Good essay! I think small business centrism and mixed use zoning is the default almost everywhere except the US. I've had he same in India, Singapore, much of Europe, seasia and more. The idea of having open regs on opening a shop or whatever, with the neighbours right to complain, creates a pretty nice equilibrium.
I find the zoned corporate strip malls to be the odd one out, the results of a rather weird policy choice.
There are many plus points to Japan's urban development but I think it is worth pointing out that there are tradeoffs (note that I live in Japan and have no plans to not remain in Japan).
First is the danger in a major earthquake etc. All of the Zakkyo, Yokocho etc. are likely to fare very badly when a fire breaks out. Being on, say, the 8th floor of a narrow tower when the fifth floor is on fire and there are (as would likely be the case after a quake) fires all over the place is liable to be fatal. And we know what happens to a Yokocho because there was one that burned to the ground after the Noto Earthquake earlier this year. Luckily the whole place was shut for the NY Day holiday but if the quake had occurred say a couple of days earlier and later at night I imagine there would have been considerable loss of life.
Second the fact that neighborhood associations prefer to not get the police/justice system involved in local disputes is not actually a positive thing for the police. What it says is that the police are arbitrary and capricious and you have no way to predict how they will rule. This is, BTW, one reason I believe rape is severely under-reported in Japan. Japanese rape victims well-founded fears that the cops will take the side of the rapist. The same may well apply to a lot of other crime. The police have a 99% successful conviction rate but I wouldn't assume that means they have a 99% accuracy rate.
Thirdly those neighborhood associations are very much a mixed bunch. Some are good. Some make the worst US Home Owner Associations seem like bastions of tolerant local democracy.
I think on the whole Japan does things well but there's a lot of dark underbelly that visitors don't always notice.
Your last point about small business is really interesting.
Japan has a bunch of the businesses that Tyler Cowen's love letter would arguably be addressed to who have a lot of power (maybe too much?), and yet Japan is also able to still have this thriving small business scene. Is it because a clear divide in industries where this is encouraged?
Also, Americans talk about how much they love small businesses, but given all of the burdens placed upon them it seems untrue in practice (licenses, permits, burdensome regulations).
Super Noah! In the mystery of Japanese small businesses, I always get flabbergasted by the staff they can afford. It's not rare to see restaurants open where there's barely more customer than staff. I went for a haircut in a neighbourhood salon, and the gentleman massaged me and cut me with great care for 30-45 min. And the cost was the same as a 10 min haircut in Europe.
As an economist, may be you can tell right away: is there a big difference in cost structures of business in JP vs EU vs US, and the share of income/value added that goes to labour, capital and taxes?
Could that explain part of why JP could afford so high a workers to customers ratio? Surely that would impact small business, urbanism, as well as unemployment and therefore safety.
Sad to miss the meetup, I will be in Tokyo for the first time on Monday. Excited to dive into the article, now I have Emergent Tokyo on my reading list this week.
I used to be an occasional visitor to Tokyo. I loved the amazing buzz of the city but thought I could never live here. It was too noisy, crowded and expensive. Flash forward to the present and you will find us happily retired in Shinjuku of all places. Our neighborhood is clean, quiet and yet only a stroll from the thousands of shops, restaurants and bars that attract visitors. Away from those busy but highly concentrated areas are massive super blocks full of tiny, quiet streets for residences, pedestrians and cyclists. As Noah has mentioned in the past, housing is relatively affordable by mega city standards, public transportation is comprehensive and superb, the food here is far better than anywhere else (and cheaper too with far better service), and Tokyo remains a relatively clean and safe city with offerings (museums, concerts, shopping, subcultures, uniqueness) other cities cannot match overall. These days, I would no longer live anywhere else.
I wonder how much business fees factor in. If you have large fixed fees to serve alcohol, that will incentivize higher capacity restaurants. If fees, to the extent they exist, were proportional to occupancy, that might help to incentivize these micro businesses.
Brilliant analysis, Noah. Tokyo is a paragon of Glaeser's "Consumer City." Consumption amenities have huge value. Cities offer convenience, variety and discovery. Totally agree on the importance of small businesses: lots of small shops and restaurants mean that more varied choices are close at hand. One glaring omission: Public policies on cars and parking. Tokyo requires you have a dedicated private off-street parking space to register a private vehicle. This, coupled with liberal residential zoning, enables lots of density and car-free households. Having a high fraction of consumers on foot--and not in cars--tips the competitive balance in favor of smaller, closer businesses. In contrast, in the US, where 80% or more of households have cars and must drive anyhow, larger stores with bigger parking lots dominate mom-and-pop businesses. FYI: In the 1930s, nearly all US grocery stores were mom-and-pops--there were no supermarkets, and most households didn't own cars. Cars enabled supermarkets, and the larger scale, choice, and better pricing wiped out the corner grocery store in most US cities.
Last week I went to lunch at an excellent small restaurant in Fukuoka with two others. It had a table with four seats and a counter with five but it is exclusively kashikiri, meaning your group reserves the whole restaurant for your meal. It was probably less than 20 square meters with the entire kitchen behind the counter. A single local guy owned and ran the place by himself, no other employees. He had spent time in Sardinia after high school and learned that regions Italian cooking. The menu was selected by him and used local ingredients, including pork from a farmer who raised only 1 pig at a time. It was an excellent 5 course meal ending with house made sakura gelato. The cost was 6000¥ and with the current exchange rate was less than $100 for three people. It was on the first floor of an old house in a tiny maze of residential streets, not big enough to drive a big SUV on, just a seven minute walk from the subway (very nice, clean and quiet) station, but also right next to a small automated pay parking lot (100¥ for 90 minutes). Best lunch of the year.
Seriously underrated article because it points out information (emergent superblocks) that aren’t part of the New Urbanist and YIMBY conversations. Bravo 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
I’d just point out that at least #4-7 could be simplified to “Have Japanese people live there.”
I’ve lived in the Los Angeles suburbs, Oakland, and, for most of my life, Japan. It’s a human capital issue. I’ve never had a gun pulled on me on a Tokyo train or subway like I have on BART. Noise restrictions? Racist!
The Lake Merritt Park “Karen” dust-up in Oakland involved locals ignoring clearly posted rules about barbecue locations where there are nice tables, pits, and grills that are away from the residential area to avoid bothering them with smoke every weekend. Following rules like these is so natural for Japanese.
These clowns are now showing up on tourist visas in Japan and posting TikToks about how they can’t behave “Oakland-style” in Japan without cops (politely) showing up.
Covid was a good example of how Japanese just behave themselves despite the lack of legal requirements to do so.
Actually those kinds of zakkyo buildings are existed at old city in Seoul, Korea. If you have a time, please visit Seoul! Definitely you can get a great experience of seoul zakkyo~.
”In dense cities where retail is largely confined to the first floors of buildings, the retail has to be much more spread out throughout the city. This means that if you’re going shopping, you have to walk or take a train long distances in order to see a whole bunch of different stores. It also means that a lot of people’s apartments are located above noisy retail outlets and crowded streets. ”
Disagree. It’s better to spread out shops and restaurants over a larger area (the old European model) rather than create one hyper busy centre surrounded by dead semi-suburban city blocks which noone has any reason to visit. The street level is what matters and stacking business simultaneously intensifies and limits life in a city.
It's a good book - funnily enough I am also in Japan at the moment (Kyoto) & have also reviewed it a couple of years ago (https://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/emergent-tokyo-designing-the-spontaneous-city-by-jorge-almazan/). I think that you're exactly right that what makes Japan's cities exciting and distinctive is the small scale unpredictability - independent stores & restaurants but also temples and who knows wha else. Tha said, I would note that my editor, who lives in Hong Kong, was skeptical that there was anything that great about Tokyo to explain. Maybe that's a reflection of some of the more soulless big developments (Roppongi Hills?) that the book cautions about at the end.
Japan is great in a lot of ways, no doubt. Oddly lacking from this analysis though, is the fact that Japan is pretty thoroughly an ethno-state. And one with an evaporating population to boot. It's pretty easy to drop into a place as an outsider from afar and say "here are all the great things about it that should be done elsewhere too!" But when this is not your home and not the home of your family, and you thus don't have that level of understanding of the full picture, and you also simply ignore the giant elephant in the room, you come across to me at least a bit like kids on a visit to disneyland saying "we should have rides like this in our backyard!!"
Good essay! I think small business centrism and mixed use zoning is the default almost everywhere except the US. I've had he same in India, Singapore, much of Europe, seasia and more. The idea of having open regs on opening a shop or whatever, with the neighbours right to complain, creates a pretty nice equilibrium.
I find the zoned corporate strip malls to be the odd one out, the results of a rather weird policy choice.
There are many plus points to Japan's urban development but I think it is worth pointing out that there are tradeoffs (note that I live in Japan and have no plans to not remain in Japan).
First is the danger in a major earthquake etc. All of the Zakkyo, Yokocho etc. are likely to fare very badly when a fire breaks out. Being on, say, the 8th floor of a narrow tower when the fifth floor is on fire and there are (as would likely be the case after a quake) fires all over the place is liable to be fatal. And we know what happens to a Yokocho because there was one that burned to the ground after the Noto Earthquake earlier this year. Luckily the whole place was shut for the NY Day holiday but if the quake had occurred say a couple of days earlier and later at night I imagine there would have been considerable loss of life.
Second the fact that neighborhood associations prefer to not get the police/justice system involved in local disputes is not actually a positive thing for the police. What it says is that the police are arbitrary and capricious and you have no way to predict how they will rule. This is, BTW, one reason I believe rape is severely under-reported in Japan. Japanese rape victims well-founded fears that the cops will take the side of the rapist. The same may well apply to a lot of other crime. The police have a 99% successful conviction rate but I wouldn't assume that means they have a 99% accuracy rate.
Thirdly those neighborhood associations are very much a mixed bunch. Some are good. Some make the worst US Home Owner Associations seem like bastions of tolerant local democracy.
I think on the whole Japan does things well but there's a lot of dark underbelly that visitors don't always notice.
Your last point about small business is really interesting.
Japan has a bunch of the businesses that Tyler Cowen's love letter would arguably be addressed to who have a lot of power (maybe too much?), and yet Japan is also able to still have this thriving small business scene. Is it because a clear divide in industries where this is encouraged?
Also, Americans talk about how much they love small businesses, but given all of the burdens placed upon them it seems untrue in practice (licenses, permits, burdensome regulations).
Super Noah! In the mystery of Japanese small businesses, I always get flabbergasted by the staff they can afford. It's not rare to see restaurants open where there's barely more customer than staff. I went for a haircut in a neighbourhood salon, and the gentleman massaged me and cut me with great care for 30-45 min. And the cost was the same as a 10 min haircut in Europe.
As an economist, may be you can tell right away: is there a big difference in cost structures of business in JP vs EU vs US, and the share of income/value added that goes to labour, capital and taxes?
Could that explain part of why JP could afford so high a workers to customers ratio? Surely that would impact small business, urbanism, as well as unemployment and therefore safety.
Sad to miss the meetup, I will be in Tokyo for the first time on Monday. Excited to dive into the article, now I have Emergent Tokyo on my reading list this week.
I used to be an occasional visitor to Tokyo. I loved the amazing buzz of the city but thought I could never live here. It was too noisy, crowded and expensive. Flash forward to the present and you will find us happily retired in Shinjuku of all places. Our neighborhood is clean, quiet and yet only a stroll from the thousands of shops, restaurants and bars that attract visitors. Away from those busy but highly concentrated areas are massive super blocks full of tiny, quiet streets for residences, pedestrians and cyclists. As Noah has mentioned in the past, housing is relatively affordable by mega city standards, public transportation is comprehensive and superb, the food here is far better than anywhere else (and cheaper too with far better service), and Tokyo remains a relatively clean and safe city with offerings (museums, concerts, shopping, subcultures, uniqueness) other cities cannot match overall. These days, I would no longer live anywhere else.
I wonder how much business fees factor in. If you have large fixed fees to serve alcohol, that will incentivize higher capacity restaurants. If fees, to the extent they exist, were proportional to occupancy, that might help to incentivize these micro businesses.
Brilliant analysis, Noah. Tokyo is a paragon of Glaeser's "Consumer City." Consumption amenities have huge value. Cities offer convenience, variety and discovery. Totally agree on the importance of small businesses: lots of small shops and restaurants mean that more varied choices are close at hand. One glaring omission: Public policies on cars and parking. Tokyo requires you have a dedicated private off-street parking space to register a private vehicle. This, coupled with liberal residential zoning, enables lots of density and car-free households. Having a high fraction of consumers on foot--and not in cars--tips the competitive balance in favor of smaller, closer businesses. In contrast, in the US, where 80% or more of households have cars and must drive anyhow, larger stores with bigger parking lots dominate mom-and-pop businesses. FYI: In the 1930s, nearly all US grocery stores were mom-and-pops--there were no supermarkets, and most households didn't own cars. Cars enabled supermarkets, and the larger scale, choice, and better pricing wiped out the corner grocery store in most US cities.
hey noah can u write about south korea's economy?
Last week I went to lunch at an excellent small restaurant in Fukuoka with two others. It had a table with four seats and a counter with five but it is exclusively kashikiri, meaning your group reserves the whole restaurant for your meal. It was probably less than 20 square meters with the entire kitchen behind the counter. A single local guy owned and ran the place by himself, no other employees. He had spent time in Sardinia after high school and learned that regions Italian cooking. The menu was selected by him and used local ingredients, including pork from a farmer who raised only 1 pig at a time. It was an excellent 5 course meal ending with house made sakura gelato. The cost was 6000¥ and with the current exchange rate was less than $100 for three people. It was on the first floor of an old house in a tiny maze of residential streets, not big enough to drive a big SUV on, just a seven minute walk from the subway (very nice, clean and quiet) station, but also right next to a small automated pay parking lot (100¥ for 90 minutes). Best lunch of the year.
Seriously underrated article because it points out information (emergent superblocks) that aren’t part of the New Urbanist and YIMBY conversations. Bravo 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
I’d just point out that at least #4-7 could be simplified to “Have Japanese people live there.”
I’ve lived in the Los Angeles suburbs, Oakland, and, for most of my life, Japan. It’s a human capital issue. I’ve never had a gun pulled on me on a Tokyo train or subway like I have on BART. Noise restrictions? Racist!
The Lake Merritt Park “Karen” dust-up in Oakland involved locals ignoring clearly posted rules about barbecue locations where there are nice tables, pits, and grills that are away from the residential area to avoid bothering them with smoke every weekend. Following rules like these is so natural for Japanese.
These clowns are now showing up on tourist visas in Japan and posting TikToks about how they can’t behave “Oakland-style” in Japan without cops (politely) showing up.
Covid was a good example of how Japanese just behave themselves despite the lack of legal requirements to do so.
Actually those kinds of zakkyo buildings are existed at old city in Seoul, Korea. If you have a time, please visit Seoul! Definitely you can get a great experience of seoul zakkyo~.
”In dense cities where retail is largely confined to the first floors of buildings, the retail has to be much more spread out throughout the city. This means that if you’re going shopping, you have to walk or take a train long distances in order to see a whole bunch of different stores. It also means that a lot of people’s apartments are located above noisy retail outlets and crowded streets. ”
Disagree. It’s better to spread out shops and restaurants over a larger area (the old European model) rather than create one hyper busy centre surrounded by dead semi-suburban city blocks which noone has any reason to visit. The street level is what matters and stacking business simultaneously intensifies and limits life in a city.
It's a good book - funnily enough I am also in Japan at the moment (Kyoto) & have also reviewed it a couple of years ago (https://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/emergent-tokyo-designing-the-spontaneous-city-by-jorge-almazan/). I think that you're exactly right that what makes Japan's cities exciting and distinctive is the small scale unpredictability - independent stores & restaurants but also temples and who knows wha else. Tha said, I would note that my editor, who lives in Hong Kong, was skeptical that there was anything that great about Tokyo to explain. Maybe that's a reflection of some of the more soulless big developments (Roppongi Hills?) that the book cautions about at the end.
Japan is great in a lot of ways, no doubt. Oddly lacking from this analysis though, is the fact that Japan is pretty thoroughly an ethno-state. And one with an evaporating population to boot. It's pretty easy to drop into a place as an outsider from afar and say "here are all the great things about it that should be done elsewhere too!" But when this is not your home and not the home of your family, and you thus don't have that level of understanding of the full picture, and you also simply ignore the giant elephant in the room, you come across to me at least a bit like kids on a visit to disneyland saying "we should have rides like this in our backyard!!"