Another benefit of zakkyo buildings is the balance of discoverability of the higher floors. Shops on those floors are discoverable when walking by due to the signage, but aren't as discoverable as ground floor businesses, which creates a class of somewhat less desirable commercial space that is still extremely conveniently located, which allows a neighborhood to support a wider range of businesses, and allows for very thin margin and hobby project businesses to survive even in more expensive areas.
Something I'm curious if zakkyo helps with is business survivability and turnover. The significant number of small businesses is one clue, but how much turnover is there in Tokyo businesses compared to other cities? If a case could be made that zakkyo has a quantifiable effect on small businesses surviving longer than 2 years that may be a much stronger argument for adoption than the ones you mentioned (even if I find those reasons appealing, too).
It was my first thought, too, will oversaturation be a too steep barrier for entry?
A few other thoughts. Zakkyo functions the best in a densely-built urban area, with plenty of medium- and high-rise residential buildings, which is relatively rare in North America, outside several cities. Given space availability, it could make more sense to start with small retailers and restaurants in housing areas, European style, and move towards zakkyo later. It will not make a huge difference if you have zakkyos downtown only, which is still too far from residential neighbourhoods.
In a nutshell, these recommendations make sense for places like New York, but not plenty of other US cities.
There are options to have a just two or three floors of a building be shops/restaurants while the rest are shops/offices etc. This is quite common in urban Japan in places where there aren't zakkyo. Typically it's either the basement and ground floor or the ground floor and first floot (or all three)
Most notable example for Boston popping up in my mind is Back Bay's Newbury Street, where the garden level and first floor are both commercial, with even a few of the second floor units as lower visibility businesses, like law offices, very niche boutiques, etc. Kind of unique in that the building form is still mostly brownstone residential (excepting the many renovated facades) from its original construction purpose, but today it definitely allows for more commercial density than the standard idea of mixed-use.
Oh, it is absolutely the same in Europe. Outside the main streets in residential areas, where you typically have residential units built over commercial ones, you will see small one-floor commercial buildings, most often grocery shops or restaurants. What Noah showed from Europe is what you usually see in downtown/densely built urban areas, and on main streets in residential areas.
One thing I've seen in Chicago (e.g. Chicago Ave east of State Street) is semi-basement and first floor, i.e. one level of retail slightly below street level, accessed by a few steps going down, and one level above street level, accessed by half a flight going up. It's not wheelchair accessible, but the aesthetics work fine for an American city if you can use stairs.
Well I can think of some businesses in zakkyo in Tokyo that have been in the same location for a decade or more. Other businesses in the same building have changed but I don't recall how long they lasted
It's not a surprise to me that your American examples of Zakkyo are in Korea-towns. Korea is very much like Japan, with main retail going up often 4-10 storeys. Here in Seoul, and in the rest of Korea, you can expect most buildings to be rammed with retail if it's at all possible.
Many zakkyo have one (small) elevator and one flight of stairs as a fire escape that is often used by the businesses next to them as a storage area. Zakkyo are a fire hazard
The economics of the zakkyo city would be interesting to explore. More commercial space, but less residential, in that neighborhood, and requiring, in the US at least, multiple access/egress points that might rely on elevator technology to bring the clientele. In this sense, the zakkyo economy demands the technology.
But I'd also like to mention the concept of the technology informing the economy, with two newer examples. and one old one. The old one is the New York City subway system, with all the stores along the way in the tunnels. Newer versions of that are the way Union Station in Washington DC is not just a train station anymore. but a destination shopping/eating location of its own. Of the same ilk is Montreal's "Underground City". where subway access tunnels open up into large building atriums, themselves a mix of offices and businesses in the zakkyo style - though more understated in its advertising. The concept allows one to get all over town, shopping in multiple locations, without ever going outside into a Montreal winter snowstorm.
To unblock this beyond three stories, we’d need to finally get rid of the dual-staircase requirement in the US—which would be great for all kinds of reasons.
Single—access blocks for housing & single-access blocks for retail!
The signs are key, but so is a sufficient level of urban safety that building owners are willing to just let randos walk through all the floors of a building and trust that the elevators and stairs and hallways will stay clean and safe.
San Francisco actually has a few defacto, or stealth, zakkyo buildings downtown. Back when I regularly ordered bespoke clothing, my tailor was in one of them. But the catch is that they are limited to the sorts of businesses that can survive on appointments driven by word of mouth and/or online advertising, like fancy tailors and specialist hair salons. Because not only is there no signage, you have to check in with the security person in the lobby who makes sure you aren't a homeless person or something.
It’s not the same as Japan culturally, where you may seem homeless people (but usually isolated in parks) and a bit of graffiti, but very little trash, especially considering that public trash cans are very rare, and household trash rules are strict. Also you regularly see shop owners sweeping and hosing off the public sidewalks in front of their shops. I don’t think there’s much of this behavior in NYC, even now.
The lack of trash cans encourages people to think about what their plan is for trash before they generate it. People are ready to carry trash to the next trash can, potentially all the way home. If trash cans were more plentiful but not quite truly abundant, people would rely on a nearby trash can existing, and when the nearest trash can is further than expected or full, they will just litter. To make matters worse, if it's not possible to put out household trash at any time, people will stuff household trash into public trash cans, quickly overflowing them, which encourages passersby to litter.
This means that, at least in some cultures, removing trash cans actually improves the cleanliness of streets. While trash cans weren't removed from Japan for that reason, Taipei noticed the counterintuitive effects of trash can removal, and explicitly started getting rid of public trash cans to improve street cleanliness, and it largely worked.
I wonder if San Francisco's wide-footprint stores downtown, like Macy's, could be converted into many smaller businesses on multiple floors. In this case, I think having a having a security lobby might work because the cost would be divided among so many more businesses.
It's a mine blowing experience to travel in Asia walk in their cities. The Navy allowed me to see some of these places Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. Going into these areas is like surfing the internet while walking. Never needed a car plenty of public transportation. Sadly it's cultural and would be a hard sell for most Americans.
I don't think it would be. As mentioned, Americans are fine with this type of building in ethnic enclaves. And enjoy them while on vacation.
And I think more Americans would be sold on the idea knowing they can live in a quiet residential neighborhood within walking distance. Most Americans would not want to live immediately next to Times Square or Shibuya Center Gai, however there's incredibly peaceful residential neighborhoods a pretty quick walk from Center Gai.
On the Gold Coast and Streeterville of Chicago, you can live in a quiet apartment/condo just a few blocks from the Mag Mile. Or literally on the Mag Mile. I lived in a (cheap) apartment a couple blocks from the John Hancock Tower when I was single and my wife and I rented a (cheap) quiet condo right on the Magnificent Mile (Michigan Ave. just a few blocks north of the Chicago River) before we had kids.
These are essentially streetcar suburbs. It's not so much inventing them as it is reviving them, and dare I say mandating them. Start with continuing and extending the urban road grid and fitting land uses to the grid.
There are quiet neighborhoods a short walk from Times Square too; they could be quieter if they got rid of cars. People aren't so much of a problem. (The actual problem with NYC is the groceries aren't very good because they don't have enough warehouses.)
On the other hand, Tokyo is not that quiet. You can hear the train jingles from nearby JR stations from some distance away.
I would love to see it here but the old city isn't a priority the surrounding suburbs get the money and planning. Mini malls and fast food franchises galore.
There's no reason why you can't have dense suburban downtowns in suburban America, they just... don't? The space taken up by a "Mini Mall" could easily be a downtown main street for the surrounding area with dozens of shops and a supermarket, but... it isn't, it's just like three giant shops.
Japan has explicit policies against big box stores in cities. I've been to a real supermarket in Tokyo like… once. But I'm pretty sure the suburbs have plenty of them.
People need to stop deriving their urban planning opinions from places that they've only visited as tourists. The things that make a place great for tourists are not the same things that make a place great for living and raising a family.
One other thing about Japan is that mixed use buildings of all sorts are extremely common. Even fairly small towns will often have a building or two (usually near the station) where there are a mix of offices, clinics, shops and restaurants/bars.
Great piece! Serendipitously (ahem), I just got the following from a friend traveling in Japan and staying in Osaka:
"Now we're in Osaka. We're staying in a hotel that is basically in an arcology. The building contains a mall with every imaginable kind of shop: clothing, electronics, cameras, luggage, appliances, toys, golf equipment, bicycles (the bicycle store has a test track), fishing and camping, groceries, pharmacies. There are multiple grocery stores and on the order of a hundred bars and restaurants (there are two Starbucks and there are always enormous lines at both of them). There is even a Wework."
That’s the new Grand Front Osaka, which isn’t really part of the hotel, it’s part of Osaka Station and the hotel is just part of the whole amazing place. Osaka Station like Kyoto Station and unlike Tokyo Station have multiple (7 I think) vertical, often outside but covered, layers connected by large escalators with many shops and restaurants, as well as department stores and hotels. Tokyo station is the more typical older style with the shops in the underground levels.
Yeah Tokyo station is more like the Montreal underground mall discussed in some other comment here. You can walk underground past shops etc. for a heck of a long way around Tokyo station.
When I was in Shanghai in 2019, there was an incredible labyrinth of shops of all kinds beneath street level. "Communist above, all capitalist below!" said my Hong Kong colleague.
This is a 10 storey mall in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Does this count as one?
They have a dome of course because Muslims.
They also put the sole food court on the top floor and elevator access is blocked. This forces you to go to every floor if you wanna get some food. Genius idea.
I live in New Malden, which is London’s Korea town. It has a very typical London suburban high street lined with 2-3 story redbrick buildings with ground floor shopfronts. But all the upper floors are occupied by Korean businesses with signs in the windows. They are not neon signs and so it was a few years before I even noticed them.
Living as a blue dot in a red sea here in the middle of the country I have a hard time seeing my neighbors adapting to this sort of change. On the coasts in urban area much better chance. Our dependence on the auto makes it harder also.
I was trying to figure out if I had seen this sort of building in koreatown in Los Angeles, but then realized that a major Asian strip mall in Irvine actually is effectively a two-story drive-to version of this, Diamond Jamboree: https://maps.app.goo.gl/WEa84UW9cpsrvAJW7?g_st=ic
Chicagoan here. There are neighborhoods outside The Loop where this type of development could work as well. I'm thinking Little Village, South Loop, Lakeview / Lincoln Park.
I disagree somewhat. I lived in Vietnam for over a decade which has essentially zero transit. And Vietnamese famously hate walking (for reasons both good (heat, humidity, UV, wearing high heels) and bad (laziness)), so you don't have any foot traffic anywhere.
But there are still zakkyo style buildings, though not to the same extent as in Japan.
One famous example is the "Apartment Cafe Building" on Nguyen Hue street in Saigon.
Apartments are next door to cafes and other shops. Not because of any grand plan but simply the lack of any meaningful zoning to prevent it from happening.
(Insert standard rant about how accepting Americans are of centralised government planning Soviet style when it comes to their zoning....)
The key insight from Saigon isn't "you have to have transit and walkability". It's "cars are just astoundingly space inefficient and literally any other kind of motorised vehicle would work better".
Saigon gets zakkyo style development by having scooters, not transit.
I spend more time in small town Japan where people drive. You still have fairly compact urban centers because there is free/cheap parking nearby. Typically you'll have the JR station. The forecourt is the bus station and around/near that are a few multi story hotels. Then there's a couple of streets off that are often yokocho like where there are a lot of bars/restaurants etc. This area will often have multiuse buildings with bars/restaurants on 2 floors and likely some offices/clinics etc. There will also likely be an apartment tower or two. Somewhere in that will be disused ground that has been turned into parking and/or multistory car parks and/or elevator parking (https://ihiap.com/products/ihi-elevator-parking-system/ )
It is interesting to see which towns get enough foot traffic from the mix of hotel guests and locals to thrive and which don't. There doesn't seem to be a great deal of logic to it though obviously towns with tourist attractions do better than those without.
Japan, like the US, has a strong single family detached house culture, even if it has a culture that happily builds low/mid-rise apartments mixed in with them. While Greater Tokyo is significantly denser than its closest European peers, peak residential density is significantly lower than in Paris but peak commercial density is significantly higher.
While a small area of zakkyo buildings can be sustained just by people walking/biking in (though often because said area is near a suburban train station), the seas of zakkyo buildings in Shibuya or Shinjuku absolutely need the immense foot traffic that comes with being some of the most transit-accessible neighborhoods in the world.
Another benefit of zakkyo buildings is the balance of discoverability of the higher floors. Shops on those floors are discoverable when walking by due to the signage, but aren't as discoverable as ground floor businesses, which creates a class of somewhat less desirable commercial space that is still extremely conveniently located, which allows a neighborhood to support a wider range of businesses, and allows for very thin margin and hobby project businesses to survive even in more expensive areas.
Definitely!! This is a great way of describing that.
Something I'm curious if zakkyo helps with is business survivability and turnover. The significant number of small businesses is one clue, but how much turnover is there in Tokyo businesses compared to other cities? If a case could be made that zakkyo has a quantifiable effect on small businesses surviving longer than 2 years that may be a much stronger argument for adoption than the ones you mentioned (even if I find those reasons appealing, too).
That's an interesting thought!
It was my first thought, too, will oversaturation be a too steep barrier for entry?
A few other thoughts. Zakkyo functions the best in a densely-built urban area, with plenty of medium- and high-rise residential buildings, which is relatively rare in North America, outside several cities. Given space availability, it could make more sense to start with small retailers and restaurants in housing areas, European style, and move towards zakkyo later. It will not make a huge difference if you have zakkyos downtown only, which is still too far from residential neighbourhoods.
In a nutshell, these recommendations make sense for places like New York, but not plenty of other US cities.
There are options to have a just two or three floors of a building be shops/restaurants while the rest are shops/offices etc. This is quite common in urban Japan in places where there aren't zakkyo. Typically it's either the basement and ground floor or the ground floor and first floot (or all three)
I think I've seen that in the US (Boston?)
Most notable example for Boston popping up in my mind is Back Bay's Newbury Street, where the garden level and first floor are both commercial, with even a few of the second floor units as lower visibility businesses, like law offices, very niche boutiques, etc. Kind of unique in that the building form is still mostly brownstone residential (excepting the many renovated facades) from its original construction purpose, but today it definitely allows for more commercial density than the standard idea of mixed-use.
Oh, it is absolutely the same in Europe. Outside the main streets in residential areas, where you typically have residential units built over commercial ones, you will see small one-floor commercial buildings, most often grocery shops or restaurants. What Noah showed from Europe is what you usually see in downtown/densely built urban areas, and on main streets in residential areas.
One thing I've seen in Chicago (e.g. Chicago Ave east of State Street) is semi-basement and first floor, i.e. one level of retail slightly below street level, accessed by a few steps going down, and one level above street level, accessed by half a flight going up. It's not wheelchair accessible, but the aesthetics work fine for an American city if you can use stairs.
Well I can think of some businesses in zakkyo in Tokyo that have been in the same location for a decade or more. Other businesses in the same building have changed but I don't recall how long they lasted
It's not a surprise to me that your American examples of Zakkyo are in Korea-towns. Korea is very much like Japan, with main retail going up often 4-10 storeys. Here in Seoul, and in the rest of Korea, you can expect most buildings to be rammed with retail if it's at all possible.
Would ADA and elevator size requirements in the US be a barrier?
Great question.
^^ Good question. Does the zakkyo model require small, cheap elevators to work? How many elevator banks do you see in a typical zakkyo?
Reminds me of this NYT piece from a few months ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/opinion/elevator-construction-regulation-labor-immigration.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&tgrp=cnt&pvid=4B2D864D-0C13-4E62-8E66-BF9D253756E9
Many zakkyo have one (small) elevator and one flight of stairs as a fire escape that is often used by the businesses next to them as a storage area. Zakkyo are a fire hazard
The economics of the zakkyo city would be interesting to explore. More commercial space, but less residential, in that neighborhood, and requiring, in the US at least, multiple access/egress points that might rely on elevator technology to bring the clientele. In this sense, the zakkyo economy demands the technology.
But I'd also like to mention the concept of the technology informing the economy, with two newer examples. and one old one. The old one is the New York City subway system, with all the stores along the way in the tunnels. Newer versions of that are the way Union Station in Washington DC is not just a train station anymore. but a destination shopping/eating location of its own. Of the same ilk is Montreal's "Underground City". where subway access tunnels open up into large building atriums, themselves a mix of offices and businesses in the zakkyo style - though more understated in its advertising. The concept allows one to get all over town, shopping in multiple locations, without ever going outside into a Montreal winter snowstorm.
Oh yes, Japan does this too!
To unblock this beyond three stories, we’d need to finally get rid of the dual-staircase requirement in the US—which would be great for all kinds of reasons.
Single—access blocks for housing & single-access blocks for retail!
Yep!
The signs are key, but so is a sufficient level of urban safety that building owners are willing to just let randos walk through all the floors of a building and trust that the elevators and stairs and hallways will stay clean and safe.
San Francisco actually has a few defacto, or stealth, zakkyo buildings downtown. Back when I regularly ordered bespoke clothing, my tailor was in one of them. But the catch is that they are limited to the sorts of businesses that can survive on appointments driven by word of mouth and/or online advertising, like fancy tailors and specialist hair salons. Because not only is there no signage, you have to check in with the security person in the lobby who makes sure you aren't a homeless person or something.
Safety is absolutely key, but NYC is safe enough to support zakkyo buildings. Koreatown does well!
It’s not the same as Japan culturally, where you may seem homeless people (but usually isolated in parks) and a bit of graffiti, but very little trash, especially considering that public trash cans are very rare, and household trash rules are strict. Also you regularly see shop owners sweeping and hosing off the public sidewalks in front of their shops. I don’t think there’s much of this behavior in NYC, even now.
The lack of trash cans encourages people to think about what their plan is for trash before they generate it. People are ready to carry trash to the next trash can, potentially all the way home. If trash cans were more plentiful but not quite truly abundant, people would rely on a nearby trash can existing, and when the nearest trash can is further than expected or full, they will just litter. To make matters worse, if it's not possible to put out household trash at any time, people will stuff household trash into public trash cans, quickly overflowing them, which encourages passersby to litter.
This means that, at least in some cultures, removing trash cans actually improves the cleanliness of streets. While trash cans weren't removed from Japan for that reason, Taipei noticed the counterintuitive effects of trash can removal, and explicitly started getting rid of public trash cans to improve street cleanliness, and it largely worked.
I wonder if San Francisco's wide-footprint stores downtown, like Macy's, could be converted into many smaller businesses on multiple floors. In this case, I think having a having a security lobby might work because the cost would be divided among so many more businesses.
You've (also) just invented the shopping mall.
It's a mine blowing experience to travel in Asia walk in their cities. The Navy allowed me to see some of these places Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. Going into these areas is like surfing the internet while walking. Never needed a car plenty of public transportation. Sadly it's cultural and would be a hard sell for most Americans.
I don't think it would be. As mentioned, Americans are fine with this type of building in ethnic enclaves. And enjoy them while on vacation.
And I think more Americans would be sold on the idea knowing they can live in a quiet residential neighborhood within walking distance. Most Americans would not want to live immediately next to Times Square or Shibuya Center Gai, however there's incredibly peaceful residential neighborhoods a pretty quick walk from Center Gai.
On the Gold Coast and Streeterville of Chicago, you can live in a quiet apartment/condo just a few blocks from the Mag Mile. Or literally on the Mag Mile. I lived in a (cheap) apartment a couple blocks from the John Hancock Tower when I was single and my wife and I rented a (cheap) quiet condo right on the Magnificent Mile (Michigan Ave. just a few blocks north of the Chicago River) before we had kids.
These are essentially streetcar suburbs. It's not so much inventing them as it is reviving them, and dare I say mandating them. Start with continuing and extending the urban road grid and fitting land uses to the grid.
There are quiet neighborhoods a short walk from Times Square too; they could be quieter if they got rid of cars. People aren't so much of a problem. (The actual problem with NYC is the groceries aren't very good because they don't have enough warehouses.)
On the other hand, Tokyo is not that quiet. You can hear the train jingles from nearby JR stations from some distance away.
I would love to see it here but the old city isn't a priority the surrounding suburbs get the money and planning. Mini malls and fast food franchises galore.
There's no reason why you can't have dense suburban downtowns in suburban America, they just... don't? The space taken up by a "Mini Mall" could easily be a downtown main street for the surrounding area with dozens of shops and a supermarket, but... it isn't, it's just like three giant shops.
Japan has explicit policies against big box stores in cities. I've been to a real supermarket in Tokyo like… once. But I'm pretty sure the suburbs have plenty of them.
People need to stop deriving their urban planning opinions from places that they've only visited as tourists. The things that make a place great for tourists are not the same things that make a place great for living and raising a family.
Giving parents veto power over land use and architecture is not the same thing as making a great place.
One other thing about Japan is that mixed use buildings of all sorts are extremely common. Even fairly small towns will often have a building or two (usually near the station) where there are a mix of offices, clinics, shops and restaurants/bars.
Yep!
Great piece! Serendipitously (ahem), I just got the following from a friend traveling in Japan and staying in Osaka:
"Now we're in Osaka. We're staying in a hotel that is basically in an arcology. The building contains a mall with every imaginable kind of shop: clothing, electronics, cameras, luggage, appliances, toys, golf equipment, bicycles (the bicycle store has a test track), fishing and camping, groceries, pharmacies. There are multiple grocery stores and on the order of a hundred bars and restaurants (there are two Starbucks and there are always enormous lines at both of them). There is even a Wework."
That’s the new Grand Front Osaka, which isn’t really part of the hotel, it’s part of Osaka Station and the hotel is just part of the whole amazing place. Osaka Station like Kyoto Station and unlike Tokyo Station have multiple (7 I think) vertical, often outside but covered, layers connected by large escalators with many shops and restaurants, as well as department stores and hotels. Tokyo station is the more typical older style with the shops in the underground levels.
Yeah Tokyo station is more like the Montreal underground mall discussed in some other comment here. You can walk underground past shops etc. for a heck of a long way around Tokyo station.
And then there's Shinjuku...
according to my friend it is Hotel Hankyu Osaka Respire. I don't know where that is.
That is a hotel directly connected to Grand Front Osaka as you can see on Google Maps.
Indeed.
When I was in Shanghai in 2019, there was an incredible labyrinth of shops of all kinds beneath street level. "Communist above, all capitalist below!" said my Hong Kong colleague.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashundhara_City?wprov=sfla1
This is a 10 storey mall in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Does this count as one?
They have a dome of course because Muslims.
They also put the sole food court on the top floor and elevator access is blocked. This forces you to go to every floor if you wanna get some food. Genius idea.
That's an indoor vertical mall!
I live in New Malden, which is London’s Korea town. It has a very typical London suburban high street lined with 2-3 story redbrick buildings with ground floor shopfronts. But all the upper floors are occupied by Korean businesses with signs in the windows. They are not neon signs and so it was a few years before I even noticed them.
Living as a blue dot in a red sea here in the middle of the country I have a hard time seeing my neighbors adapting to this sort of change. On the coasts in urban area much better chance. Our dependence on the auto makes it harder also.
Yeah, only dense cities like NYC, SF, and maybe the center of Chicago can support this type of development.
I was trying to figure out if I had seen this sort of building in koreatown in Los Angeles, but then realized that a major Asian strip mall in Irvine actually is effectively a two-story drive-to version of this, Diamond Jamboree: https://maps.app.goo.gl/WEa84UW9cpsrvAJW7?g_st=ic
Chicagoan here. There are neighborhoods outside The Loop where this type of development could work as well. I'm thinking Little Village, South Loop, Lakeview / Lincoln Park.
Or in the proposed California Forever city in Solano County.
https://abc7news.com/california-ballot-new-city-farmland-residence-solano-county/14332889/
Isn’t the “Red Sea” exurban and rural people? They don’t even get a vote on city planning issues
My understanding around here is the planning for the "city" depends on the needs and buy in of the surrounding suburbs.
https://youtu.be/ng3X39lenvg?feature=shared
How much of zakkyo is posible/facilitated by transit?
How do so may people get to the zakkyo district?
Is the building generally a condominium?
How is the street-entry elevator managed? Is that generally permitted in US city zoning/building codes?
Transit is very important, because you need a lot of foot traffic in an area to support this kind of development.
I disagree somewhat. I lived in Vietnam for over a decade which has essentially zero transit. And Vietnamese famously hate walking (for reasons both good (heat, humidity, UV, wearing high heels) and bad (laziness)), so you don't have any foot traffic anywhere.
But there are still zakkyo style buildings, though not to the same extent as in Japan.
One famous example is the "Apartment Cafe Building" on Nguyen Hue street in Saigon.
(Randomly Googled photo)
https://localvietnam.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/cafe-apartment-building.jpg
Apartments are next door to cafes and other shops. Not because of any grand plan but simply the lack of any meaningful zoning to prevent it from happening.
(Insert standard rant about how accepting Americans are of centralised government planning Soviet style when it comes to their zoning....)
The key insight from Saigon isn't "you have to have transit and walkability". It's "cars are just astoundingly space inefficient and literally any other kind of motorised vehicle would work better".
Saigon gets zakkyo style development by having scooters, not transit.
Do they have attached parking garages?
I spend more time in small town Japan where people drive. You still have fairly compact urban centers because there is free/cheap parking nearby. Typically you'll have the JR station. The forecourt is the bus station and around/near that are a few multi story hotels. Then there's a couple of streets off that are often yokocho like where there are a lot of bars/restaurants etc. This area will often have multiuse buildings with bars/restaurants on 2 floors and likely some offices/clinics etc. There will also likely be an apartment tower or two. Somewhere in that will be disused ground that has been turned into parking and/or multistory car parks and/or elevator parking (https://ihiap.com/products/ihi-elevator-parking-system/ )
It is interesting to see which towns get enough foot traffic from the mix of hotel guests and locals to thrive and which don't. There doesn't seem to be a great deal of logic to it though obviously towns with tourist attractions do better than those without.
Or do they already live in that area? Not the same culture of single-family homes that we have in North America.
Japan, like the US, has a strong single family detached house culture, even if it has a culture that happily builds low/mid-rise apartments mixed in with them. While Greater Tokyo is significantly denser than its closest European peers, peak residential density is significantly lower than in Paris but peak commercial density is significantly higher.
While a small area of zakkyo buildings can be sustained just by people walking/biking in (though often because said area is near a suburban train station), the seas of zakkyo buildings in Shibuya or Shinjuku absolutely need the immense foot traffic that comes with being some of the most transit-accessible neighborhoods in the world.
Very interesting, thanks for writing this.