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![David Watson 🥑](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="96" height="96"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg>)
Even though most of your narrative is correct the causes of why it has happened, cheap affordable housing that is, is wrong.
Unlike most of the world, Japanese do not use their houses as store of wealth. That is primarily due to the low quality material they use, namely cheap
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Brutal commutes and rough summer climate. Not an easy place but def affordable with a normal USD salary.
David Eagleman, in his book "Livewired," says postwar Japan repurposed military engineers for the bullet train and Tokyo infrastructure as an example of how the Human brain uses excess capacity.
Topography of Japan: "The terrain is mostly rugged and mountainous, with 66% forest.
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The Anglo world lives in an artificial housing bubble and requires permanent NIMBYism to prevent "housing wealth" from collapsing back to its normal state and renting returning to its normal affordable level.
Tokyo used to have expensive housing. Not so much anymore.
Love this!
We should start permitting $800/month apartments in US cities 
part of it is that Japan already reached the part where the real estate speculation bubble collapses, thirty years ago, which is part of why housing remains affordable but also part of why wages have stagnated for decades
still, affordability is good
OP acknowledges it but those $800 studios in central tokyo are TINY lol
There are yt channels dedicated to exploring its now-notorious cheap but insanely small and odd shaped microapartments. If that's what you want...
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let's invest in metro-rail transportation to make Houston a livable city.
Tokyo is a prefecture not a single city. Even considering the 5 Burroughs of NYC is his is a specious comparison. You’ve also confused cause and effect here.
ok yea but Japan's real estate culture is also the total inverse of America's. Property depreciates in Japan due to the demand for more safe and advanced architecture to combat the natural disasters they face.
Not to mention their modular buildings are next level.
But what about the scalpers...I mean "investors?" How are they going to make money?
I haven't seen anyone mention how weak the yen is right now. It's at a historic low, so obviously if you convert the rent into dollars it's going to look cheap from the outside
Not allowing external investors to buy up entire streets of apartments to convert into rental units also helps with that.
Japan also has a significantly dwindling population. Probably the biggest contributor
Context is everything. What is the cost per sq/ft? What about cost relative to income? Not saying US is great by any means, but throwing out a random price is meaningless.
Negative population growth and a decades long stagnant economy isn't the flex you think it is. As recently as the early 90's, home ownership in Tokyo and it's suburbs was beyond the lifelong means of the average Japanese worker, creating an entire culture of renters.
Tokyo has remained affordable because Japan is a relatively poor country now
There are alot of vacant apartments, but because of NY laws landlords don’t wants to rent them out
Also, see Hudson Yards “affordable housing” that nobody can’t afford
It will be a desolate hellscape in a few decades as their population demographics finally come to fruition. They won't have the people to maintain a city that size without changing the demographics of Japan completely something I doubt they would do. They need to start now.
They only did this because they reached an insanely unaffordable housing situation in the late 80s where the price to income ratio reached 12:1:
If the US starts to build a lot of housing, when existing homeowners see their houses' value go down they might riot...
- Tks for the thread - #Japan -affordable housing is possible if one advocates for the less affluent consistently in policy
only talked the talk in 2015 - he was disingenuous in walking the walk, a pattern he repeated on other progressive initiatives
Maybe they just aren't as corrupt as Americans are on that front?
Doubt the Japanese would ever resort to the wild price gouging we see in the US, when Japan is a place where a company has to make public apologies over the slightest errors and regularly forces CEO resignations
Tokyo is severely lacking in the very specific kind of thing that makes everywhere in NYC that’s “affordable” utterly miserable to be in.
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Gonna be honest I don’t predict that Congestion Pricing will be that effective in reducing congestion, I think a similar # of people will drive into Manhattan with a $15 toll. Which would make it an absolute cash cow for the MTA the likes of which it has never seen in its history
BREAKING NEWS: WE DID IT! CONGESTION PRICING LIVES TO FIGHT ANOTHER DAY
Thanks to all of our pressure, the legislature refused to bail Hochul out. But this is only getting started: we need to keep up the pressure to ensure the MTA board stands up to Hochul.
Stay tuned!Quote
Bernadette Hogan
@bern_hogan
Sources say: Legislature will likely not act on any short term MTA funding plan before they leave town. They can deal with it at a later date.
Other thing up for grabs: a deal to give yeshivas a separate lane to meet substantial equivalency regs with the State Education Dept.
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go ahead. say the customers at your 5-table mid-tier diner drive in from out of state. tell me they sit in traffic for 3 hours to pay $24.99 for pancakes. say they park right in front.
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Christopher Robbins
@ChristRobbins
>@GovKathyHochul just said she decided to kill congestion pricing because the owner of this Midtown diner said his New Jersey customers weren't going to....drive into his Midtown diner anymore?
cops illegally blocking the busiest bike route in their city with their cars in the middle of the rush hour to watch black teenagers enjoy the beach on a warm summer day
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Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere
@TylerLaRiviere
Replying to @TylerLaRiviere
May have slightly underestimated the amount of cops. There are a ton.
