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Why Japan Looks the Way it Does: Zoning
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All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this video.The lax zoning laws (at least compared to the US) allow mixed use so you have more things within walking distance. This was a fascinating video on it: https://youtu.be/wfm2xCKOCNk
Yes, land use is one factor.What is interesting is that the dynamic actually flips once there is adequate zoning. Take a look at this[0] video on Tokyo zoning and how he talks about living in an industrial zoned area. He talks about how it's cheaper to do so, and if you want to move to a single family zoned area, it's actually more expensive!
Under the current system, landowners want their own land to be zoned as high as possible, while they want everyone else's land to be zoned as low as possible. Since 1 < everyone else, when people vote on zoning it is zoned as low as possible. With a LVT the system flips, everyone wants their land to be zoned as low as they desire, and they want everyone else's land to be zoned as high as possible. They would only accept land zoned restrictively if those people would pay higher taxes for the exclusive use of it.
This is a system with proper incentives.
⬐ tharkun__I don't see how one follows from the other.In either system living in an industrial zone (or on the edge of it) will cost less as it is less desirable to live there (noise, air pollution, smells, further from grocery store, no parks etc) and nobody in their right mind would pay high rent there. Nothing to do with land value taxes.
Zoning changes what people will build there (we assumed it was even legal to have housing in an industrial zone there). If you rezone a residential area industrial and make it illegal to have housing there guess what will happen (assuming there's demand for industrially zoned areas)
⬐ ItsMonkkYour argument is that places that are zoned lower are worth less, and places that are zoned higher are worth more. That's only true in the existing paradigm.What would be true in the new paradigm is that places would only allowed to be zoned lower if people are willing to pay for that exclusive access. It's not just industrial areas, all higher zoned areas would be cheaper than lower zoned areas.
Land Value Tax incentivizes proper zoning, as the more scarce the housing is, the higher the tax. Proper zoning(like Tokyo has without a land value tax) flips the structure.
⬐ tharkun__That is not my argument at all.In fact the residential zoned houses at the edge of the industrial zone are worth less potentially than the industrial piece of land on that edge. (maybe not, because residential neighbors will get complainy ;))
I am saying that I don't see how a land value tax does what you propose. I had no idea what that even was until I read these posts and looked it up.
I don't see what you mean by zoned "lower" and "higher" actually. I can zone the land for another New York City in the middle of flyover country and that doesn't mean people will come just like that. The price this will command will be super low because there's nothing there (this is actually part of your land value tax system's reasoning). If I can find someone interested at all.
If instead I zone it agricultural I can sell it depending on vicinity to a small town, how flat it is (mountain side? No thank you for big agri, only small homesteaders will pay you a little at all). Flat and great soil near other agri infrastructure? Now we are talking pricy!
⬐ ItsMonkkThe value of the land is based on1. The inherit value of the land - rivers, gold or oil being key examples.
2. The nearby infrastructure
3. The zoning policies
4. The community and commercial services
If there is land zoned for another NYC, with the infrastructure of NYC, including the excellent port access, it would very quickly become worth what NYC is worth as people showed up. We see this with the pop-up cities in China after they reach completion. Though no doubt some will stay in ghost status forever.
It is up to the local government to do what they can to make the most of their land, just as much as it is up to the landowner of an individual parcel to do what they can to make the most of their land. The city is incentivized to zone the area so that it is valued highest. If they do a poor job of that, that is on them.
⬐ tharkun__I completely agree with that last post's reasoning for why a pop-up city might stay empty or become another New York.I don't see why it needs a land value tax and having one causes anything. All the things you are putting into your land value calculation cause that. Not the tax.
Now don't get me wrong. I'd love me a land value tax as it would probably mean I'd pay less for where I live. But that's it so far. Color me unconvinced otherwise.
⬐ ItsMonkkYep, this is a very natural way to think and why Georgist policies have not been enacted.I'm a programmer, as most are on this website. The thing that mostly interests me is when incremental changes don't lead to global maximums. As are most who study AI and say, Agile development. When is it that prisoner's dilemmas occur?
I pay attention to things like programmers who fix the bug they introduced fix the bug at a deeper level[0], I pay attention to Simple Made Easy[1], I pay attention to the systemic effects[2].
I point out that the Land Value Tax is so simple and yet fixes so many things. It fixes an inherit problem with society at a deep level. You need to pay attention to the incentives and how they mold the eventual outcomes. Land value taxation leads to correctly aligned incentives.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28128729
Exactly this. This is a cultural issue, more than anything else.Countries like Japan have taken a profoundly different approach to urban development, and have more mixed-use zones (single-family, multi-family, high-rise, etc).
The _Life Where I'm From_ episode on zoning in Japan is useful, I think, as a point of comparison. Zoning in Japan can still be pretty complex (limits on floorspace, setback, and angles), but allows for environments that many people like.
I like the way that Japan handles zoning.It's based on population densities. Localities can designate industrial and commercial areas, but can't deviate from federal guidelines to prevent growth.
Instead of single family homes they allow triplexes where a percentage of space can be used for a low-impact business, like a barber shop or something. They have setbacks geared towards making sure that you don't build three stories on top of your neighbor's house.
They have neighborhoods. They don't have a housing shortage. They don't have a system that doesn't empower developers who want to clear-cut cheap land on the outskirts of town and build sprawling anti-social subdivisions of oversized identical houses.
Here's some more information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk
⬐ nine_kThe interesting thing is that the value of a typical home in Tokyo decreases with time.This idea would be terrifying for most of the US homeowners.
⬐ mikem170Agreed. It's crazy that we got into this spot where places people live are also expected to be an investment that forever out-paces inflation. It's not sustainable.
> Define “significantly impose”. That’s the basic problem,I agree.
> existing near someone can have effects that are easy to justify in court
I had the impression this was a "mob rule" problem, that local voters were voting for zoning laws that limit the quality and quantity of new housing. I admit to not understanding the legal or moral justification. It just doesn't seem right to micromanage others to the extent that occurs today.
There are other countries that are much more flexible, like Japan [0]. Instead of single family single use zoning they start with three story multi-use housing. Some places in the U.S. are moving in this direction.
> decreasing or limiting increase on future land values
That can be flipped around. Someone who opposes new housing is taking value from the people who could have made use of that new housing, had it been allowed.
⬐ ashtonkemIf we’re talking about California, “mob rule”[0] isn’t the right framing. This isn’t a majority of citizens suppressing the rights of people to build on their own property, it’s a minority using asymmetric political involvement to get their way.The recent lawsuit against UC Berkeley is a great example. A handful of cranks angry about UC Berkeley admissions abused an environmental review process to impose their will on their town. Not the will of the majority, but rather the tyranny of the most rich and petty.
0 - I prefer the term “tyranny of the majority”.
⬐ danukerAnother example is HOAs. They have devolved into instruments of tyranny.⬐ ashtonkemIndeed. Not getting a HOA was a hard requirement for us.The fascinating thing about HOAs is that they’re all done under the guise that they “improve property values”, but I’ve never seen any evidence that this works. From my geographic location it seems like non-HOA factors drive prices (supply, demand, neighborhood location and nearby amenities like transit and shopping), not whether or not the neighbors flower bed matches the “neighborhood character”[0]. From what I see it just seems to let petty tyrants control their neighbors; the property value argument seems like a transparent excuse.
0 - You see this phrase a lot in zoning discussions and it makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills. As if neighborhood character is a concrete thing that can be pointed to and protected, rather than a constantly changing and emergent result of the humans living in a place.
⬐ foogaziHOAs manage commons in a condominium covenantSome people like not worrying about stuff and having rules in place.
It’s all about the freedom to choose
For my house I decided not to buy in an HOA - missed out on some amenities for sure.
⬐ ajmurmannNot only in condominiums. In suburbia they also manage commons, but also impose rules on what you can do with your house and on your land. You likely need permission for color changes, there might be limitations on what can and cannot be planted in your front yard. You might get fined if your house doesn't fixes when the HOA decides they are needed or when you repeatedly don't bring your garbage in quickly.I'm not sure what to make of the choice part here. Once an area is under an HOA it's almost impossible to dissolve the HOA. Anecdotal evidence from my own HOA which my wife was president of for many years shows that only very few people get involved. The people who do get involved tend to be of the type who want to overreach. When my wife was president she probably spent more time trying to bring the other folks involved in the HOA back to what's reasonable. Fortunately management companies also help with this. I'm afraid that without management companies most HOAs would devolve into attempts to build a miniature fascist state that only would be stopped by prolonged court battles.
⬐ foogaziThe choice part comes in that people choose to buy/rent into an HOA - they don’t just spring up on you unannounced⬐ ashtonkem⬐ ashtonkemPartially true. You're right that they don't spring up unannounced, but there is something distressingly feudal about a property contract by (probably long dead) founders binding future owners in perpetuity without any possibility for redress or change. Personally I think it would be much better if current home owners could create or destroy a HOA if they felt that it no longer met their needs, rather than tying it to the lot forever.Also, depending on your state it can be very hard to avoid a HOA. If you're buying a home in California, Colorado, or Florida you've got a 2/3 chance of buying into a HOA, with the numbers getting worse over time. 2/3 new homes being made now have a HOA, so pretty soon you won't have an effective choice when buying.
> In suburbia they also manage commons, but also impose rules on what you can do with your house and on your land.Not all HOAs have infrastructure to maintain. I know a few people in neighborhoods with HOAs that don't have private roads or facilities for the HOA to manage, it's just purely there for property value.
This video covers it: https://youtu.be/wfm2xCKOCNk
⬐ marvinThanks!
This is true, zoning in Japan [0] makes a lot of sense. Instead of single family homes they allow triplexes, even a percentage of space dedicated to a low-impact business (like hair stylist, etc). They have setback rules so that you can't put second/third floor up against your neighbors property line blocking the sun all day. They dedicate nearby spaces for commercial and hi-rise buildings, making it possible to live near where you work. And there is dedicated space for factories and other industrial buildings.Single-use single family zoning is being eliminated in some areas of the U.S., allowing accessory dwelling units to be built, etc. Even California just passed a low changed R1 to R3 for all cities in the state (pending court cases, I assume).
Your note above contains a lot of assumptions about what I think, and vitriol, words like steal, destroy, trash, etc. This seems to be something that you are emotional about.Lots of people think it's immoral for neighbors to be able to micromanage the living spaces of other neighbors outside of basic safety issues. I'm not sure how you'd defend imposing your will on other people just because you can at any given moment. Who are you to hijack the decades and centuries that goes into a city, like you mentioned, and freeze it in time for your convenience, at the expense of others who were born into the same society you were. We're all here together, you can't morally just marginalize people you're afraid of.
I stand by my original statement that I think it's wrong for you to characterize everyone who doesn't agree with the way zoning has evolved in this country over the last 100 years as an interloper. We live in a democracy. These are fellow citizens, people who are just as important as you and me.
I'm not in favor of big developers or corporations or profits. I don't want to build a high rise or a factory next to your house. I am in favor of lots more real neighborhoods, as opposed to suburban developer big-box retail car centric sprawl. I am opposed to single use zoning.
If I had a magic wand I think that the way the Japanese do zoning is much better than the way it has evolved in the U.S. [0].
⬐ toss1I can tell you that no one is "freezing anything in time", or "micromanaging the living spaces of other neighbors", or "doing it for their own convenience", or attempting to "morally marginalize people I'm afraid of".I'm making no assumtions, merely responding to what you put in print. Maybe you are merely playing dumb, but you show little evidence of knowing how any of this actually works, or evidence of having even participated in a town meeting, much less actively worked to get any changes done.
>>I'm not in favor of big developers or corporations or profits.
Actually, that is EXACTLY who you are in favor of - that is how it works.
I've seen in multiple locales how developers make alliance with the old-timers that don't like rules, and then they push through zoning variances, overrides, or elimination. And what goes up is NOT anything in remote characterization related to the neighborhood -- what goes up IS as many units as possible, stacked as high as they can go, or shopping malls/factories if that's more profitable.
If you don't want "single use zoning", you WILL get multi-use, because the appraisal of everything is done by "best and highest use", which means whatever brings in the most money. So, if they can develop a high-rise or factory within an inch if your property line and make the most money, that's what you'll get.
>>words like steal, destroy, trash, etc. This seems to be something that you are emotional about.
Yes, I care about it a lot, but my direct experience is that these are the most accurate words to describe what actually happens (not in your idealized concept).
We literally have right now, on my backyard, a 50+ acre lot that a developer recently bought in a 2-acre zoned area, with typical lots 3-7 acres. This area is very hilly and includs the wetlands that also stretch onto more than half of my lot and harbor multiple endangered species and a great variety of other wildlife. we and our neighbors literally enjoy this wildlife multiple times every day (and some of it also enjoys our gardens).
Did he propose to put up a handful of homes to increase the density but in keeping with the neighborhood? No one would have seriously objected to that, and he could put up a handful of quite profitable high-end homes.
Instead he proposed 5 different plans with 60-300+ 4-story condo units. These 60-300+ units would all add that miultiples of the current traffic to a street that now only serves 20 houses.
It would also completely trash the environment- Their plan was to literally strip-mine the place, put up 35ft+ retaining walls, plant a few trees and some grass. And tap into the same water supply that feeds the 30-odd wells from the same lot - so this could easily run us all out of water. AAnd the land is so steep that the roadways would exceed the allowable specs for fire trucks in the summer, and this is New England which has winters, so people could easily be trapped in multi-unit buildings with fire & rescue unable to reach them.
So, whether you want to talk environment, community, traffic, water, or safety, these interloper developers -- yes, they come from out-of-state and have zero local investment -- are perfectly happy to trash all of it for their own profit, then leave town.
This is literally taking paradise and putting up a parking lot - you don't know what you've got till it's gone.
And this is typical. There are these multi-hundred 3-4 story projects going up everywhere in the region - anywhere they can find a plot and push it through.
And yes, upon finding out about Planning Board meetings to get variances for this, we worked late and weekends for about a month, and shut down this abomination for at least a few years. More people showed up at that Planning Board meeting than ever before, by an order of magnitude. ZERO of them were concerned about their property values. I literally never heard it brought up in a single conversation, email, or meeting. Everyone had concerns, whether it was traffic, safety, environment, water supply, waste treatment, infrastructure, or whatever, but:
ZERO ever even mentioned property values.
ZERO ever mentioned who might move in (and some of these were proposed to be low-income units, because that gets the developers lower regulations).
Yet those are your first accusation, that everyone is greedy and just cares about their prop values, and is "afraid" of who might move in.
And your concerns about "steal", "destroy", "trash" are not emotional, they are simply accurate descriptions of what happens.
And yes, this is a democracy, and you do not have a vote in the towns which you presume you should improve their rules. If you don't have any skin in the game in the locale you propose to change, your are literally an interloper - just check any definition [1-5].
If you like Japan, go there. If you want to make a difference here, then go to a town or city. Get involved in the governance. They are always looking for people to help. run for a position - you will be welcomed in any decent place. INVEST your money and your time in the place. THEN you will legitimately have a say in how it is run.
Until then, stop being so entitled and stop the clueless rhetoric.
While you think you are helping yourself and some other poor people, all you are doing is literally helping developers 1) steal value from others who have spent generations building it, 2) destroy the existing environment and culture where they build, and 3) trash the surroundings.
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/interlop...
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interlope
[3] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/interloper
[4] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/interloper
[5] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/interlo...
[6] specifically, in the Vladimir Lenin sense of a person who is unaware of what they are doing, but nevertheless helpful to the cause.
[edits: formatting, grammar]
⬐ mikem170⬐ toss1I replied to your sibling reply. I think that you are on a side-track bringing and focusing on large developers. I mentioned zoning in Japan, and they don't allow for that. To the contrary, they do more than we do to cultivate neighborhoods with small businesses.> Until then, stop being so entitled and stop the clueless rhetoric.
We both feel passionate about this stuff. It's easy to go off the rails. Doesn't look good, though.
⬐ mikem170> I've seen in multiple locales how developers make alliance with the old-timers that don't like rules, and then they push through zoning variances, overrides, or elimination.I'd say this is why we need a system of more uniformly applied rules, so that we don't have decisions made at the discretion of local boards and variances. A process like that is easy to abuse and corrupt, just as you described above. Those with the money and connections can game the system.
p.s. We might be overloading this comment thread! lol
One more fallacy you have posted:>>Lots of people think it's immoral for neighbors to be able to micromanage the living spaces of other neighbors outside of basic safety issues. I'm not sure how you'd defend imposing your will on other people just because you can at any given moment.
No one is micromanaging the living spaces of other neighbors. As you say, it's a democracy.
I have lived in towns that had zoning, and voted it out. Some years later, there were meetings where people were asking "If we had zoning, this siht would not have happened, would it?", but they did decide to create zoning, then abolish it, then reinstate it.
It is simply false to imply that I have some micromanaging power over my neighbor, beyond the democratically agreed rules that require them to apply for variances to the zoning rules, and allow abutters to submit comments on those variance requests, which must also be considered.
In Switzerland, you will drive around and see poles standing on land. These are marking the corners of a proposed new building and must be erected for months before a hearing on the building, so everyone can comment and post objections, requests for adjustments, etc. before permission is granted to build.
This is not some kind of unfair micromanagement, it is taking into consideration everyone's local concerns before making a decision.
Zoning does not exist as you imaging because of petty concerns over property value and fear of unknown people. It exists because too many people will build things that negatively affect their neighbors, and are democratically introduced. I get to vote on them in my town, and you in yours. I don't get to vote in your town, and you don't get to vote in mine, any more than I get to vote in Switzerland, or some Swiss guy gets to vote here.
⬐ mikem170> No one is micromanaging the living spaces of other neighbors.Your statement above seems quite incorrect. I was thinking that most people in the U.S. can't build an accessory dwelling unit in their backyard for their grandmother. Most people in the U.S. can't build a 400 square foot house on their land. Most people can't convert their house into a duplex or a triplex. Most people can't run a low traffic specialty retail or service business out of their house. None of these are safety issues.
You mentioned variances, which can be requested for things like the above. But that's my main point, why should these things require variances? "taking into consideration everyone's local concerns" as you mentioned. Processes like this take away people's freedom to modify their house like in the above examples, without good reason.
This is what I was referring to. Why should the approval of other people be required to make the above modifications to a property you own?
Maybe this is the main thing that we disagree on. It seems like micromanaging to me.
I still don't think you get where I'm coming from when I mentioned Japan. I'm not in favor of developers, and I don't think my ideas lead to that. Did you look into how the Japanese do zoning? I'm guessing you didn't, because all you said to me was "If you like Japan, go there." That just seems reactionary. Japanese homeowners could make all of the modifications I mentioned above without needing permission. It's a good system. Has it's advantages. I think that sometimes people are afraid of change.
Some of the stuff you typed in your two replies was interesting, but doesn't seem to narrow down what we are discussing. I don't think the dictionary definitions helped.
⬐ toss1There are several reasons that zoning and variances work.First is scale. Very few one-off items will have a big effect. But when nearly everyone does it, it entirely changes the loads on the infrastructure, character of the community, etc.
Adding 2x-3x the residents to existing plots will add similar loads to the roads, water, sewage, and services infrastructure. These boil down to very real costs, and if not properly managed, including raising taxes as it happens, will seriously degrade the town. Limiting this is not micromanaging, it is managing.
The other is the direct effect on the neighbors. This happened with my grandparent's house, a one floor ranch built in the ~1950s overlooks the Hudson river north of NYC. Someone bought it and wanted to turn it into a 2-story. There is another large house further up the ridge overlooking the roof, the river, and the hills beyond. This change would have destroyed their view of the river and hills to the west. Despite the new owner's significant funds and lobbying, the request was denied and it was sold on.
I think this is an excellent result. The owner of my GP's house would have imposed a massive external loss on the neighbor.
Sure, there are some neighbors who are absolute asses and will deny everything for spite, and that can be as annoying as micromanaging. At the same time, I do not consider it to be my right to do whatever TF I want, and the hell with how it affects my neighbor - and in particular, I want the same treatment - golden rule.
The problem is that developers DO work by the different golden rule - he who has the gold makes the rules. They are basically growth hackers (and not in a good way). Any hole in the rules they WILL attempt to exploit in order extract maximum profit from a plot of land.
The developer off my back lot line? He's not big, he's a guy from another state who builds additions, and thinks this massive development, with which he has zero experience will be his big retirement payday. Considering the environment and geography issues, I think he is stupid money and that serious developers passed on the lot. But that doesn't stop every random builder with dreams.
So, as soon as you allow general conversion from single to duplex/triplex, that is guaranteed what you will get within a few years. Sure, some of it will be people just building a second unit for their family to live on the same plot. But most of it will be builders buying up lots that can then be built out. And they will do it in the way that makes them the most profit, usually short-term - this means regard for the neighbors is zero beyond what is required and enforced.
So, while these ideas sound wonderful and egalitarian, the reality is that being more loose about it inevitably leads directly do developer abuses and destruction of what has been created.
There may be solutions to this, but if it was easy, it would have already been done.
⬐ mikem170(continuation of reply above...)> The problem is that developers DO work by the different golden rule - he who has the gold makes the rules. They are basically growth hackers (and not in a good way). Any hole in the rules they WILL attempt to exploit in order extract maximum profit from a plot of land.
I have something to run by you. Maybe single use single family zoning actually helps developers, to the detriment of everyone else.
For the last several or more decades developers have been buying land on the outskirts of towns, clear cutting it and building a bunch of houses as quickly as possible, nothing else, then handing it off to a homeownwers association, so that neither the developer nor the town have to spend any extra money on amenities. The developer makes their money, then looks for another subdivision to build. What could be more convenient? The houses all look the same, because that is cheapest. Many of them are not well made. These subdivision neighborhoods are all pretty much identical, just house after house, empty streets except for the occasional dog walker, a car being required to get to the nearest strip mall, just past the nearest gas station, everything built since at sometime in the 70s seems to follow this pattern.
Perhaps this is why single familt single use zoning is so prevalant across the country, because that is convenient for developers who want to go on building more subdivisions. Single family homes are the best way to get the most markup per housed person. Either that, or apartment complexes that look like people warehouses. Maybe defending the current zoning regulations plays right into their hands. Works out nice for banks and car companies, too. Developers don't care what these neighborhood are like to live in or the long term problems, as long as they can turn a good profit this year.
Many people, myself included, find all these new corporate developed neighborhoods to be alienating, even dystopian. You say you are against developers but they are the ones who we're currently optimized for. They are making money off the current rules, and leaving behind so many externalities - not just financial but so many quality of life issues, commutes for home owners and service workers, the loss of neighborhood gathering spots, the deteriorated relationships with neighbors and small business owners, serendipity walking down the street, dependence on cars, decades of working to pay for this stuff, kids with nothing to do, insular, isolating, monoculture, etc.
Now we even have the problem of hedge funds buying up housing! I am truly dismayed thinking where that trend leads, given the influence the rich have over politicians to warp things more to their profitability without regard for personal or societal damage.
I'm expressing some of my dislikes above... In the spirit of communicating my fears on this issue, which we haven't addressed yet.
It seems to me that you are arguing to keep things the same, to let developers continue to build these inhumane (to many of us) places to live. Yuck. Keeping things the same sucks so much for so many people.
> So, as soon as you allow general conversion from single to duplex/triplex, most of it will be builders buying up lots that can then be built out.
I would say this happens of how regulated housing is. Only developers have the expertise to navigate the system. That's why often corporations are in favor of regulations, they know that individuals and small companies can't deal with the overhead. Regulatory capture. It did not used to be this way.
Regulation for non-safety issues adds a considerable amount to the price of a new house. We could halve those costs, at least. Other places do. Some places have 99 year leases on the land and houses are depreciating assets, like cars, which people often have rebuild to taste, some every time they move. In some countries the average person pays off the average house in three years. Lots of things are possible, just saying.
Somewhat related, I would be game to tax primary residences differently than investor owned property. Houses and neighborhoods should be for people to live in, not for the rentier class to make money.
> So, while these ideas sound wonderful and egalitarian, the reality is that being more loose about it inevitably leads directly do developer abuses and destruction of what has been created.
Do you not agree that developers have been driving the last several or more decades of building, given that most new construction has been subdivisions and corporate apartment complexes during that time?
It's become almost impossible to do otherwise, based on the current regulations you are in favor of.
I feel like we've been letting developers, corporations, and profit destroy neighborhoods in this country for decades, it's causing significant problems, and that we need to make changes.
> There may be solutions to this, but if it was easy, it would have already been done.
It has been done! There are other places that have solved this. They don't have the problems with developers or housing costs that we have. We didn't have these problems in the past. I'm encouraged that there are more and more places in this country making changes.
Of course those making money off the current system will see these changes as a financial threat and continue to resist. Many others are in favor of these changes for numerous reasons, and will continue to push for them.
I apologize for any erroneous assumptions I may have made above about your position while I was expressing my dissatisfaction above with the way things are.
I guess we could talk about how current zoning regulations make it difficult for individuals to build new housing and have resulted in more subdivisions and apartment complexes, how this has changed neighborhoods for the worse over the last several decades, and the belief that upzoning and/or a better system is not possible.
I look forward to what you have to say about all this.
⬐ mikem170In general I think we have in common a dislike of developers. I assume neither one of us wants to encourage them. I'll talk more about that below, and also why I don't like the current system. I do believe we could make changes for the better.> Adding 2x-3x the residents to existing plots will add similar loads to the roads, water, sewage, and services infrastructure.
City neighborhoods, even poor ones, are increasingly subsidizing less dense suburbs because there are not enough taxpayers per mile of infrastructure in the less dense areas [0]. Due to sprawl there are more roads, sewers, etc, and not nearly as many people per mile to maintain them. Suburbs built in the 70s will be facing maintenance costs soon that many of them can't afford. Transfer payments already happen through county, state and federal budgets [1]. Another reason to say that every taxpayer has a stake in zoning, not just homeowners.
Plus there's a lot of upzoning that is already happening, and infrastructure hasn't been a deal breaker. Tacoma replaced single family zoning with low-scale residential [2] which allows up to three units, and they are not the only city doing this. Others are allowing accessory dwelling units on any property if setbacks allow. In fact California just passed a law [3] that will require that all cities in the state to allow up to four housing units in place of single-family homes, and also allow the splittingi up of single-family lots. They did this because current regulations incentivize homeowners in municipalities to create an unfair market. They consider single family zoning to be a bad system and are tying to fix it. Infrastructure has not been an impediment.
> These boil down to very real costs, and if not properly managed, including raising taxes as it happens.
Before the pandemic the trend of people wanting to live in cities was pushing a lot of poor folks into some suburbs, and you could see things deteriorating over the years in these areas as the tax base got poorer, and negative feedback loops making things worse. I've seen areas with lots of abandoned strip malls. I've also seen subdivisions overloaded with cars on the street, in driveways, and on lawns because the neighborhoods weren't designed for three or four or five commuters per house, but everyone needs a car to get anywhere. Some are saying that eventually many suburbs will be like this, populated by the poor, the ghettos of the future, extended families and groups of friends sharing houses, these subdivisions and suburbs going broke, while people with money will want to live in other more interesting and better maintained places. Is this what you are in favor of?
> my grandparent's house, a one floor ranch built in the ~1950s overlooks the Hudson river north of NYC. Someone bought it and wanted to turn it into a 2-story. There is another large house further up the ridge overlooking the roof, the river, and the hills beyond. This change would have destroyed their view of the river and hills to the west. Despite the new owner's significant funds and lobbying, the request was denied and it was sold on.
It seems more fair to have consistent rules, like two stories allowed, certain setbacks, etc. than to allow neighbors to arbitrarily decide these things. I don't even understand how that is constitutional, the law and due process in this case being "lets see what your neighbors happen to think today". There should be the same rules for everyone.
I have trouble getting past how selfish this seems to me, given how strongly I feel against imposing on other people. I understand the person not wanting to loose their view. Part of me wishes that I could prohibit people from acquiring barking dogs and flood lights. Who doesn't have an axe to grind? But the people who want a view should buy the lot in front of them. That's why a water front lot costs much more than water view. It was good fortune that they had the view as long as they did, they knew that buying with a house in front of them that allowed for extra height, and now they think that the view was theirs all along, and that they were entitled to it? This is not self evident.
We don't seem to agree on the idea of who gets to set the rules and what justification is required. But I don't mean to sidetrack things picking on this specific example. I don't blame anyone for working the system as best they can. That's why we're in the mess we are in. Homeowners have shown time and time again how they care more about the value of their investment more than they care about their neighbors as people, and how far they will go to protect that value. That's how we made the game to be played.
> I think this is an excellent result. The owner of my GP's house would have imposed a massive external loss on the neighbor.
And now the neighbor has imposed a massive external loss on the owner of your GP's house, the loss of a second floor, something other people are allowed to have, for either their view or the money they think the view might be worth to a future buyer.
Furthermore homeowners have externalized other costs associated with their profits by making it harder for others to find places to live and work while simultaneously benefiting from municipal growth that everybody participates in.
Real estate as an investment has made housing more unaffordable. This amounts to a national ponzi scheme, given that prices can't outpace inflation forever without something happening eventually. Our kids, or grandkids, and taxpayers in general, will likely have to deal with a crash in prices at some point, declining suburbs and the infrastructure these communities won't be able to maintain, underfunded HOAs in disrepair, more abandoned shopping centers, more taxpayer bailouts, etc. These are all externalized future costs born by other people to prop up current homeowner values.
I understand that the current system incentivizes rising residential real estate prices and a lot of people have most of their nest egg in their home equity, and/or are highly leveraged, and/or spend way too much time working to pay their mortgage. So I get why people do this. Water view is worth a lot more than no water view. Neighbor against neighbor.
> Sure, there are some neighbors who are absolute asses and will deny everything for spite, and that can be as annoying as micromanaging.
I agree, but wouldn't push the point. I'd call things like this an outgrowth of a bad system. That's the problem with giving people power over others, it will be abused. I've heard other anecdotes, like the neighbor of my dentist who fought him building a garage like other people had, apparently because she thought a garage in his yard would make her yard look smaller.
HOAs can be another big problem in this regard, empowering petty people to harass their neighbors. There's often a strong push for uniformity in many of these places, and not much acceptance of anything different, including the color of curtains and the type of grass. For decades now most new home construction has been in developer subdivisions subject to HOA rules.
The bad attitude of so many homeowners is plainly visible on the Next Door website, with their disdain for "less desirable" people, opposition to extending bus routes with disregard for the difficulty their hired help has getting back and forth to clean their toilets or whatever, the people who want to keep non-locals away from "their" non-locally funded beach, the people who want more jobs to help grow the area but don't want to allow more housing for the janitors, teachers, clerks, nurses, and everyone else who keeps the lights on, the people who want to remove the benches in the park so that "those people" don't sit there, the people who don't want anyone economically different to live near them, etc. Even worse is the historic connection between zoning and racism, which is still alive today. All of these people think they are being perfectly reasonable. People make decisions based on emotion and will come up with all sorts of twisted reasoning as justification.
So one effect of the current rules is to enable bad people to do bad things to other people.
> I do not consider it to be my right to do whatever TF I want, and the hell with how it affects my neighbor - and in particular, I want the same treatment - golden rule.
You're invoking the golden rule in defense of doing something bad to your neighbor in the above example, blocking them from an modifying their house like other people are allowed to. I gather that you are saying that your neighbor would be breaking the golden rule by adding onto their house in a way that blocks your view. But, as I mentioned above, did you never really own the view? And the golden rule was never meant to be a one way street. It appears to me that you want something for nothing from your neighbors, and you don't want to go out of your way for anyone else who wants something different.
I understand this is tricky, There's a variety of situations. Living close to other people can be difficult, and it can be tough to draw a line between what is reasonable or unreasonable. and opinions vary. That's why I think it's important to have uniform rules, rules that don't incentivize petty selfish behavior. Sometimes the person who doesn't like his neighbors needs to move or something, and not expect everyone else to bend over backwards.
⬐ mikem170> The problem is that developers DO work by the different golden rule - he who has the gold makes the rules. They are basically growth hackers (and not in a good way). Any hole in the rules they WILL attempt to exploit in order extract maximum profit from a plot of land.I have something to run by you, though. Maybe single use single family zoning actually helps developers, to the detriment of everyone else.
For the last several or more decades developers have been buying affordable land on the outskirts of towns, clear cutting it and building a bunch of houses as quickly as possible, nothing else, then handing the whole thing off to a homeownwers association, so that neither the developer nor the town have to spend any extra money on amenities. The developer makes their money, then needs to find another place to clear cut to do it again. The houses all look the same, because that is cheapest. Many of them are not well made. These subdivision neighborhoods are all pretty much the same, house after house, empty streets except for the occasional dog walker. A car being required to get to the nearest strip mall, a little ways past the nearest gas station.
Perhaps this is why zoning got to be so similar throughout the whole country, because that is convenient for developers who want to go on building more subdivisions. Single family homes are the best way to get the most markup per housed person. Either that, or apartment complexes that look like people warehouses. Maybe defending the current zoning regulations plays right into their hands. Works out nice for banks and car companies, too. Developers don't care what these neighborhood are like to live ini or the future downsides, as long as they can turn a good profit.
Even the 1920s rust-belt city neighborhood I grew up in was built by developers, but at least that was before subdivisions and car-centric sprawl. It was a porch neighborhood where you could say hello to people you'd see every day. The houses were close together with small back yards, around half of them were duplexes, there were commercial streets interwound throughout the neighborhood, tons of variety, and many things to walk to - friends, bars, bakery, pizza, hardware, library, cleaners, deli, markets, parks, riverwalk, bus routes, schools, little leagues, churches, etc. All within walking distance, if you wanted. It was easier to do everything. It was better in so many ways.
Many people, myself included, find all these new corporate developed subdivision neighborhoods to be alienating, even dystopian. You say you are against developers but they are the ones who we're currently optimized for. They are making money off the current rules, and leaving behind so many externalities - not just financial but so many quality of life issues, commutes for home owners and service workers, the loss of neighborhood gathering spots, the deterioration of relationships with neighbors and local small business, the loss of serendipity walking down the street, the dependence on cars, kids with nothing to do, the decades people spend working to pay for this stuff, insular, isolating, monoculture, etc.
Now we even have the problem of hedge funds buying up housing! I am truly dismayed thinking where that trend leads, given the influence the rich have over politicians to warp things more to their profitability without regard for personal or societal damage.
The current system doesn't allow new housing to be built in existing single family neighborhoods, it incentivizes developer subdivisions and sprawl, despite all the known long term downsides of such things.
I'm expressing some of my dislikes above... In the spirit of communicating my fears on this issue, which we haven't addressed yet. It seems to me that you are arguing to keep things the same, to let developers continue to build these inhumane (to many of us) places to live. Yuck. Keeping things the same sucks so many ways for so many people.
> So, as soon as you allow general conversion from single to duplex/triplex, most of it will be builders buying up lots that can then be built out.
I would say this happens because of how regulated housing is. Only developers have the expertise to navigate the system. That's why often corporations are in favor of regulations, they know that individuals and small companies can't deal with the overhead. Regulatory capture. It did not used to be this way. It's not this way everywhere.
Regulation for non-safety issues adds a considerable amount to the price of a new house. We could halve those costs, at least. Other places do. Some places have 99 year leases on the land and houses are depreciating assets, like cars, which people often have rebuild to taste, some every time they move. In some countries the average person pays off the average house in three years. Lots of things are possible, just saying.
Somewhat related, I would be game to tax primary residences differently than investor owned property. Houses and neighborhoods should be for people to live in, not for the rentier class to make money.
> So, while these ideas sound wonderful and egalitarian, the reality is that being more loose about it inevitably leads directly do developer abuses and destruction of what has been created.
Do you not agree that developers have been driving the last several or more decades of building, given that most new construction has been subdivisions and corporate apartment complexes during that time? It's become almost impossible build new residential housing otherwise, based on the current regulations you are in favor of, because it's all zoned single-family. Are you in favor of keeping thigs the same? or are you happy with where you live and you don't care about other people's problems?
I feel like we've been letting developers, corporations, and profit destroy neighborhoods in this country for decades, it's causing significant problems, and that we need to make changes.
> There may be solutions to this, but if it was easy, it would have already been done.
It has been done! There are other places that have solved this. They don't have the problems with developers or housing costs that we have. We didn't have these problems in the past. I'm encouraged that there are places in this country making changes.
Of course those making money off the current system - many homeowners, corporations, and developers, will see these changes as a threat and continue to resist. Many others are in favor of these changes for numerous reasons, and will continue to push for them.
I apologize for any erroneous assumptions I may have made above about your position while I was expressing my dissatisfaction above with the way things are. These are some of the reasons why I so strongly object to keeping things the same.
I can't help but think that you're wrong on many of the points you've tried to make so far in this thread, both those in defense of the current dominant single family single use zoning regulations and those in defense of your attitude towards taxpaying non-homeowners and other fellow citizens who will increasingly have to financially subsidize the many external costs resulting from this type of zoning and the subdivision developers who are taking advantage of it.
I guess we are left to talk more about how current zoning regulations make it difficult for individuals to build new housing and have resulted in more subdivisions and apartment complexes, how this has changed neighborhoods iand quality of life for the worse over recent decades, and your belief that upzoning and/or a better system is not possible.
I look forward to what you have to say about all this.
[0] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...
[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-dixmoor-wate...
[2] https://mynorthwest.com/3238968/tacoma-to-finalize-ambitious...
[3] https://apnews.com/article/california-recall-california-laws...
⬐ mikem170> The problem is that developers DO work by the different golden rule - he who has the gold makes the rules. They are basically growth hackers (and not in a good way). Any hole in the rules they WILL attempt to exploit in order extract maximum profit from a plot of land.I have something to run by you, though. Maybe single use single family zoning actually helps developers, to the detriment of everyone else.
For the last several or more decades developers have been buying affordable land on the outskirts of towns, clear cutting it and building a bunch of houses as quickly as possible, nothing else, then handing the whole thing off to a homeownwers association, so that neither the developer nor the town have to spend any extra money on amenities. The developer makes their money, then needs to find another place to clear cut to do it again. The houses all look the same, because that is cheapest. Many of them are not well made. These subdivision neighborhoods are all pretty much the same, house after house, empty streets except for the occasional dog walker. A car being required to get to the nearest strip mall, a little ways past the nearest gas station.
Perhaps this is why zoning got to be so similar throughout the whole country, because that is convenient for developers who want to go on building more subdivisions. Single family homes are the best way to get the most markup per housed person. Either that, or apartment complexes that look like people warehouses. Maybe defending the current zoning regulations plays right into their hands. Works out nice for banks and car companies, too. Developers don't care what these neighborhood are like to live ini or the future downsides, as long as they can turn a good profit.
Even the 1920s rust-belt city neighborhood I grew up in was built by developers, but at least that was before subdivisions and car-centric sprawl. It was a porch neighborhood where you could say hello to people you'd see every day. The houses were close together with small back yards, around half of them were duplexes, there were commercial streets interwound throughout the neighborhood, tons of variety, and many things to walk to - friends, bars, bakery, pizza, hardware, library, cleaners, deli, markets, parks, riverwalk, bus routes, schools, little leagues, churches, etc. All within walking distance, if you wanted. It was easier to do everything. It was better in so many ways.
Many people, myself included, find all these new corporate developed subdivision neighborhoods to be alienating, even dystopian. You say you are against developers but they are the ones who we're currently optimized for. They are making money off the current rules, and leaving behind so many externalities - not just financial but so many quality of life issues, commutes for home owners and service workers, the loss of neighborhood gathering spots, the deterioration of relationships with neighbors and local small business, the loss of serendipity walking down the street, the dependence on cars, kids with nothing to do, the decades people spend working to pay for this stuff, insular, isolating, monoculture, etc.
Now we even have the problem of hedge funds buying up housing! I am truly dismayed thinking where that trend leads, given the influence the rich have over politicians to warp things more to their profitability without regard for personal or societal damage.
The current system doesn't allow new housing to be built in existing single family neighborhoods, it incentivizes developer subdivisions and sprawl, despite all the known long term downsides of such things.
I'm expressing some of my dislikes above... In the spirit of communicating my fears on this issue, which we haven't addressed yet. It seems to me that you are arguing to keep things the same, to let developers continue to build these inhumane (to many of us) places to live. Yuck. Keeping things the same sucks so many ways for so many people.
> So, as soon as you allow general conversion from single to duplex/triplex, most of it will be builders buying up lots that can then be built out.
I would say this happens because of how regulated housing is. Only developers have the expertise to navigate the system. That's why often corporations are in favor of regulations, they know that individuals and small companies can't deal with the overhead. Regulatory capture. It did not used to be this way. It's not this way everywhere.
Regulation for non-safety issues adds a considerable amount to the price of a new house. We could halve those costs, at least. Other places do. Some places have 99 year leases on the land and houses are depreciating assets, like cars, which people often have rebuild to taste, some every time they move. In some countries the average person pays off the average house in three years. Lots of things are possible, just saying.
Somewhat related, I would be game to tax primary residences differently than investor owned property. Houses and neighborhoods should be for people to live in, not for the rentier class to make money.
> So, while these ideas sound wonderful and egalitarian, the reality is that being more loose about it inevitably leads directly do developer abuses and destruction of what has been created.
Do you not agree that developers have been driving the last several or more decades of building, given that most new construction has been subdivisions and corporate apartment complexes during that time? It's become almost impossible build new residential housing otherwise, based on the current regulations you are in favor of, because it's all zoned single-family. Are you in favor of keeping thigs the same? or are you happy with where you live and you don't care about other people's problems?
I feel like we've been letting developers, corporations, and profit destroy neighborhoods in this country for decades, it's causing significant problems, and that we need to make changes.
> There may be solutions to this, but if it was easy, it would have already been done.
It has been done! There are other places that have solved this. They don't have the problems with developers or housing costs that we have. We didn't have these problems in the past. I'm encouraged that there are places in this country making changes.
Of course those making money off the current system - many homeowners, corporations, and developers, will see these changes as a threat and continue to resist. Many others are in favor of these changes for numerous reasons, and will continue to push for them.
I apologize for any erroneous assumptions I may have made above about your position while I was expressing my dissatisfaction above with the way things are. These are some of the reasons why I so strongly object to keeping things the same.
I can't help but think that you're wrong on many of the points you've tried to make so far in this thread, both those in defense of the current dominant single family single use zoning regulations and those in defense of your attitude towards taxpaying non-homeowners and other fellow citizens who will increasingly have to financially subsidize the many external costs resulting from this type of zoning and the subdivision developers who are taking advantage of it.
I guess we are left to talk more about how current zoning regulations make it difficult for individuals to build new housing and have resulted in more subdivisions and apartment complexes, how this has changed neighborhoods iand quality of life for the worse over recent decades, and your belief that upzoning and/or a better system is not possible.
I look forward to what you have to say about all this.
[0] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...
[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-dixmoor-wate...
[2] https://mynorthwest.com/3238968/tacoma-to-finalize-ambitious...
[3] https://apnews.com/article/california-recall-california-laws...
⬐ mikem170In general I think we have in common a dislike of developers. I assume neither one of us wants to encourage them. I'll talk more about that below, and also why I don't like the current system. I do believe we could make changes for the better.> Adding 2x-3x the residents to existing plots will add similar loads to the roads, water, sewage, and services infrastructure.
City neighborhoods, even poor ones, are increasingly subsidizing less dense suburbs because there are not enough taxpayers per mile of infrastructure in the less dense areas [0]. Due to sprawl there are more roads, sewers, etc, and not nearly as many people per mile to maintain them. Suburbs built in the 70s will be facing maintenance costs soon that many of them can't afford. Transfer payments already happen through county, state and federal budgets [1]. Another reason to say that every taxpayer has a stake in zoning, not just homeowners.
Plus there's a lot of upzoning that is already happening, and infrastructure hasn't been a deal breaker. Tacoma replaced single family zoning with low-scale residential [2] which allows up to three units, and they are not the only city doing this. Others are allowing accessory dwelling units on any property if setbacks allow. In fact California just passed a law [3] that will require that all cities in the state to allow up to four housing units in place of single-family homes, and also allow the splittingi up of single-family lots. They did this because current regulations incentivize homeowners in municipalities to create an unfair market. They consider single family zoning to be a bad system and are tying to fix it. Infrastructure has not been an impediment.
> These boil down to very real costs, and if not properly managed, including raising taxes as it happens.
Before the pandemic the trend of people wanting to live in cities was pushing a lot of poor folks into some suburbs, and you could see things deteriorating over the years in these areas as the tax base got poorer, and negative feedback loops making things worse. I've seen areas with lots of abandoned strip malls. I've also seen subdivisions overloaded with cars on the street, in driveways, and on lawns because the neighborhoods weren't designed for three or four or five commuters per house, but everyone needs a car to get anywhere. Some are saying that eventually many suburbs will be like this, populated by the poor, the ghettos of the future, extended families and groups of friends sharing houses, these subdivisions and suburbs going broke, while people with money will want to live in other more interesting and better maintained places. Is this what you are in favor of?
> my grandparent's house, a one floor ranch built in the ~1950s overlooks the Hudson river north of NYC. Someone bought it and wanted to turn it into a 2-story. There is another large house further up the ridge overlooking the roof, the river, and the hills beyond. This change would have destroyed their view of the river and hills to the west. Despite the new owner's significant funds and lobbying, the request was denied and it was sold on.
It seems more fair to have consistent rules, like two stories allowed, certain setbacks, etc. than to allow neighbors to arbitrarily decide these things. I don't even understand how that is constitutional, the law and due process in this case being "lets see what your neighbors happen to think today". There should be the same rules for everyone.
I have trouble getting past how selfish this seems to me, given how strongly I feel against imposing on other people. I understand the person not wanting to loose their view. Part of me wishes that I could prohibit people from acquiring barking dogs and flood lights. Who doesn't have an axe to grind? But the people who want a view should buy the lot in front of them. That's why a water front lot costs much more than water view. It was good fortune that they had the view as long as they did, they knew that buying with a house in front of them that allowed for extra height, and now they think that the view was theirs all along, and that they were entitled to it? This is not self evident.
We don't seem to agree on the idea of who gets to set the rules and what justification is required. But I don't mean to sidetrack things picking on this specific example. I don't blame anyone for working the system as best they can. That's why we're in the mess we are in. Homeowners have shown time and time again how they care more about the value of their investment more than they care about their neighbors as people, and how far they will go to protect that value. That's how we made the game to be played.
> I think this is an excellent result. The owner of my GP's house would have imposed a massive external loss on the neighbor.
And now the neighbor has imposed a massive external loss on the owner of your GP's house, the loss of a second floor, something other people are allowed to have, for either their view or the money they think the view might be worth to a future buyer.
Furthermore homeowners have externalized other costs associated with their profits by making it harder for others to find places to live and work while simultaneously benefiting from municipal growth that everybody participates in.
Real estate as an investment has made housing more unaffordable. This amounts to a national ponzi scheme, given that prices can't outpace inflation forever without something happening eventually. Our kids, or grandkids, and taxpayers in general, will likely have to deal with a crash in prices at some point, declining suburbs and the infrastructure these communities won't be able to maintain, underfunded HOAs in disrepair, more abandoned shopping centers, more taxpayer bailouts, etc. These are all externalized future costs born by other people to prop up current homeowner values.
I understand that the current system incentivizes rising residential real estate prices and a lot of people have most of their nest egg in their home equity, and/or are highly leveraged, and/or spend way too much time working to pay their mortgage. So I get why people do this. Water view is worth a lot more than no water view. Neighbor against neighbor.
> Sure, there are some neighbors who are absolute asses and will deny everything for spite, and that can be as annoying as micromanaging.
I agree, but wouldn't push the point. I'd call things like this an outgrowth of a bad system. That's the problem with giving people power over others, it will be abused. I've heard other anecdotes, like the neighbor of my dentist who fought him building a garage like other people had, apparently because she thought a garage in his yard would make her yard look smaller.
HOAs can be another big problem in this regard, empowering petty people to harass their neighbors. There's often a strong push for uniformity in many of these places, and not much acceptance of anything different, including the color of curtains and the type of grass. For decades now most new home construction has been in developer subdivisions subject to HOA rules.
The bad attitude of so many homeowners is plainly visible on the Next Door website, with their disdain for "less desirable" people, opposition to extending bus routes with disregard for the difficulty their hired help has getting back and forth to clean their toilets or whatever, the people who want to keep non-locals away from "their" non-locally funded beach, the people who want more jobs to help grow the area but don't want to allow more housing for the janitors, teachers, clerks, nurses, and everyone else who keeps the lights on, the people who want to remove the benches in the park so that "those people" don't sit there, the people who don't want anyone economically different to live near them, etc. Even worse is the historic connection between zoning and racism, which is still alive today. All of these people think they are being perfectly reasonable. People make decisions based on emotion and will come up with all sorts of twisted reasoning as justification.
So one effect of the current rules is to enable bad people to do bad things to other people.
> I do not consider it to be my right to do whatever TF I want, and the hell with how it affects my neighbor - and in particular, I want the same treatment - golden rule.
You're invoking the golden rule in defense of doing something bad to your neighbor in the above example, blocking them from an modifying their house like other people are allowed to. I gather that you are saying that your neighbor would be breaking the golden rule by adding onto their house in a way that blocks your view. But, as I mentioned above, did you never really own the view? And the golden rule was never meant to be a one way street. It appears to me that you want something for nothing from your neighbors, and you don't want to go out of your way for anyone else who wants something different.
I understand this is tricky, There's a variety of situations. Living close to other people can be difficult, and it can be tough to draw a line between what is reasonable or unreasonable. and opinions vary. That's why I think it's important to have uniform rules, rules that don't incentivize petty selfish behavior. Sometimes the person who doesn't like his neighbors needs to move or something, and not expect everyone else to bend over backwards.
⬐ mikem170iIn general I think we have in common a dislike of developers. I'll talk more about that below, and also why I don't like the current system. I do believe we could make changes for the better.> Adding 2x-3x the residents to existing plots will add similar loads to the roads, water, sewage, and services infrastructure.
Dense city neighborhoods, even poor ones, are increasingly subsidizing less dense areas because there are not enough taxpayers per mile of infrastructure in the less dense suburbs [0]. Due to sprawl there are more roads, sewers, etc, and not nearly as many people per mile to maintain them. Suburbs built in the 70s will be facing maintenance costs soon that many of them can't afford. Transfer payments already happen through county, state and federal budgets [1]. Another reason to say that every taxpayer has a stake in zoning, not just homeowners.
Plus there's a lot of upzoning that is already happening, and infrastructure hasn't been a deal breaker. Tacoma is replacing single family with low-scale residential allowing up to three units [2], and they are not the only city doing this. Others are allowing accessory dwelling units on any property if setbacks allow. In fact California just passed a law that will require that all cities in the state to allow up to four housing units in place of single-family homes, and the ability to split single-family lots [3].
> These boil down to very real costs, and if not properly managed, including raising taxes as it happens.
Before the pandemic the trend of people wanting to live in cities was pushing a lot of poor folks into some suburbs, and you could see things deteriorating over the years in these areas with the poorer tax base, negative feedback loops making things worse. I've seen areas with lots of abandoned strip malls. I've also seen subdivisions overloaded with cars on the street, in driveways, and on lawns because the neighborhoods weren't designed for three or four or more commuters per house, but everyone needs a car to get anywhere. Some are saying that eventually many suburbs will be like this, populated by the poor, the ghettos of the future, extended families and groups of friends sharing large houses, subdivisions and suburbs going broke, people with money fleeing to other more interesting and better maintained places.
> my grandparent's house, a one floor ranch built in the ~1950s overlooks the Hudson river north of NYC. Someone bought it and wanted to turn it into a 2-story. There is another large house further up the ridge overlooking the roof, the river, and the hills beyond. This change would have destroyed their view of the river and hills to the west. Despite the new owner's significant funds and lobbying, the request was denied and it was sold on.
It seems more fair to have consistent rules, like two stories allowed, certain setbacks, etc. than to allow neighbors to arbitrarily decide these things. I don't even understand how that is constitutional, the law and due process in this case being "lets see what your neighbors happen to think today". There should be the same rules for everyone.
Maybe the people who want a view should buy the lot in front of them, if they want it that bad. That's why a water front lot costs much more than water view. Or build their own second floor, or rooftop porch, etc. They had the benefit of the view for a while even thought they didn't own it. It wasn't taken from them. They are not entitled to this. It was never theirs to begin with. They knew there was a house in front of them that could build another floor.
> I think this is an excellent result. The owner of my GP's house would have imposed a massive external loss on the neighbor.
And now the neighbor has imposed a massive external loss on the owner of your GP's house, the loss of a second floor that other people are allowed, for either the view they don't own or the money they think the view might be worth to a future buyer.
Furthermore homeowners have externalized other costs associated with their profits by making it harder for others to find places to live and work while simultaneously benefiting from municipal growth.
Real estate as an investment has made housing more unaffordable. This amounts to a national ponzi scheme, given that prices can't outpace inflation forever without something happening eventually. Our kids, or grandkids, and taxpayers in general, will probably have to deal with a crash in prices at some point, declining suburbs and the infrastructure these communities won't be able to maintain, underfunded HOAs in disrepair, more abandoned shopping centers, more taxpayer bailouts, etc. These are all externalized future costs born by other people to prop up current homeowner values.
I understand that the current system incentivizes rising residential real estate prices and a lot of people have most of their nest egg in their home equity, and/or are highly leveraged, and/or spend way too much time working to pay their mortgage. So I understand why people do this. Water view is worth a lot more than no water view. Neighbor against neighbor.
> Sure, there are some neighbors who are absolute asses and will deny everything for spite, and that can be as annoying as micromanaging.
I agree, but wouldn't push the point. I'd call things like this an outgrowth of a bad system. That's the problem with giving people power over others, it will be abused. I've heard other anecdotes, like the neighbor of my dentist who fought him building a garage like other people had, apparently because she thought a garage in his yard would make her yard look smaller.
HOAs can be another big problem in this regard, empowering petty people to harass their neighbors. There's often a strong push for uniformity in many of these places, with not much acceptance of anything different, even down to the color of curtains and the type of grass. For decades most new home construction has been in developer subdivisions subject to HOA rules.
The bad attitude of so many homeowners is plainly visible on the Next Door website, their disdain for "less desirable" people, opposition to extending bus routes with disregard for the difficulty their hired help has getting back and forth to clean their toilets or whatever, the people who want to keep non-locals away from "their" non-locally funded beach, the people who want more jobs to help grow the area but don't want to allow more housing for the janitors, teachers, clerks, nurses, and everyone else who keeps the lights on, the people who want to remove the benches in the park so that "those people" don't sit there, the people who don't want anyone economically different to live near them, etc. Even worse is the historic connection between zoning and racism, which is still alive today. People often make decisions based on emotion, not reason and logic.
So one effect of the current rules is to enable bad people to do bad things to other people.
> I do not consider it to be my right to do whatever TF I want, and the hell with how it affects my neighbor - and in particular, I want the same treatment - golden rule.
You invoked this in defense of doing someone doing something bad to their neighbor, blocking them from an modifying their house. I assume you meant that the neighbor should have gone out of their way to not block the other person's view? As I mentioned before, I don't understand why they think they are entitled to something they didn't pay for. It seems that you want others to go out of your way for you, but I'm not sure how you feel about going out of your way for people who want something different.
As much as I'd argue with you against this, I can't say that you are completely wrong. Part of me wishes I could prohibit people from getting dogs that bark, and installing floodlights. Everyone has an axe to grind. Everyone is different. It's takes a certain amount of give and take, and compromise, to live near to others. It's not easy to codify. Perhaps that is why so many want to segregate, to be surrounded only by people just like them?
(continued in reply below...)
[0] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...
[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-dixmoor-wate...
[2] https://mynorthwest.com/3238968/tacoma-to-finalize-ambitious...
[3] https://apnews.com/article/california-recall-california-laws...
“Life where I’m from” has a great video on why japan’s zoning helped it become so livable.
Why? If people choose to live next to the incinerator that's their choice. You can also have "industrial only" zones for stuff that's pollution emitting, but most things don't need that zoning. Example Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk
Why blame the rich people rather than the system that allows them to abuse it? Rich people will always exist. The solution is to make it so that abuse is not possible. One possibility: create a state system for zoning and override every local zoning system. Let local zoning boards decide how to zone but make zoning be based on a tiered zoning system. Namely every zoning is a superset of the previous zoning. So industrial areas also allow every other type of zoning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk
⬐ newscluesRich people own and control the system.Rich people have the power to change the system but they want to maintain the status quo because they are rich and powerful.
⬐ geofftI don't know about your state, but in my state, rich people have influence at the state level too.It doesn't seem axiomatic to me that rich people will always exist (I'm not sure I even agree that poor people will always exist, despite believing that the guy who most famously said it was divine), and one of the things I have learned from working in an industry with very rich people is that merely being rich is enough to let you influence the rules of the game. If someone was able to argue for tiered zoning, you can pay people to argue for un-tiered zoning. If there's a law preventing you from influencing local zoning, and you're rich, you can go change that law just as easily as it got created. If there's a law requiring certain representation on zoning boards, you can go lobby that representation. If there's a law moving zoning to an "apolitical" government agency, you can fund candidates willing to politicize it. And so forth.
Making people not have that level of influence/leverage in the first place, hard as it might be, seems like the only viable solution.
⬐ mulmenIf you disagree with current zoning laws why would you want to weaken your ability to influence them by moving the decision to the state?Delegation of power to local authority is a central concept of American democracy. Do not throw that baby out with the zoning bathwater.
⬐ mlindner⬐ onlyrealcuzzoMy post was actually about defining a system of zoning and forcing localities (if they want to allow zoning for industry at all) to also allow high rise housing and commercial in the same area as well. And anywhere that's zoned commercial also has to automatically allow residential. Localities can still choose how they zone, but the state sets the types of zoning possible.Why would you assume a state system would be better and not even worse?⬐ markdownBecause local government represents just that locality... meaning a wealthy neighbourhood only has politicians elected and controlled by the wealthy.State govts have to appeal to a much wider demographic.
⬐ onlyrealcuzzo>65% of voters are home owners.
I found this video yesterday: "Why Japan Looks the Way it Does: Zoning" which was very illuminating https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk
⬐ bin_bashI'm sure living in Japan comes with its own set of problems, but whenever I learn about something like this it makes it sound like such a paradise. I can't imagine how great it would be to live in a small, affordable community where I walk my daughter to school every day and can take care of most errands without using my car.It seems in America you can pick 2 from safe, affordable, and walkable.
⬐ hnlmorg⬐ baneEurope is like this too. I find America's implementation of zoning to be very weird. Maybe there are some upsides to it that I'm not aware of, I'd be interested to hear some opinions of the American system from those who favour it.⬐ lbriner⬐ JohnJamesRamboThere is some "zoning" in the UK too, it is just not so set in stone. Most councils have areas that are pre-approved for new housing, any other areas would require planning permission.Building in a conservation area (not necessarily rural!), on a listed building or in a "greenbelt" area require special permission, which is not always easy or obvious.
I think the theory must be that people want some assurances. If somewhere is zoned for housing, I don't have to do pointless paperwork to build houses. It also keeps commercial areas away from residential which might or might not be a good idea although I suspect most residents prefer it that way.
⬐ xboxnolifesThere are upsides, but only relative to the issues it solved decades ago. We stopped (drastically) improving our zoning from the original changes and now we're stuck with the consequences.⬐ sho_hnSee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM for one of the major reasons.⬐ hnlmorg⬐ japanftwI don't follow. That video, while interesting, seems to be complimenting European city planning and critical of American city planning. I don't see how it's making a case for American zoning.⬐ sho_hnI may have learned something new from you, thanks! For me this was related to what I conceived of as zoning, but it appears that has a narrower definition.Europe is far, far, behind japan in pretty much every aspect. Paris, London or Berlin are basically dumps compared to Japan’s cities.⬐ toygEh, some of Europe. Yes, we are nowhere as obsessed as the Americans with suburban life and car-based commuting, because of 2000 years of urbanization (one of those things "the Romans did for us"), but in the last 20-40 years there has been a real shift towards similar models. Suburban hypermarkets, IKEA, entertainment centres, and the pursuit of "Wysteria Lane" habitats, have become commonplace for families across the continent.Some of it is driven by economic growth (city centres have become increasingly unaffordable, particularly in capital cities), some by population growth (you can only scale up a residential block so much before it becomes a mess from a social perspective), some by fashion (hello Hollywood), some by speculation (it's easy to bootstrap a shopless residential suburb), some by urban planners simply failing in the attempts to create new urban centres.
⬐ hnlmorgYou're still a short walk from the nearest primary school, shop and pub though. Granted lots of local pubs are going under these days and local shops don't have a massive selection. But it still beats having to drive for every little thing.You can get all three, you just have to live somewhere outside the two coasts I think. I’ve got all three in a small town in the middle. I walk on the sidewalk in front of my house to the library that is a few doors down from my incredibly affordable house. It feels like a Norman Rockwell painting.I’m hoping remote work can allow more people to experience this.
⬐ helen___keller⬐ skhr0680FWIW you can have all of these on the coasts as well. For example, if you can afford a suburban Boston house, you can find any number of small towns in New England where you can afford to live and have a small walkable community (that is to say, in absolute terms these communities are expensive but in relative terms for New England they are not).The problem this is missing is that "walkable" doesn't actually include everything you need to live. Jobs are the most obvious one, for those who don't have remote work or their own business, which is to say for most Americans. You'll also probably end up driving when you need to do serious shopping because your town center's general store isn't a Wal-Mart. Similarly for any number of specialized purchases or services.
In any case, small-town living and city living are very different. What's impressive about Japan is bringing a walkable, livable urban form to a mega city of 30 million people. When American towns start growing into cities (or when they are informally annexed into a larger cities' urban region) they usually do so by converting farmland into car-accessible suburbs, which is the problem.
⬐ gremIinWhat are you job options if you get laid off? How often do you and your spouse spend time with friends? I would hate moving to a small town and being cut off from seeing friends whenever I want to. Not to mention people tend to congregate towards larger cities, so moving to a small town probably means giving up quality food and my favorite events like sports and the symphony.⬐ ghaff⬐ thethethetheYou don't really need to choose.In many places, you can live in a smaller town and be within an hour or so of a city. It doesn't need to be a choice between living in Manhattan or the middle of nowhere in Wyoming.
⬐ JohnJamesRamboI’m self-employed, so I can’t be laid off!My gf and I don’t really like to socialize that much and prefer to stay in and play video games and watch tv, so we love it. The ubiquity of the internet has made it possible to live almost anywhere in my opinion. For $25 a month we can see and do pretty much the same thing everyone else is doing every night on the internet. We cook our own meals also. You can always make new friends in a small town.
There are trade-offs to be sure, but if you knew how low my mortgage payment is you might choose like we did. :) All the money I save has allowed me to invest heavily, which will allow me to travel and see the world instead of see a city go by every day on a commute to work until I’m old.
⬐ gremIinI see, so your "you can have all three, you just have to..." is actually unrealistic/bad advice to those who are not self-employed, not to mention those who actually enjoy doing things in the city.⬐ ghaffHow many places is being able to walk to a wide choice of professional jobs a realistic option? (Obviously if you expand the definition to reasonably accessible by public transit, the list gets longer but is still relatively limited given transit options and the fact that many offices are in industrial parks, not cities.) And sports/symphony limit you to a relatively large city or at least a college.Edit: modified the list of cities based on commentsIs your neighborhood truly walkable though? Do you walk to the grocery store? What about the hospital? dentist? Physical therapist? Pet store? Restaurants? Is there transit nearby?
Afaik, there are only a few cities in the US (all costal) which are truly walkable in the traditional sense, SF, NYC, Boston, DC and maybe Philadelphia and only limited parts of the cities are actually walkable. These are the only cities with limited single family zoning and didn't boldoze their city centers to build parking lots and freeways in the 50s like the rest of NA cities (see https://www.vox.com/2014/12/29/7460557/urban-freeway-slider-...)
Many cities and small towns in the US and Canada may have walkable elements in limited areas, but they are still very car dependent in most cases
⬐ lolpythonJust providing a non-coastal example - Pittsburgh is pretty decent for walkability and transit. It is a dense, small (in area) city. Trips by bus are often comparable to the same trip by car. I would say that most neighborhoods in Pittsburgh are walkable, but getting between neighborhoods is best done by bus, due to the big hills.Some figures:
- 10 percent of Pittsburgh residents commute by walking [0]. 17 percent commute by public transit [1].
- "According to the U.S. Census Bureau, public transportation commuters in Pittsburgh spend an average of 32 minutes traveling to work, the 11th-fastest transit commute time of the 136 cities in our analysis. That is also just nine minutes slower that the average commute time for drivers, the fifth-smallest difference." [2]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_... [2]: https://smartasset.com/mortgage/best-cities-for-public-trans...
edit: formatting
⬐ ghaffThe core of Boston is more walkable than SF is. Especially if by "walkable," you really mean walkable and with easy access to expansive public transit to easily get to all the other things you won't have in a small town center or otherwise within a 30 minute or so walk.To the sibling comment, walkable means different things to different people.
Walk to a hospital or a grocery store that isn't a small market/convenience store? You're already talking a city at that point. And, in the hospital case, probably not all the medical professionals you might conceivably want to see are likely to be within a one mile or so radius.
A ton of places are walkable in the sense that you can buy a house/condo and walk to a restaurant or two and pick up a few groceries. But, as you say, very few cities in the US are walkable in the sense that you really don't need a car without a lot of compromises/depending on others/using personal transportation services a lot.
⬐ thethethethe⬐ cnntthAdded an edit to the comment based on your info, thanksBoston is /very/ walkable, the whole city can be walked end to end in a few hours and Somerville is one of the densest neighborhoods in the U.S.I'll also say D.C. (and to some extent Northern Virginia and select parts of Maryland) makes car ownership optional, the transit system does a good job of covering a lot of neighborhoods.
I've been to a few college towns that also, by necessity, are dense and are walkable or at least bikeable oasis in otherwise rural areas.
⬐ thethethetheThanks for the info, I added an edit to my comment⬐ ghaff⬐ ghaffBTW, Boston did pretty much bulldoze the center of the city (the West End) for a freeway but spent some $10 billion (much of it federal money) to rectify the problem with the Big Dig. It was walkable before the freeway was dismantled but less so in Boston proper. (As with other US cities, it was also less safe in general a few decades ago.)The thing with college towns is that you tend to have the campus and, if it's in a rural area, generally a few streets of associated town. Technically walkable but, once you're not a student any longer, the campus is less interesting/useful and there probably isn't a whole lot in the ten or so blocks of the town that you can walk to. You can doubtless survive but the options are probably limited without a car (and most of your non-student friends in the area probably have one).If you can find a way to make money without working for a company that demands all of your time for a small wage, Japan is a great place to live. Having schools etc in walking distance means that all of the local people keep an eye out to make sure each other’s kids are safe. It’s really nice.⬐ bart_spoonI lived in Japan for a few years, and it basically was paradise. There were virtually no downsides in my opinion.⬐ lozenge⬐ aikinaiGender norms are pretty stringent especially on mothers.In general it seems very accepting if you fit in and very hostile if you don't, which is shown in a high suicide rate in school age children.
⬐ bart_spoon⬐ naomeuxWhile true, I was mostly speaking of zoning. I consider things like gender norms as being cultural and not necessarily overlapping with their city zoning. From a pure urban design perspective, its basically perfect in my opinion. (That said, it's not entirely correct that culture and urban design are separate. I'm not sure Japanese cities can be recreated in America, if for no other reason than there is a huge gulf between how individuals view and interact with society in Japan vs. America)It's also worth noting that while stressors from gender norms exist in Japan, the idea that their suicide rate is extremely high is somewhat outdated. Its been decreasing over the last few decades, while countries like the US and many European countries have increased, to the point where there isn't that much of a difference between the regions.
I agree with you on this one, but except for one thing. The walls are too thin to have your own space. It's quite uncomfortable that you don't have your privacy even you're at home.⬐ bart_spoon⬐ pjc50If you are talking about walls within your home, that may be true, my living situation was such that I wouldn't know. If you are talking about thin walls between neighboring apartments, I never had much of an issue. Perhaps they are thing, but in general Japanese people are so conscious of others that I never had an issue with loud neighbors.It looks from the outside that the downside is "small" living spaces. They look small by UK standards so I imagine that to an American it's like living in a closet.⬐ liotierDesktop computers with CRT were far less popular in Japan than anywhere else, and compacity is part of the story for the TV/gaming console/computer hybrids that found more traction there than elsewhere. Perfectly usable furniture that lost its purpose are left on the curb for pickup - no space at home to store anything not in production ! The never-used formal dining room found in US homes would look bonkers to a visiting Japanese.⬐ ghaff⬐ freetime2>never-used formal dining roomTo be fair, I'm not sure how common this is with new/remodeled construction in the US. Entertainment pattens have changed for the most part and layouts tend to be a lot more open. In particular, you don't see the hard demarkation between dining area and kitchen area which dates to when the "help" worked in the kitchen and served in the dining room.
⬐ skhr0680I remember people making fun of the Xbox for being too huge and “American”!> The never-used formal dining room found in US homes would look bonkers to a visiting Japanese.
there’s always the never-used huge tatami room at grandpa’s house in the countryside
It depends where you’re coming from and where in Japan you choose to live. I moved from a small city with a high cost of living in the US to a small city with a low cost of living in Japan. My home in Japan is twice as big and a quarter of the cost of my former home in the US.⬐ rwmjIt can be very cheap if you're prepared to put the work in. There's a Youtube series about a guy who is doing up a large (even in UK/US terms) abandoned house which he bought for (IIRC) $40K: https://www.youtube.com/c/TokyoLlama/videos⬐ freetime2⬐ bart_spoonOr even if you don’t want to put in any work, it can still be quite affordable.Here’s a 10 year old, 18,000 sq ft house in Ibaraki prefecture (same prefecture as Tokyo Llama’s house) for about $220k USD. It’s not large by US standards, but definitely sufficient for a family of 4 IMO. And with interest rates in Japan being about 1%, the monthly mortgage payment would be about $625.
https://www.athome.co.jp/kodate/1039825842/
This location looks pretty rural, but similar homes can be found all over Japan.
Sort of, but the reality is that when everything is structured the way it is in Japan, you don't really feel like you need much space in your apartment. That said, I lived there when I was single, and it would be very different living there with my young family. But I knew young family with houses when I was there and it seemed comfortable. I was also in Hokkaido (mostly Sapporo), which is not quite as dense as the Tokyo area (though still very dense compared to most of the US).⬐ lozengeIt's a lifestyle difference. Americans enjoy the convenience of a home gym and paddling pool/real pool (if they can afford it). Japanese might walk to their gym or even prefer the onsen to the shower they have at home. Americans invite guests round, Japanese use cafés and love hotels. Americans stack consoles and gaming PCs, Japanese can also visit arcades. There's an equivalent for most activities, and it has lower CapEx and more variety. Maybe if your hobby is woodworking or car repair, Japan can't serve you for lack of space.Here in the UK, it really feels like every business is taking my money and spitting me out as fast as possible (except pubs, which... are good if you want to get drunk I guess...). Vs in Japan where services felt cheap, trustworthy, and welcoming (such as clean toilets).
⬐ namelessoracleAre you really stating the home gyms and pools are common in the Americans that do buy homes? Huh?⬐ corpdronejulyThey are though. This varies regionally, but they're both multimillion dollar industries that push very hard to make their goods affordable to increase their available customer base.I grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood, and every other house has a bench and some weights. Many of the families saved up for a treadmill or elliptical, and woe betide the child who thought they could use it. Someone on every block(usually more wealthy than the area average) had an above ground pool, and the neighborhood kids would go over and hang out there all summer.
⬐ bart_spoonIts not super crazy. When you consider the number of homes that have home gyms, or pools, or basketball hoops, trampolines, or swing sets etc. that people have, its a large number of homes. And even for those who don't, most houses in America are built such that one could buy one if they want.I grew up in suburban Indiana, and when I went home to visit my parents, I counted it up and literally over 1/3rd of the houses I could see from their front porch had a basketball hoop in the driveway.
⬐ helen___kellerIt depends heavily on region, but in the suburbs most Americans have room for something that wouldn't be easily affordable in an urban Japanese home (or urban anywhere home, i suppose). Maybe a lawn or backyard, maybe a pool, maybe a garage that can fit more than one car, maybe a driveway that can fit your car while your garage is used for something else, a house big enough to have a room that you don't use every day, and so onI personally would vastly prefer a walkable, affordable, safe, dense urban region over a lawn, a 2 car garage, and a backyard. But not everyone would agree with me, particularly for some who would say that dense and walkable is a negative rather than a positive.
Japan's not a paradise in every way, but this is exactly why my family has settled here. The lifestyle possible in most of Japan is very difficult to replicate in other countries and invaluable to general quality of life even if you have to compromise in some areas.⬐ blacktriangleBeing a homogeneous ethnostate does wonders for the social cohesion that allows for a society like Japan to work.⬐ eldaisfish⬐ temp8964You are being downvoted but this sentiment is not wrong. See also the nordic countries and this Freakonomics podcast that goes into some detail: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/happiness/ In particular, note Denmark's notoriously strict immigration system.The key point being that ethnically homogenous societies tend to work well. It isn't guaranteed but it does contribute because everyone is the same or similar. Similar ideals, similar goals and so on. The feeling one gets in these societies is stifling. We have nice things but they are for us, not for you.
⬐ j-bosHard to say because while Japan has long been homogenous and had strong social order, the modern level of safety is historically recent.⬐ f00zz⬐ stormdenniswasn't always rich either (there are descriptions of pre-war slums in Kazuo Ishiguro's "An Artist of the Floating World")Not a popular opinion, it seems.⬐ jgwil2⬐ llampxPeople are rightly offended by the claim that racial purity is a prerequisite for a cohesive, high-functioning society.⬐ darksaintsNo, it's not. It's a common opinion among white nationalists, but they are a tiny minority and they don't realize how different white people (or any ethnicity for that matter) actually are. If you put a bunch of British Columbians and Texans in a room, you might have ethnocentricity, but you won't have anything close to social cohesion.⬐ corpdronejulyGiven the interminable arguments they have about "who counts as white" and their racial anxieties I'm sure they're more aware, on average, of the differences between a Texan, and a Californian, or a Scottsman and A Frenchman than those of us who focus on finding what we have in common and being good neighbors.⬐ eldaisfishThis is a bad comparison. "White" is about as informative as "European" or "Indian". It conveys a vague notion of melanin levels and little else. Regions such as Europe or India are so diverse that a Finn and a Spaniard have very little in common. Same goes for a "Country" like India.Someone from BC and someone from Texas actually have a lot in common - both are from immigrant societies and both speak the same language. Can't say that for someone from Kerala, India and Punjab, also in India.
⬐ darksaintsThats all fine, but we're talking about white nationalists...they're not exactly nuanced about culture. To white nationalists, whiteness is all that matters, and if we just kicked out all of the non-white people, we could participate in this enthocentric utopian fantasy that they have. Nevermind the fact that almost every ethnostate that has ever existed has had civil wars and irreconcilable differences. Hell, our own country is the result of some members of a homogenous ethnostate moving to get away from that state, and ultimately waging war against it.Plenty of homogeneous states which don't work. Seems it's not such a great indicator.⬐ njharman> Plenty of homogeneous states which don't work.Plenty? Name five, other than isolated microstate islands. I can think of very few modern homogeneous ethostates.
⬐ rataata_jrIQ factor? Japanese are pretty smart.⬐ ethanbondWell GP does say allows for such a state, not guarantees.⬐ darksaintsWell if that's what they meant, then heterogeneous melting pots also allow for advanced societies to work. And ethnocentricity is a shitty indicator for social cohesion.You know what you lose by living in a tiny apartment?- You don't have a dedicated space to build a home-lab with your own servers and network devices
- You can't turn your own garage or a shed in the backyard into a workshop (for woodwork or whatever)
- You don't have a backyard to do BBQ with your friends
- You don't have a backyard to grow a variety of plants for food or for your kids' learning
- You don't have a backyard to play sports with your kids
- You don't have a dedicated space to setup a science / robot / computer lab for your kids
- You can't play music / movie with full volume
- You don't have a space to park multiple vehicles, maybe even no space for four five bikes
- etc.
No. I like to live in a big suburban house and raise a big family, instead of living in a tiny apartment. In addition, U.S. suburban areas also have lots of big public parks (city parks, and state parks also in close driving distance) for all sorts of out door activities. I don't envy living in a crowed neighborhood at all.
I think the beauty of life is free to chose. You chose where to live for your preferred life style. And I chose for mine.
⬐ darksaints⬐ freetime2Nothing you've said here is incompatible with Japanese zoning. It is American zoning that forces choices on people, not the other way around.⬐ temp8964Your understanding is very strange. I didn't say Japanese zoning is forcing people. Weird.> where I walk my daughter to school every dayFrom first grade onwards kids actually walk to school in groups, without adult supervision (except for the occasional crossing guard). So while you wouldn’t be able to walk with your daughter, I think it actually says even more about the safety and walkability of Japanese neighborhoods that 6 year olds are able to get to and from school safely without adult supervision.
⬐ tkgallyMy two daughters went through elementary schools in Tokyo and Yokohama, and they walked to school in groups—called tōkōhan—that were arranged by the schools. In Tokyo, their tōkōhan met each morning in front of our apartment complex; in Yokohama, it met a block away from our house. There were about ten to fifteen kids in each group.The children were taught at school how to behave safely in the tōkōhan, and older kids were assigned to walk at the front and rear of each group and to keep tabs on the younger ones. In the afternoons, though, the kids came home on their own, as different grades finished at different times.
In Yokohama, parents shared the crossing guard duties. For a week or so every couple of months, I would have to stand with a flag at a nearby corner for fifteen minutes every morning and wave each tōkōhan by. (I was working from home then and was available to do it.)
The streets in the area where we lived in Tokyo had sidewalks, but in our Yokohama neighborhood the narrow streets are used by both pedestrians and vehicles. That has always made me a little nervous, but fortunately there’s not a lot of traffic in our neighborhood; most of the people living nearby do not have cars, and those who do seem to do most of their commuting and errands on foot or bicycle. I feel less safe in rural areas of Japan, where pedestrians often have to walk along narrow, sidewalk-less roads with cars and trucks whizzing by.
"Life Where I'm From" is a fantastic channel. His series on homelessness in Japan is one of the best and most thoughtful pieces on the subject I've ever seen, and makes me very much question the way of homelessness elsewhere.Japan isn't a perfect paradise by any stretch of the imagination, but if you end up having to build several high-density megalopolises, it's as close to an ideal model as possible. It's very hard to describe why their cities are so good because it's a list of a million small things. If you can, visit and see. It's a wonderful collision of familiar and bafflingly different all in one.
⬐ None⬐ aehardingNoneSee also:NotJustBikes https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0
Strong Towns https://www.strongtowns.org/
⬐ mlindnerMore like a "lack of zoning". Japan's very limited zoning restrictions allows more natural cities to be built.Additionally, the train companies own the land around the train stations and are thus encouraged to develop the land for commercial use, effectively setting up destinations for the users of their train systems. The cities then develop around the train stations as the primary hubs of commerce.
⬐ yborisI lived in Tokyo for 2.5 months in a furnished 2br apartment ~7 min walk from 3 different subway stations (2 stations away from Shinjuku) for $1,500/month. The company renting the apartment caters to non-Japanese-speaking tourists and they handled all the paperwork. Visiting from the US for less than 3 months is hassle free. My experience was wonderful. I've now visited 6 times in my life and am eager to return. The streets of Tokyo (and other cities) always feel cozy to me - my favorite destination.⬐ QandThanks⬐ setgreeCan you mention what company you used? I'd like to do similar, the airbnb's i've seen with such a location were always too pricey.Also, I clicked your profile and saw the video hub. Just wanted to say thanks as I have been looking for something like that for quite a while.
⬐ yborisFontana - https://www.tokyocityapartments.net/I have not used other companies and I used Fontana just once, but it was a great experience.
On the paperwork front - there was gas, electric, and water that I had to pay (you take the bill and pay at any convenience store - very easy) - the company can help if you have questions. They can also help close the three accounts when you are finished with the apartment. The apartment came with free WiFi. Minimum stay was 2 months (policy likely still in place).
Very nice! For more on the subject, see this article in the Financial Times [0], which got a nice write up on marginal revolution [1][0]: https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3...
[1]: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/la...
⬐ pjc50I'd be interested in hearing how this is handled in various European countries, because "zoning" in the SimCity style doesn't really exist in the UK. We have an explicit permission system: https://www.createstreets.com/the-long-history-of-british-la...(long, but extremely good, it describes the system as "nationalising development", very much in keeping with the postwar mood).
⬐ helen___kellerI agree strongly with his point that the Japanese style of zoning is more capitalistic.Everything about modern zoning in American cities exists to prevent your neighbors from using their land how they want to use it.
We've made great advances in quality of life since the 1920s, but most places to live around my area date pre-war unless you can afford to live in a glass tower luxury condo complex. Rebuilding those 1920s-era buildings is generally not possible, and definitely not economical.
In Japan, it's common practice to buy a plot of land, demolish any structure currently on that land, and build your dream home from a catalog (based on your budget, of course). It's bafflingly capitalistic compared to how my city is run, where most of the housing stock is in violation of current zoning law, you're lucky if the house you want to buy doesn't have any asbestos, and presence of lead is treated as a dont-ask-dont-tell situation.
⬐ japanftwIt is unbelievable how much more developed most east asian countries are compared to the west. While poverty, corruption and crime are rampant in western europe and the us, countries such as japan, south korea and singapore are thriving.⬐ mlindner⬐ ladyattisEquating the US and Western Europe seems like a strange thing to do. The problems both have are almost completely unrelated.⬐ suctionJapan is long beyond its thriving years. Once you go into the countryside or smaller towns, there are many boarded-up businesses, decay, and infrastructure that is in dire need of investment.I think Japan's metropolitan zoning has some merits over the US/CA models. It just seems like here in the US we chose cars over street cars too soon and forced everyone to homogenize neighborhoods going forward. The idea of a mixed use zoning seems like a smart solution among other things we can try here in the US to clamp down on what I call "concrete hell."⬐ njharman⬐ newyankee> we chose carsWe didn't choose, decision was foisted on us by tire, car and oil company lobbyists.
⬐ ladyattisAlso, I believe the US Army wanted an interstate highway system to use in place of the rail network. So there were many stakeholders that brought us this car centric landscape into existence.⬐ carapaceFWIW this is my go to source for the story: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArMIt's brief and fairly entertaining.
⬐ ravitationAnother longer, but also entertaining, source for the story.If the income/ wealth for a given city is not uniformly distributed (not delving into the reasons), having an almost strict usage of land based on higher incomes doesn't seem quite capitalistic as in US/ Canada. Quite a valid point by the narrator.If housing is a basic need, vested interests are preventing it from becoming cheaper due to how much intertwined it has become with today's economic system. NIMBY is just class warfare with a catchy names and wrapped in supposedly noble intentions while impacting the poorest.
⬐ mlindner⬐ zz865There is no evidence for the so called "class war" some people try to make as an argument for why housing is so expensive. They have built in assumptions that there already is a class war and then try to find evidence to support their theory, when in fact the high housing pricing can easily be explained by simple supply and demand which is usually caused by restrictive zoning regulations making additional housing either impossible or uneconomic.Japan has the same population as it had in 1985. USA is up 40% in that time, some states are up 100% (Florida, Texas) or California 55%.Zoning is a lot easier with a stable population.
⬐ lemoncookiechipJapan has a serious problem with lack of sound proofing in most of the buildings you'll come across, as well an insane amount of paper work involved in everything you do. Finding a house, moving, trashing large items, getting a car license, dealing with the bank, and pretty much every aspect of life you can think of, involves a lot of paper work as well as your physical presence.If you're a foreigner who is moving to Japan, this problem is tripled, as well as some discrimination (not necessarily racism) you might find while looking for housing, due to fear of foreigners just leaving. These issues aren't very clear when you're there on a tourist visa due to how easy everything seems. Unless you have a company dealing with this stuff for you, you're going to have some headaches.
There's also odd day to day things, such as being unable to withdraw money from ATMs after hours, which is mind-boggling to a foreigner like me.
Otherwise, Japan is an amazing well oiled peaceful machine that just requires A LOT of paper work to get going.
⬐ kaboommanAs someone living in Japan, none of this has been true for for me. Except for the driving license part, I can't comment on that since I never tried to get one. Perhaps it was like this 10 years ago or may be the case in rural areas, but life in Tokyo is pretty hassle and paperwork free.I also had never had problems with soundproofing. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised how super soundproof everything was compared to the places I lived in in the U.S. But I've only ever lived in newer apartment buildings, not the old ones.
⬐ toyg> Japan is an amazing well oiled peaceful machine that just requires A LOT of paper work to get going.One has to wonder if that paperwork is an essential cause of such a peaceful state. It might well be channeling (male) energies that could otherwise end up unsettling society.
When even criminal cartels are highly-formalized, one has to wonder if the acceptance of ritualistic forms of bureaucracy is a key to the "dynamic stillness" of Japanese culture.
⬐ csomar⬐ amake> One has to wonder if that paperwork is an essential cause of such a peaceful state. It might well be channeling (male) energies that could otherwise end up unsettling society.Don't know where I should start. These two sentences do not make any sense. France and the Soviet Union are/were highly bureaucratic states, they do not seem to be revolutionary-free or that successful. And that "male energy crap" doesn't really mean or exist anywhere beyond these "alpha-chad" forums.
Peace happens when a majority of people accept the status quo. This is usually coupled with a ruler (or a government) that has laws that are compatible with the social expectations of said population.
Japan is not a particular exception. During its history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Japan), it had its fair share of violence, revolts and internal conflicts. It also had periods of peace, like the one they are experiencing it right now.
> When even criminal cartels are highly-formalized, one has to wonder if the acceptance of ritualistic forms of bureaucracy is a key to the "dynamic stillness" of Japanese culture.
I think that if anything was to destabilize Japan it would be its inability to reform its bureaucracy. That being said, I don't think it's as bad as people think it is. You shouldn't look at bureaucracy as only government papers but the whole process of operating there. Japan is still a very efficient country and they do lots of things efficiently. Would you rather spend 30 minutes filling paper work and have fast public transport; or fill no paperwork and spend 1.5x250 hours on traffic jams?
⬐ toyg⬐ iratewizardTo be short, the evolution of Japan during Meiji and the remarkable social cohesion that it has produced since, in my opinion, simply cannot be compared with the European experiences you mention. One of them does not even exist anymore, so it has clearly failed (and lasting barely half the time "modern" Japan has existed). The other is much less rigidly formal than the Japanese version, and has much wider social differences and inequalities as outcomes.> that "male energy crap" doesn't really mean or exist anywhere beyond
... beyond the global statistics on violence. http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/...
Call it what you want, the reality is that violent action and unrest is a very male thing (and typically performed in summer, but that's another story). Look at videos of riots pretty much anywhere and you'll quickly see the overwhelming majority of actors (both among rioters and authorities) is invariably male.
History shows us we can have social systems where all women are effectively treated as slaves, lasting centuries; the other way around, eh, not so much. Surely there is a reason for that. (This does not mean society should indulge anyone's "appetite for destruction"; I'm just pointing out that shit-stirrers tend to be men, so if you can keep men busy, chances are that you can also keep the peace for longer.)
> Would you rather spend 30 minutes filling paper work and have fast public transport
Oh, absolutely - I never implied that bureaucracy has to be inefficient. Efficient bureaucracy can be tremendously effective, but typically it is efficient only when its cogs "believe" in the intrinsic value of having an efficient bureaucracy. My point was that such belief seems much stronger in modern Japan than in most other countries.
Japan's well oiled and peaceful machine comes from a thousand little things that everyone cooperates on. Only areas with large numbers of foreigners have trash cans in public (and still have litter issues). When you walk into a grocery store during a downpour, you do your best to dry off and leave your wet umbrella at the fire. If young people are whispering too loudly, someone will ask them to quiet down and they will listen. Mutual trust and respect that comes with a tightly knit and homogenous society.⬐ joeblubaugh⬐ bart_spoonSorry, whispering too loudly? Where, the library? Perhaps you mean shouting?⬐ iratewizard⬐ forgotmyoldnameThis happened on a bus when two middle / high school aged girls were speaking no louder than a murmur to each other.I don’t mean to bust your bubble, but I live in a town in Japan with basically no foreigners, but there’s plenty of litter and it’s gotten substantially worse since COVID started and the few foreigners that were here all left.Beaches are also getting dirtier and dirtier with people having parties and just throwing plastic bottles, alcohol cans, food packets, etc wherever they please. Quiet places far from town I used to visit 2 years ago turned into absolute dumps this past year.
⬐ iratewizardThis was not my experience in Nagoya, Bizen, Takayama, Miyoshi, Osaka, Kyoto, Miyoshi, Fuji or Tokyo two years ago.⬐ forgotmyoldnameThose are tourist-heavy towns. They're actively cleaned up to keep tourists wanting to come.It's very different in locations where tourists aren't common, especially post-covid.
⬐ iratewizardThey are not all tourist heavy towns by any means.⬐ forgotmyoldnameTakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Fuji, Tokyo, and Nagoya were most definitely full of tourists.Kyoto and Takayama in particular were probably half tourists by population 2 years ago. Those towns are virtually ghost towns now that Chinese tourists are gone.
Visiting places with no foreign tourism and driven just by local industry, like Toyohashi or Yokkaichi or small islands, and you'll see considerably less cleanup efforts. Even going through Tokyo at 4 AM looks very different from Tokyo at 8 AM after some cleanup is done.
⬐ iratewizardThey must be, because you're a white liberal living in rural Japan and you know everything about the country. Those major cleanup efforts in small village like Bizen and Miyoshi are definitely just to impress the tourists. Crazy to learn that Nagoya is actually a tourism city, too. You're definitely not a jackass.⬐ forgotmyoldnameProjecting your insecurities isn't healthy.⬐ iratewizardThat would make sense if I were a liberal, a jackass, or living in rural Japan. Is "projecting" your pseudo-intellectual "no u"?I don't think its the paperwork necessarily. In my opinion it entirely boils down to individualism. Japan is peaceful because in general everyone values societal harmony. If you are going to step out of line, there better be a good reason for it. In the US, the individual reigns supreme, and society is exists only so far as it makes things better for you individually. Even many of the more collectively minded political movements in the US seem to by hyper-focused on individualism, comparatively.There are tradeoffs. Japan tends to have more entrenched bureaucracy, more stringent cultural norms, etc. But it is also far more safe, harmonious, and, in my opinion, pleasant, than the US.
⬐ dirtyoldmickwot?⬐ idoAre you arguing paperwork is placating men who would have otherwise been criminals and revolutionaries? That's certainly a take but it'll need a lot of convincing to believe it.⬐ toygThe bureaucratic ideals tend to flourish in cultural systems that value order, as the Japanese one clearly does. If it's accepted that the collective is superior to the individual, as Meiji-era culture drilled deeply into every level of society, the next best question becomes how to organise such collective - enter bureaucracy. If one accepts he has to partake in bureaucracy for the good of the collective, one might eventually get to value the rituals in themselves, and the structure and order they provide, and feel a sense of belonging. Coupled with substantial guarantees of social solidity (job for life, always-increasing wealth levels...), this setup removes a lot of anger and criticism from the system, making it even more stable, in a virtuous cycle.Obviously nothing is permanent, and various economic crisis have significantly dented this model, but I reckon it still does a lot to placate the kind of unrest that we give for granted in the West - where bureaucracy is reviled by the individualistic "animal spirits" we exhalt since the times of Homer.
⬐ mr_overallsOkay, I'll admit I had the same reflexive skepticism to your initial comment as the person you're replying to. . . and your very well-reasoned, detailed response is emblematic of the reasons I keep coming back to HN.⬐ rglullis⬐ Chris2048Japan was a very aggressive empire not even two generations ago, yet OP claiming that "Meiji-era culture values" are responsible for its current peaceful attitude passes for "well-reasoned"? What a load of IYI crap.Just as a counterexample: Germany is also known for its love for bureaucracy, its tendency to submit to authority and for the constant, loud, bite-less protesting. No amount of bureaucracy has helped to "channel (male) energies" elsewhere.
⬐ toygI think it goes lost that my original comment said "an" essential cause, not "the" cause. Obviously social systems are complex creatures, and isolating a factor does not mean excluding all the other ones.> Japan was a very aggressive empire not even two generations ago
Aggressive externally but peaceful internally, which is really what we're talking about. Probably as a reaction to centuries of brutal internal warfare, since Meiji internal cohesion has been emphasized above most other things, and it has held in a way that we've not yet seen in Europe on a comparable scale.
> Germany
Interesting mention, because German practices and values were among the most significant ones "imported" under Meiji; Germany had recently made a massive social and technological leap forward, precisely the sort of thing the Japanese wanted to make (and did make), and Germans were extremely self-assured. However, Germany lies on a cultural bedrock of fundamental individualism, like the rest of Europe, and various factions were soon clashing in the streets in the name of various ideologies, with the result we all know. I think a lot of Germans would find your "bite-less protesting" as a mischaracterization: German movements have been very, very bitey, before and after the various recent conflicts, producing (and exporting) terrorists and disruptors pretty regularly.
⬐ rglullis> Obviously social systems are complex creatures, and isolating a factor does not mean excluding all the other ones.Yet here you are, defending the idea that we would be better off by leaning heavier into bureaucracy and collective compliance as a way to "internal" peace.
> Germany lies on a cultural bedrock of fundamental individualism (...) a lot of Germans would find your "bite-less protesting" as a mischaracterization.
Great. Now try to explain Switzerland. They are not exactly known for a "love of bureaucracy" or "the (national) collective taking precedence over the individual", yet they managed to get peace (internal and external) through centuries.
Do you see my point? You are trying to attribute to "bureaucracy" something that can be attributed to a bunch of other things. It is a bad generalization and a basic fundamental attribution error. This is what smells of IYI crap.
⬐ toyg> defending the idea that we would be better off by leaning heavier into bureaucracyI think you're projecting a lot, trying to put words in my mouth and being unnecessarily aggressive.
I've been very careful not to make any judgement of superiority of this or that system throughout this thread. I pointed out several times that the Japanese experience is very unique, and in many ways probably and fundamentally unaccessible to us in the West. "We" cannot be "better off" doing this or that because "we" are not Japan; they seem to have found a formula that works for them, and it's interesting to note how the various elements interconnect in such formula. One of those elements is the somewhat-ritualized bureaucracy, and my point is that it seems to contribute significantly to the success of that model in those circumstances. Obviously I'm not advocating mindlessly trying to replicate that elsewhere, nor am I stating that bureacracy is a necessary condition for social peace - this is just a strawman you are erecting for your own personal reasons.
> Great. Now try to explain Switzerland.
Did you even read my posts above? Scale is important when comparing such systems, and I was very careful to caveat my statements on this throughout, because I knew somebody would eventually bring up Denmark, Norway, or, well, Switzerland.
The Swiss Federation contains barely 9m people, with 211 p/sqm; Japan has 125m, with 333 p/sqm. Obviously we are talking about different orders of magnitude. It's not terribly difficult to get a block assembly to agree on something (still not easy!), but getting the whole city to agree on anything is a different ballgame.
> This is what smells of IYI crap.
Any chance you could drop the gratuitous insults?
⬐ rglullis> I think you're projecting a lot,Am I?
I remember past conversations with you where you claimed that EU's bureaucracy should get credit for changes that would've happened naturally on the market. Here as well you are arguing that bureaucracy is the reason to Japan's "peace", when there are plenty of possible alternative answers.
Just as an example, you could have at least try to attribute Japanese/Scandinavian/Swiss "peace" to the relative homogeneity of their populations and their cultural oikophilia (which gets often mistaken for xenophobia). It would be a much simpler explanation for the commonalities among different people, independently of scale and independently of any silly distinction between "external" and "internal" aggressiveness.
But instead of just considering Occam's razor, you start with a conclusion and then you try to build a narrative that gives some kind of support to it.
> this setup removes a lot of anger and criticism from the systemIt could also have the opposite effect, if citizens uphold their end of the bargain and the government doesn't; this is why I think there is more to this wrt competency on the government side.
> There's also odd day to day things, such as being unable to withdraw money from ATMs after hours, which is mind-boggling to a foreigner like me.This hasn't been true for over a decade. 24/7 ATMs can be found at any convenience store, which are plentiful.
⬐ glandium⬐ teek24/7 ATMs can be found at any convenience store, but there usually are fees associated with using them. Fees that vary depending on time of day and/or day of week. The ATMs anywhere else that is not a convenience store are also still, for the vast majority, not 24/7.⬐ fomine3Most banks offers a few free convenience store ATM count per month. Usually requirement is like not using paper passbook or set the account to be given salary.I've been living in Japan for over 5 years.> Japan has a serious problem with lack of sound proofing in most of the buildings you'll come across
In older or cheaper buildings this is true. However if you pay you can have better sound proofing. For example some Japanese mansions (residential low-rise condominiums) are built from reinforced concrete and isolate sound fairly well. You just have to be careful to read about the building and its construction. You also have to be willing to pay extra for better construction materials.
> as well as some discrimination (not necessarily racism) you might find while looking for housing
This is true for rentals. I also want to clarify Japanese also experience discrimination so it is not purely a non-Japanese thing. Generally landlords have freedom to put whatever restrictions they want on who they rent the unit to. But this is for good reason. A landlord cannot easily evict a tenant. So the landlord is taking a huge risk in trusting that the tenant will respect the contract and actually pay the rent.
I will say in buildings owned by corporations or businesses, they sometimes don't have any discrimination by nationality. They do tend to have higher requirements for income and may discriminate based on your current company employment contract. Also they may require a specific guarantor company which tends to be more expensive. The guarantor company is sort of a risk insurance for the landlord paid by the tenant.
However things are quite different if you buy the land outright. Here the only restriction is bank loans. If you do not have permanent residence, the number of banks willing to lend money are very few. If you have permanent residence then you have many more banks to choose from. Otherwise there is no restriction on who can buy land.
> Unless you have a company dealing with this stuff for you, you're going to have some headaches.
I think it is all about perspective and expectations. In Japan the Japanese are used to dealing with bureaucracy (though many Japanese also really dislike it). The information is readily available, you just have research yourself. Otherwise you have to accept that you are moving to a non-English speaking country and it is your responsibility to find a way to understand the local language or get someone to help you.
I do agree that there are still many headaches to adjust to Japanese business and culture. But I also don't understand why everyone has an expectation that Japan must change to meet their expectations. Japan is a first world country with many issues, but it isn't a place where you can expect to be free of first-world problems.
For example in the US nearly nobody bothers to complain about credit rating agencies. Maintaining your credit is seen as something you control. Which isn't necessarily true. Credit ratings greatly affect American lives. So everyone is in a way obligated to participate in a non-government created scheme yet nobody bats an eye. Just sign up for a credit card.
⬐ namelessoracle⬐ aikinaiLOTS of people hate the credit agencies and complain about them.I would say hatred of credit agencies is probably one of the few issues left you could get wide support of across the political spectrum.
How long ago did you live in Japan? Very little of this is true anymore. Unless maybe you're deep in the country and only dealing with businesses and authorities that stopped evolving decades ago?I recently moved and only communicated with the real estate agent and the moving company by chat. Large trash reservation is online. Drivers license requires an application, but isn't that normal? Same with a lease; I think those are still paper in most countries.
I don't know of any ATMs that close anymore; maybe super rural banks still do?
It depends on the municipality, but the good ones have moved most of their paperwork online and allow you to digitally sign it with an actual signing certificate embedded on your My Number card and the NFC chip in your phone. If you're doing the paperwork on a computer, you scan the a QR code to complete only verification and signing with the phone.
Certainly not everything's cutting edge, but a lot of things are quite streamlined these days. Immigration paperwork, for example, is a cakewalk compared to the US, probably requiring about 100 times fewer pages at least in my past experience.
Edit: And as someone mentioned below, modern apartments are very soundproof, just not the old wooden ones.
⬐ makeitdoubleDidn’t you still have to stamp the actual lease contract ? (+ guarantee paper, insurance etc.)We went through the whole dance a few months ago, and while most of the discussions were done by chat/mail, we still ended up snail mailing a ton of paper back and forth to close the deal.
Also most bank ATM still have closing hours, it can be way later than it was 10 or 20 years ago, but it still closes at night e.g. Mufg’s Kouenji branch: https://map.bk.mufg.jp/b/bk_mufg_s/info/BA592126/
Going further west and some will close at 18h or 20h without remorse.
For soundproofing, it’s less a matter of modernity than of price. Foreigners often will only get access the super low and middle-high offers, so there is a higher chance to land on a pretty well soundproofed building. Your random Leopalace built this year will still have paper thin walls, and so do cheaper appartments in general,
⬐ fomine3For ATM, anyway we can use ATM at 7-11 that's available 24/7. Banks want to reduce ATMs, so encouraging to use ATM at convenience store.Soundproofing would be still a problem if it's an cheaper apartments even if relatively new.
⬐ benrbray> Didn’t you still have to stamp the actual lease contract ?Not a big deal, it plays the same role as signatures do in the US. Only very recently did we stop having to sign credit card receipts here!
⬐ makeitdouble⬐ aikinaiI was mostly reacting to the “we did everything by chat” part.There are countries were this is a mundane thing, and you can go through the whole process digitally, including all the contracts signing. Sadly in Japan this is far from being the norm, and the stamping culture is one of the cause among many others.
There is a good 99pi episode on this, in extreme cases people need to physically go to the office just to stamp their papers.
(otherwise making a stamp is a matter of 30 min at any shopping mall, it isn’t a barrier in any way)
Yeah, I had to sign the paper lease and various addenda probably ten or twenty places, which was a bit much, but I thought the process was smooth and reasonable. It's pretty neat the agent is required to explain everything you're signing in plain language. It means the lease is written clearly in the first place, doesn't have a bunch of extraneous items, and the lessee knows exactly what they're agreeing to.I don't have a stamp and haven't needed one for anything in many years living here. I understand it's basically required for purchasing real estate, but I haven't done that yet.
I think the ATMs just close if they're in a building that closes; it's not because the ATM itself can't function at night. It's been years since I personally saw an ATM that was physically accessible but unusable. But I typically just use conbini, so I can't claim to be an ATM expert. I just know it's never been a problem for me.
Good point on apartments; I've been fortunate to not have experience with those paper-thin homes, but I do hear a lot about them still on Japan-based forums and such.