this simply by making the street itself as narrow as possible. Many of these narrow streets are one-way for cars, but others have traffic in both directions, And that makes drivers slow down even more, as they may need to react to
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oncoming traffic on a narrow street. The speed limit on these streets is never more than 30 kilometres per hour, And on a street this narrow, that feels like the “right” speed to be driving. Slower speeds makes the street safer for everyone because slower cars are safer cars, and slower speeds gives everybody more time to react, making crashes less likely to happen. I talked about this before in my video about why 30 kilometres per hour is the correct speed limit for cities.
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Slower car speeds also results in much less noise from motor vehicles, Which makes these streets remarkably quiet for being in such a bustling urban environment. In order for these streets to work though, car volumes also need to be low. This street in Kyoto is an example of how things can go horribly wrong if cars are not restricted. This is a mess. Hundreds of people are pushed to the very edges of the street by a few dozen drivers. Thankfully most Japanese streets
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are not like this. Through traffic is avoided by making some of these narrow streets one-way to car traffic, and neighbourhoods are designed to prevent cars from driving through. This means that the only cars on these streets will be local traffic, with a destination somewhere in the neighbourhood. This is exactly the same method used in most of the Netherlands to reduce car traffic in residential neighbourhoods as well. Fundamentally, through traffic kills
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neighbourhoods, so the only people who should be driving in a neighbourhood are those who are coming to or going from one of the destinations in that neighbourhood. With this kind of street design, traffic is pushed to the wider roads, which keeps the narrow streets safer and more convenient for everyone else. Of course, because of their wide width, these roads can feel very barren and uncomfortable to anyone walking,
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And there is always a metal railing preventing people from crossing the road mid-blook. Which can make for some very crowded sidewalks that are not exactly ideal. The best roads are the ones that have a line of trees as the buffer, and a wide sidewalk, like this. This makes the sidewalk feel like one of those narrow Japanese streets, just with a line of trees on one side, instead of a building.
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In other places, the wide roads can be avoided by using pedestrian bridges, like this one. Now, I don’t really like pedestrian bridges, because they are almost always built to speed up car traffic for the benefit of drivers, rather than for the convenience for people walking, and I’ve talked about that in a previous video. But I do find these bridges are typically better implemented in Japan than in other countries, in that they are more often designed
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to actually benefit people travelling on foot. My biggest issue with pedestrian bridges is having to go out of your way to go up and down using ramps or elevators, which is never more convenient than, y’know, just … walking across the ground. but in Japan, major train station exits are often directly connected to pedestrian bridges which is much more convenient. Some are nicely designed with trees and places to sit.
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It’s easy to forget you’re even on a pedestrian bridge when it looks this nice. And there are often shops and other amenities at the same level. This helps to make these pedestrian bridges look less like bridges and more like elevated car-free streets. Though in this case the pedestrian bridge brings you right to the side of a highway, which was not so nice. But on the bright side, our hotel had an entrance here, directly at bridge level.
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Shibuya is famous for Shibuya crossing, one of the world’s busiest pedestrian scramble intersections, But the other side of the station directly connects to this, I guess what you would call a pedestrian roundabout, which is an even better crossing in many ways. This allows people to exit the train station and walk right over this busy road. And on the other side you can go down to street level or continue on this level into the adjacent buildings
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where there are shops and restaurants and offices. There’s even this little parkette, which you can get to by walking from the train station without ever having to interact with any cars at all. And then there are several ways to avoid the major roads and go straight down to the smaller streets. You may have noticed something missing from those smaller streets: there are almost no parked cars at all.
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Parked cars lining the street is such a normal thing to see in cities all over the world That you don’t even register them when looking at a street. But when they're gone, the streets look wider, brighter, more inviting. Several cities have been making an attempt to remove parking to improve urban environments. Paris is planning to remove 70% of all on-street parking in the city, And Amsterdam is well on its way to achieving the goal of removing 10,000 parking spaces by 2025.
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But Japan is in a whole other league. Street parking is rare in Japan, especially in large cities. Almost all parking is off-street, and usually paid. Even when street parking is permitted, overnight parking is not, which means that people cannot just leave their cars in the street overnight. And they are very quick to take away your car if you park illegally. In fact, you are not permitted to buy a car at all unless you can present a Shako Shomei,
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A certificate that proves you have an off-street parking space for your vehicle within 2 kilometres of your house. This makes such a massive difference to life on the street. Parked cars are really ugly, of course, and they take up a lot of space that could be better used for other purposes such as bicycles lanes or greenery. And it’s been fantastic to see what Amsterdam has done with all the extra space freed up by removing street parking.
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But street parking is worse than just a waste of space. Street parking makes streets more dangerous by reducing visibility And on-street parking significantly increases traffic congestion as people cruise for cheap street parking Or block up the street while parallel parking. But I've talked about that in several previous videos and besides, None of that is a problem with most Japanese streets because there are
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just … barely any parked cars at all. So as you might expect, there are quite a lot of off-street parking spaces in Japan. Such as this large building in Shinjuku. Though there are also much smaller lots like this one in Kyoto. It’s surprising to me that they have this huge sign, cameras, and an automated payment machine. Just for these 6 parking spaces. Other parking spaces use an automated locking system that lifts up behind your front wheels,
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preventing you from leaving without paying. And sometimes off-street parking can be squeezed into some of the most unexpected places. This public parking lot in Shibuya has just one parking space, squeezed into the only place it could fit. They even provide parking for your ramen! Residents may rent a parking space nearby, Or dedicate part of their land for parking. And modern houses may be built with a dedicated parking spot. So that you can park your American pickup
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truck like this guy. I don’t know how he navigates that thing through most Japanese streets. For businesses, the majority of their customers will come by walking, cycling, or public transit, so providing parking is not worth the cost. There are better uses for valuable urban land. Though parking may be provided in smaller towns and less-busy areas. This one surprised me though, as it’s literally across the street from a train station.
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Street parking is rarely permitted along the wide roads, too. If somebody was driving down a major road like this and wanted to drop off a passenger, they could turn into one of these narrow streets and pull over to allow them to get out. This allows the road to work well as a road, moving large volumes of cars, without them getting slowed down by people going in and out of parking spaces. While parking is not allowed on these narrow streets, stopping for
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a short time is normally permitted. So it’s very normal to see a truck unloading goods for the local restaurants. Even though the street is narrow, a truck can pull over to the side and there’s still plenty of space for people to move around it. And there’s almost always a spot for those trucks, because the street isn’t clogged up with a bunch of parked cars. This allows these streets to be used by necessary vehicles, While still staying safe and
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comfortable for anybody walking through. Of course it also helps that Japanese vehicles are typically quite small. Especially these kinds. These are Keijidosha, usually referred to in English as Kei cars. These are small cars that need to fit within certain size and power requirements. They were introduced after the war as an inexpensive way to get people to purchase Japanese-made cars that were fuel-efficient and
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well-suited to the small narrow streets of Japan. The use of Kei cars has been encouraged by the government over the years through tax and insurance benefits. These cars usually seat four people, and can reach highway speeds, but they fit best in the city on these narrow Japanese streets. There's no way any other car could make it down this street. I love how it's still marked 30 kilometres per hour,
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as if anybody could drive any faster down this. There are also Kei trucks that have to meet the same requirements of a Kei car, but are designed as a cargo van or pickup truck. You’ll find these all over Japanese cities as delivery trucks or maintenance vehicles. Fun fact, these two have truck beds that are the same length. So while they may have much less horsepower and can't replace every truck, Kei trucks are still
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extremely useful and can be more efficient at doing the same task as a full-sized pickup. Which is why as American pickup truck manufacturers are building bigger and more obnoxious trucks targeted to suburban moms and insecure office workers, American farmers are importing Kei trucks to do actual work, as they’re better suited for what they need a pickup truck to do. I find it interesting that Japan decided to
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regulate their cars to match their narrow streets, While the Americans have regulated wide streets to match their oversized vehicles. And while not quite as small, they even have tiny garbage trucks! When walking around the city it is so much nicer to be around these small vehicles that are less than 2 metres tall, rather than full-sized cars and trucks. But shoutout to this guy who tried to drive a full-sized Toyota Land Cruiser through a crowded street in Ginza.
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Nice work, buddy. Something that’s fascinating about Japanese cities is that quite a lot of people ride bicycles, and yet if you look around, there is very little bicycle infrastructure. Again, this is possible only because of these narrow streets. Fundamentally, bicycle lanes aren’t necessary. The only reason they exist at all is because cars are dangerous, and people cycling need to be separated from them. In this sense, bike lanes are actually
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car infrastructure, in that they’re only needed because of all the cars. If you get rid of the cars, you don’t need bicycle lanes. This is exactly what we experience here in the Netherlands. There are protected bicycle lanes on busy roads, But it’s often best to ride on the small, narrow streets instead, because there’s so little car traffic. Similarly in Japan, this is the best place to ride a bike.
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These streets are wider than any bicycle lane, and it’s a very pleasant place to ride. For cyclists, this makes riding on these narrow streets very efficient, and they can be much faster and more comfortable than riding on a busy road with traffic lights. Unfortunately, once you get off of the narrow streets, cycling becomes very difficult and dangerous, especially in Tokyo. There are almost no protected bicycle lanes,
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and some of these wide roads can have a lot of high-speed car traffic. Cyclists are allowed to ride on the sidewalks, but this can also be difficult because even wide sidewalks can get quite crowded. And there's places like this where people walking and cycling need to share this tiny little piece of the road, which is ridiculous. So while people may cycle more in Tokyo than in other large cities, the average trip length is quite short, as people use bicycles to go to
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local shops, like the grocery store, Or to go to and from their local train station. Trips that can be done almost exclusively on these nice narrow streets. I would say though that Japanese cities certainly do not encourage cycling, they tolerate cycling. And bicycle infrastructure is rarely more than just paint. This is slowly changing however, and there are a few places where protected cycling lanes have been installed. Though these almost always take space
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away from the sidewalk , rather than taking space away from car drivers. As I mentioned earlier, Japan is very strict about car parking, but they’re also quite strict about bicycle parking as well. In major cities, free bicycle parking is not permitted in many places, including train stations. Parking a bicycle will then require using a machine such as this one. The machine will assign you a parking spot, And this clamp will hold your wheel in place.
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When you come to collect your bicycle, you need to go to the machine and pay the correct amount for your bicycle to be unlocked. The first hour or two may be free, but this is entirely at the whim of the owner of the bicycle parking lot. And I found that the rules and prices varied wildly across Japan. In the Netherlands, bicycle parking is very much encouraged, and it is almost always free. Even the fancy underground bicycle parking garages that are being built all around
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the country are free for the first 24 hours. The logic here is that while parked bicycles may be a nuisance, they are orders of magnitude less of a nuisance than cars, and so anything that gets people out of cars and onto any other form of transportation is encouraged. Though for what it’s worth, this 24 hour free bicycle parking policy at stations is only in place due to heavy advocacy from the Fietsersbond;
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the original plan was to have little or no free parking for bicycles in these garages. So if you live in the Netherlands and think that cycling advocacy is a “solved” problem, I assure you that it is not. So please donate or volunteer with the Fietsersbond if you are able to, link in the description. As much as I love free bicycle parking, I think Japan may have the right approach here, especially in the busiest areas. The population density found in many
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Japanese cities is much higher than in most other countries, and a very large portion of the population is within a short walk of a train station. In the Netherlands, about 50% of train passengers arrive by bicycle. The busiest station in the Netherlands, Utrecht Centraal, has official parking spaces for over 22 thousand bicycle, About half of which are in the world’s largest bicycle parking garage, a multi-level bicycle stable under the station with space for 12,500 bicycles.
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Even a small station like Driebergen-Zeist, which transports about 9 thousand passengers per day still has a bicycle parking garage that’s this big. So while bicycles are certainly better for cities than cars, by a very, very, very, very, very, very, [deep inhale] very wide margin, they are not without their own challenges. And at the scale of many Japanese train stations, it’s really better to encourage people to come on foot, Or by transferring from other rapid transit.
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Though this only works if driving is significantly more expensive and difficult than cycling, because anybody who drives instead of cycling is a much, much, much, much, much ... I'm sorry I can't do this joke again ... bigger problem. Plus so many of these roads are extremely wide and I think Japan could really benefit from adopting Dutch road design, even than most countries, so that some of this sea of asphalt could be converted into protected bicycle lanes,
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Or used to plant more trees to provide shade and separation from car traffic. Because as it is, some of these roads are just awful. At this point my regular viewers might be asking themselves, do these roads count as stroads? And everybody else is asking themselves, what the fuck is a stroad? Stroads are those awful suburban arterial roads that are found all over the US and Canada. They try to be a destination, lined with parking lots and big box stores,
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But all of that destination traffic gets in the way of them being a road, a high-speed connection between two places. Stroads do neither of these things well and so they’re ugly, expensive, and dangerous. And I have a previous video about them if you’d like to learn more. This, although not a great thing to have right outside of the world's largest train station, is probably still a road though. These roads in Japan don't have parking, the stoplights are quite far apart,
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and most of the destinations are off on the side streets. But they are definitely stroad-adjacent, Especially this one in Tokyo, with the gas station and the McDonald's drive-thru and while obviously some roads are required to access the nice narrow streets, Others are extremely wide and not a great thing to have in the middle of your city. However, as soon as you get out of the city, Japan absolutely has stroads.
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In fact, outside of major cities, Japan can be remarkably car-centric. If you didn’t look closely at the cars, you could easily mistake this for somewhere in America. There are several reasons for this. After world war 2, Japan was rebuilding, and like in pretty much every country at the time, cars were seen as the future. So cities were rebuilt for cars. Plus Japan was occupied by the Americans, and Japanese highways and suburban neighbourhoods were heavily
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influenced by what was happening in the US. One of the worst-case examples of this is Okinawa, which was controlled by the US until 1972, and it is, unsurprisingly, the most car-centric city in Japan to this day. Once again, Life Where I’m From has a great video about Okinawa if you’d like to learn more. [Why did Okinawa get left out?] [Well, we can blame the US] [Thanks America!] The other big reason for these remarkably car-centric places is that Japan has an extremely
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large and influential automobile industry. And that results in a push towards car-centric planning, just like it does in Germany, France, and the US. A local car industry will have significant political influence through direct lobbying of course, but also simply because the automobile industry employs millions of people, and so it’s in their best interest to sell lots of cars. I’ve seen this in the life where I’m from,
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in Southwestern Ontario, where there was a lot of manufacturing related to the automobile industry. The majority of my extended family worked either directly for a car company, or for one of the companies that supported them. So they were happy when people bought American cars, manufactured in Canada. Though my parents bought a Volvo. And a Toyota. And because my parents single-handedly financed the whole Japanese car-industry with that one Toyota purchase
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Japanese cities are often split between train-centric neighbourhoods, with human-scale streets. And oversized roads slicing right through the city. Of course, some roads will be necessary in any city, if only for deliveries that can’t be done any other way, but a lot of Japanese roads are really oversized for the amount of traffic in these cities. Look, I’m not going to pretend to be an expert in Tokyo. I've never lived here.
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But I have been here at least a dozen times on business trips, and these roads are almost never busy outside of a very very narrow window of rush hour. And this is the case in many other Japanese cities as well. Half of these lanes could be removed and yeah, it might maybe result in a bit more traffic at rush hour, but this space could be much better used. I can't tell you how many times I've stood at a red light in Japan with literally hundreds of other
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people while there are almost no cars at all. It was particularly uncomfortable walking in the hot sun along this road in Kumamoto. There is more than enough room to put a line of trees here, but instead it’s devoted almost entirely to asphalt. It really shows just how much cities cater to drivers that such an enormous amount of valuable urban land can be devoted to car lanes that sit nearly empty most of the time,
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just so that a small number of people don't have to wait too long at rush hour. There are some roads that are better than others, such as this one. This still serves the function of a road, by moving cars away from the narrow streets, But it’s much less intrusive to people walking and cycling. Ultimately, multi-lane roads should be relatively rare in the city, and used only if they are truly necessary. As I was exploring Tokyo I visited this area
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where a rail line was recently buried and the space was turned into a linear park and walkway. They had parkettes, And lots of small shops, And lots of greenery. Rail tracks aren’t very wide but even in this narrow space they were able to build a fantastic linear park that benefits everybody living nearby. Now, given that, imagine how much nicer this area could be if they did the same thing with a few of these car lanes. By seeings all these pretty streets in
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Japan you might be inclined to think that the wide roads are a historical artefact, And that the Japanese have seen the light of the Shinkansen and are no longer going down a car-centric path. But nothing could be farther from the truth. One of my followers on Mastodon lives on this street. It's a pretty typical residential Japanese street, like several others I've shown in this video. It even has this nice modal filter near the train tracks that allows access for people walking and
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cycling, but blocks through traffic for cars, so there isn't much car traffic. It's a pretty nice street. And it's going to be demolished to build a new road. It was actually kinda heartbreaking to go here and see all of these people cycling, and all these kids walking home together down this quiet street. Knowing that this will be difficult or impossible for them when it’s bulldozed to create a high-speed road for cars.
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This convenience store with the giant parking lot might appreciate all the new traffic though. And here’s another example that’s farther along in the bulldozing process. Most of the buildings here have already been destroyed, Or have been condemned and had their residents evicted, so that a four-lane road can be put through here. One block away shows what this place used to look like. This will connect this road here … To this one about a kilometre away.
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And this is prime urban land, too. The new road will literally go right between this train station and this one. Who benefits from this? Certainly not the people who live here in this apartment with all these bicycles, who live less than 200 metres from a train station They will soon have a high-speed road that they’ll probably never use, running right by their front door. This is ultimately the reality of Japan. They have some exceptionally good public transit,
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And exceptionally good land use to go with it. Neighbourhoods that are lively and have a strong sense of place. Where small independent business can thrive, And they have some of the best urbanism in the world. All it’s all tied together by these great narrow streets. But at the same time they have a highly influential automobile industry And many remote locations are very car-centric, and inaccessible by public transit,
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Which puts pressure on urban areas to build more and wider roads more car-centric infrastructure And to surrender more valuable urban land for car parking. You may have heard that Japan’s population is shrinking, and many of the smaller towns and villages are losing people But the population of Tokyo is actually growing, As more young people move into the city. And the national government has been taking steps to gradually increase immigration.
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So now is the time to build for those people. To convert asphalt to trees, To make it easier to get between neighbourhoods without crossing 8 lanes of car traffic. And to make it safer and easier to ride a bicycle. And to ultimately make Japanese cities some of the most desirable and livable cities in the world. But none of that will happen if they keep bulldozing great neighbourhoods to build more roads. We all want to make a positive difference in the world, and your
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They offer evidence-based, impartial advice that’s completely free. Most career advice focuses on personal gain, but 80,000 Hours takes it a step further, helping you find ways to tackle the world's most pressing problems. And you don’t have to be a doctor or charity worker to make a difference—there are many high-impact paths you can take. On their website, you’ll find a curated job board with hundreds of opportunities to have a high-impact career.
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You can filter jobs by location, role type, and the problem area they address. It’s an incredible resource if you’re looking to make a change or just want to see what’s out there. And for those who need personalised guidance, 80,000 Hours also offers free, one-on-one career advising calls. They’re there to help you plan a meaningful and impactful career. If you're also interested in deep dives into global issues, check out the 80,000 Hours podcast.
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They have in-depth conversations with experts about the world's most pressing problems and how you can help solve them. I personally enjoyed the episode with Lewis Bollard on ending factory farming and the impact of AI on animal welfare. He highlights the disturbing possibility that AI could increase animal suffering by optimising factory farming for profit. Everything 80,000 Hours provides is free because
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they’re funded by philanthropic donations. Their only goal is to help you find a fulfilling, high-impact career. If that sounds interesting to you, go to 80000hours.org/notjustbikes, or click the link in the description. You can sign up for their newsletter and get a free copy of their in-depth career guide,
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