[oblio]

> Maybe you mean suburban sprawl? Or maybe you just mean the urban area is less disjointed? Urban sprawl is exactly how I would characterize Japan, but maybe I just have the terminology wrong.

No, he's right. Sprawl is inherently a negative term. Japan has large cities because you know, they can't put people in Manchuria (they've tried) or on the Moon, so they have to put them somewhere. So the most efficient way to house large numbers of people is in dense cities.

The US is a great example of both urban sprawl (outside downtown, American cities have town to village population densities) and suburban sprawl. The worst of both worlds, really.

[ehnto]

Interesting, I think it's fair to suggest that sprawl has some negative connotations but I don't think it's quite so severe. I would definitely call some of the streets of Kyoto sprawling, as in, they have wandered in strange directions like a creeping vine. I also wouldn't suggest that Japanese cities have expanded carefully, they have taken as much space as they feasibly can in their expansion, and replaced it all with concrete. Perhaps the cities themselves were carefully considered from an urban planning point of view.

But I think in actuality, taking zoning and planning control away from the people who use the zones is what causes most of America's strange layout. People absolutely want medium to high density mixed use communities, and affordable housing, but you're not allowed to build that in America.