I've never thought of Tokyo as a tall city. The city-scape is generally max 6 story buildings. The tallest building in Tokyo is shorter than the tallest in San Francisco!
Tokyo achieves more density than San Francisco because the average street width is about 14 feet. San Francisco's is about 90 feet. That creates a lot more buildable land per block and less traffic.
The average building height is also about 3 stories instead of just over two in SF. The majority of housing is single family houses and owner occupied. And Toyko has much, much less parking.
The result is a comfortable, walkable city at double the density of SF without high-rises and with less traffic.
The key difference is that SF is planned, laid out, regulated, permitted, and platted very badly and Tokyo is planned well.
Also, the peninsula cities are required by law to sprawl at low density, constricting SF's ability to spread medium-density growth that would keep housing affordable. Any upzoning, even around transit stops, is blocked and housing supply remains severely limited.
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I've never thought of Tokyo as a tall city. The city-scape is generally max 6 story buildings. The tallest building in Tokyo is shorter than the tallest in San Francisco!
Tokyo achieves more density than San Francisco because the average street width is about 14 feet. San Francisco's is about 90 feet. That creates a lot more buildable land per block and less traffic.
The average building height is also about 3 stories instead of just over two in SF. The majority of housing is single family houses and owner occupied. And Toyko has much, much less parking.
The result is a comfortable, walkable city at double the density of SF without high-rises and with less traffic.
The key difference is that SF is planned, laid out, regulated, permitted, and platted very badly and Tokyo is planned well.
Also, the peninsula cities are required by law to sprawl at low density, constricting SF's ability to spread medium-density growth that would keep housing affordable. Any upzoning, even around transit stops, is blocked and housing supply remains severely limited.
Why is that? To protect people's vacation homes on the beach?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_structures_in_T...
(There are a lot of tall buildings in Tokyo)