| > Young people in Japan are forced to live in tiny apartments where you can literally sit on a toilet while cooking food: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/business/tiny-apartments-... This isn't the gotcha you think it is. It's an entirely separate cultural issue. If you had read the article in question you posted, it mentions the fact that there are multiple cheaper apartments nearby that aren't as trendy due to age. And that these microapartments are explicitly chosen for the sake of living near ultra-trendy areas, though it's not necessary due to the convenience and wide reaching networks of transportation. > All while at the same time having millions of beautiful empty houses readily available: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/realestate/japan-empty-ho... Again, read the articles you post. These sit empty due to cultural issues. This is because houses depreciate in value and buying older homes is not viewed as a good thing. "Houses in Japan typically decrease in value over time until they are worthless — the cultural legacy of post-World War II construction and shifting building codes — with only the land retaining value. Owners feel little incentive to maintain an aging house, and buyers often seek to demolish them and start fresh. But that can be expensive." > And this is great! Houston is giant, but it's extremely efficient because it doesn't have The Downtown where you _have_ to be. As a result, industry and offices tend to be interspersed with residential areas. So the average commute stays short. Efficient? Have you lived in Houston or Austin? Because I did. For 5 years. It was a nightmare getting to anywhere because it's a sea of paved-over bullshit with zero avenues to get anywhere outside of using a car. And if you do use a car, you have to wade through awful traffic and a city that isn't design to accommodate people. Houston literally ranks among the worst cities for traffic. Calling Houston efficient is so downright divorced from reality that I would have to question if you've looked at any cities outside of the US. Let alone lived in the cities you extol the virtues of. |
Well, yeah. It's called: shitty densification.
> If you had read the article in question you posted, it mentions the fact that there are multiple cheaper apartments nearby that aren't as trendy due to age.
In other words: they are even shittier.
> "Houses in Japan typically decrease in value over time until they are worthless — the cultural legacy of post-World War II construction and shifting building codes — with only the land retaining value. Owners feel little incentive to maintain an aging house, and buyers often seek to demolish them and start fresh. But that can be expensive."
Again, you're looking at symptoms. Tokyo is basically being rebuilt all the time, mostly as a result of corrupt wheeling-and-dealing by real estate developers. But the countryside and smaller cities stay empty and decaying.
> Efficient? Have you lived in Houston or Austin?
Yes, I have. I hated the climate and the (lack of) nature around it, but loved the city.
And yes, Houston is much more efficient than a similarly sized NYC in pretty much all categories: commute time, cost of housing, income inequality (0.48 GINI index vs 0.56 for NYC), infrastructure spending per capita, number of municipal employees per capita, etc.
> Because I did. For 5 years. It was a nightmare getting to anywhere because it's a sea of paved-over bullshit with zero avenues to get anywhere outside of using a car.
And why is that bad? Cars enable more efficient cities. They are objectively far superior to transit for several fundamental reasons.