Top all-time · #857
Urban kchoze
Personal blog · urbankchoze.blogspot.comeconomicspolitics
Urban kchoze is a personal blog at urbankchoze.blogspot.com about economics and politics. Since 2014, 77 different Hacker News readers have linked it 105 times, most often “Japanese zoning”. The last post was in 2020, but the archive is still widely read.
Sometimes recommended · 9 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog mainly for its posts on Japanese zoning, which they present as a model of national, flexible land-use rules. Commenters use it as background for US housing and transit debates.
- Recommended for · 9 comments
- Called 'excellent', 'really good' and a 'good summary' or 'writeup'; one commenter called it their only favourited story and read the whole archive.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Just a blog about urban and transport issues. It started as an English translation of my French-language blog "kchoze urbaine", though now I'm primarily writing in English to reach a wider audience. Why the name? "Chose urbaine" in French means literally "urban thing". Why "kchoze" instead of "chose
Most-linked posts?
- Japanese zoning49 people · 67 mentions · first linked 2014-07-07
- Japanese Zoning (2014)16 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2016-08-14
- Urban Kchoze – Japanese Zoning (2014)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-04-10
- Urban highways destroy wealth2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-01-13
What Hacker News says?
Recipe for solving loneliness and increasing the odds of "successful marriages" (which is really what this article seems focused on conveying as a problem). Build a successful community: * Enough housing, at reasonable cost * Enough jobs to "employ" all adults * Good jobs, fitting the skills of workers * Stable jobs, that aren't a gig or contract * Career jobs, with a future in the area * Good transit mesh * More di…
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness”Submitted Japanese zoning as a story · 196 points
HN discussionAnd yet you and everyone else are unable to produce any meaningful sources or analysis that justify your beliefs. [citation needed] and we can talk about it. Healthcare is a social policy matter, not monetary policy, and nothing to do with increase in the money supply. You take that up with your representatives not the Fed. Housing is a function of city council zoning policy. You take that up with your city council…
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies”Submitted Urban highways destroy wealth as a story · 137 points
HN discussionI'm not sure this is true. I know of several communities without strong regulations on what can be built (beyond perhaps size limits), and they tend to be pretty interesting. They also tend to develop their own individual character, due either to engineering limitations or social mimesis. For example, Japanese houses are pretty disposable, but you can build more or less anything you like. (Here's a great article on…
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture?”Submitted Building affordable housing as a story · 56 points
HN discussionNot just Europe! Tokyo, for example, is a remarkably pedestrian and bicycle-friendly city, despite also supporting quite heavy traffic in some areas. And of course, the extensive train network completely eliminates the need for a car in daily life. If you pick a random place on the map (like [1]), you'll see that the high-speed traffic is very well-separated from residential areas, with infrequent intersections. The…
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality”Submitted Euclidean Zoning (2014) as a story · 29 points
HN discussionJapan not so much scrapped various regulations as their regulations are just different - and nationwide. One of the effects of how their zoning classes work is that you don't have "residential-only" zones with no shops or other amenities - instead you have zones defined along the lines of maximum nuisance and with overlapping uses. You have a total of 12 zones, which start from "exclusively low rise residential" tha…
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund”Submitted Tackling congestion as an economic, not engineering, problem as a story · 29 points
HN discussionIt takes the right policies and a lot of time. We have seen American cities become less walkable and more auto-centric in the last ~60 years thanks to policies designed to hollow out urban cores and increase suburban sprawl [1]. We have also seen Amsterdam embrace "human-centric" urban planning, leading to significant transformation toward the vibrant, walkable, bikeable city that Amsterdam is famous for being today…
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive”Submitted Police box: policing a walkable city as a story · 27 points
HN discussionThat is crazy. I do not want a concrete plant to open next to my house. Or a Yoko Ono Scream Therapy franchise :) But yeah, the insane detail that many cities have in their zoning plans is stifling. The link[7] monkeypizza included elsewhere in this thread is what I'd like to see as the norm [7] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods”Submitted Cities Skylines: A new tool for understanding urban and transport issues as a story · 3 points
HN discussionExcellent blog about Japanese zoning: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods”Submitted Japanese Zoning as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Shortages of buildings are not the only reason that property prices can be high. It pretty much is - everything else is window dressing. Pretty much every single city in China is 3-10x more dense than any area in the US, so lack of land is a reason I find continually uncompelling. Our lack of density, zoning practices, NIMBY attitudes and car dependency all contribute to this, with the result being a lack of const…
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “Priced out of home ownership”Submitted Urban Kchoze: Japanese Zoning as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI would like to see more of this in the US. Common sense (zoning, and other things): Japanese Zoning :: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845 http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving”Submitted Japanese Zoning (2014) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI don't think it's even necessary to have areas that are completely regulation or zoning free, there are much more rational models in other countries. One of which is Japan http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “Things that are illegal to build in most American cities now”Submitted Japanese zoning as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOver the last 20 years, it's a little bit smaller (2.53 vs 2.62). It's a lot smaller than it was in the 1960s for instance (3.33) [1] The study focuses on the "50 largest cities" in the US which generally have regressive housing policies. Often, those cities are where the economy is doing well and high-paying jobs are available - but the city councils refuse to permit new construction. This limits supply in the face…
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “U.S. rent has increased 175% faster than household income over past 20 years”Submitted How modern zoning affects land value and incentivizes sprawl as a story · 2 points
HN discussionJapan has fantastic zoning laws. Here's[0] a great blog post about it. [0] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “Peak California”Submitted Japanese Zoning (2014) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionBackground on japanese zoning which backs up these statements: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship”Submitted Japanese Zoning (2014) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionReally good article on zoning in Japan: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html I think it's a bit of both, it's not viewed as as much of an investment therefore zoning laws are lax, which mean that housing can't become an investment because anyone can build (up to) anything on a lot.
Comment linking /2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
on “Japan's Hometown Tax (2018)”Submitted The midrise obesity crisis in North America as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
