Japan’s urban land usage is terrible and there is no reason to replicate it in most places. The economics of building up in Japan are different to anywhere is that is not as earthquake prone (which is basically everywhere). That’s why neighborhoods in central Tokyo still have detached single family dwellings in large numbers which is not something that you see in most other large Asian cities that don’t have to worry about natural disasters. Anyone who talks about replicating Japanese urbanism anywhere outside the Ring of Fire should be forced to commit sudoku.

Tokyo only works because a huge proportion of the working and middle class are pushed out to satellite cities like Chiba, Saitama, and Kawasaki. Yes, there is public transport that gets them to Tokyo for their jobs, but unless you’re lucky enough to have flexible starting times you are crushed into cattle car conditions for upwards of an hour each way. Not to mention that as soon as you get outside the Yamanote circle line, it becomes basically impossible to take a train in any direction except towards Tokyo or away from Tokyo. Want to get from Nakano to Nerima by train? Fuck you, pay an entirely separate company for bus fare, potentially doubling the cost of your trip.

The narrow walkable roads are great until you notice that there’s no space for a physically separated cycle lane so bikes are forced to either weave in and out of illegally parked traffic or pedestrians on the footpath. Oh yeah but the drivers will know they don’t own the road right? My comrade in Christ, have you ever met a driver? There is no shortage of assholes who will threaten to run you down because you’re in their way except now where’s no footpath that physically stops them from doing so. Speaking of lack of physical separation, lots of houses and apartments have front doors that open right into the path of traffic because of how narrow the roads are. You don’t have to be a genius city planner to see how that shit is incredibly dangerous even for adults, never mind children and animals.

Speaking of illegally parked cars, many ostensibly two lane roads are only physically wide enough for one vehicle which sounds great because fuck cars but people end up haphazardly parking all over the place with their blinkers on to run errands, make deliveries, and pick people up or drop people off. Couple that with extremely expensive paid parking and insufficient parking enforcement and you get instances of emergency vehicles being literally unable to proceed because of parked cars and narrow roads.

The awesome flexible town planning and zoning rules that these videos always fellate produce copy paste concrete jungles with little thought given to greenery or parks or other public spaces. This is now becoming especially problematic because Tokyo is just a huge urban heat island with insufficient trees and green spaces, which is not working out well for a city where there’s a lot of older people who are expected to walk everywhere in 40 degree summer. Again, circling back to those cool narrow streets - they tend not to be very cool temperature wise because there’s physically nowhere to plant trees so there’s no fucking shade and everything is just houses and buildings which aren’t good shade.

This is just KKKraker weeaboo slop starting from a conclusion of “WOW JAPAN SO COOL HONORARY ARYANS GOOD TRANSPORT” and then working backwards to support that conclusion with a bunch of bullshit.

The narrow streets aspect has been talked about before by a libertarian crank I have to give credit to for getting me into urbanism

https://newworldeconomics.com/lets-take-a-trip-to-tokyo/

Great video! I second his recommendation of Life Where I’m From’s video about Japanese zoning.

I’d also recommend a book I checked out from the library recently, Emergent Tokyo, which goes into a lot of the same subjects and has some great insights.

I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

• yewtu.be
• inv.nadeko.net
• yt.artemislena.eu
• piped.video