Japanese Zoning: Family Friendly and Economicly Better?

Plenty of people have written about the vast improvement Japanese zoning would be over American land use rules. Noah Smith wrote about it and I agree with his observations. What I want to discuss is how this land use also improves economic outcomes and creates family-friendly cities. 

In 2023, Japan recorded its lowest birth rate. Part of this can be explained by the social expectations around gender roles, lack of job security, and workforce expectations that keep staff in the office for long hours. However, walking around Japan and seeing children all over you might find it difficult to believe there are low birth rates. 

During my trip this past November, I visited Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. Everywhere at any time of the day we saw children walking, in strollers, or on bikes. Most of the parks were full of kids running around playing and screaming. In Kyoto we found a book fair on the Umekōji-Kyōtonishi Station plaza, right between the Kyoto Rail Museum and a playground. This was hardly the densest neighborhood but it’s hard to imagine seeing this kind of density in any suburban community that markets itself as a great place to raise a family. Despite the lack of really tall buildings, the housing was dense because of the lack of setbacks, the use of multiple stories, and the occasional 5 or six-story point access building. These designs create a neighborhood that provides a variety of housing options from studios to three bedrooms and supports public transportation and small businesses. 

The design of these neighborhoods matters because in America suburbs have taken the mantle of family-friendly communities. Yet, suburbs have been far more successful at isolating families in their own homes. A Japanese home may be smaller but that’s because everything you need is in your neighborhood. In American suburbs, we try to buy all of our entertainment needs for the house because going out to eat or recreate requires driving and finding parking. As much as we’ve been taught that a car means freedom, the truth is that many of us see it as a chore. That being said, a house doesn’t need to have everything if the neighborhood has what we need within walking distance. But if the neighborhood or community is desolate then we have to try and make the home serve all of our needs. 

Two things help create the density of homes and businesses we see in Japan. Point access buildings and inclusive zoning. Point access buildings don’t require two staircases connected to each floor which limits the size and designs of what can be built. This is the reason why we don’t have a lot of narrow and tall buildings like we see in Japan or other non-North American cities. Inclusive zoning tells you specifically what you can’t build. Everything else is essentially allowed. In America, our zoning says what is allowed, and everything that isn’t is automatically excluded. This is why we don’t see many mixed-use areas and why in our suburbs and even cities you have to drive from your home to the central business district or business park. When it’s time for shopping you have to go to one area that only has retail businesses. This separation of uses is also known as Euclidean Zoning. These two American choices make short, horizontal, and distant communities the default design. It leads us to spend so much of our time doing a major chore, driving. 

The average cost of owning and operating one vehicle is about $12,000 a year. That’s about $1,000 a month on transportation expenses. “Drivers reported spending an average of 60.2 minutes per day driving in 2022,” according to the AAA Foundation For Traffic Safety and 30% of the trips by survey respondents were for running errands. Unfortunately, our decision to restrict housing in the urban core where all the jobs and amenities are has resulted in super commuting, traveling 90 minutes or more, back and forth. This financial and opportunity cost means that many adults have to spend their resources on being stuck in a car rather than investing them on their family. 

What can we do?

1. Zoning: We could take zoning away from cities to prevent NIMBYism. That might be too drastic so an alternative is to change zoning rules to be inclusive rather than inclusive. State funding could also be used to incentivize mixed-used zoning, walkable neighborhoods, and multi-modal transportation options.

2. Building codes: We need single-stair reform. Allowing point access buildings means we can build a wider variety of buildings including tall and thin ones on small parcels. 

3. Housing finance: We need a social housing development corporation and a revolving loan fund for housing to continue adding housing units when interest rates are too high. Construction has up and down cycles due to market conditions. Right now we have a down cycle as a result of high interest rates.

4. Invest in public transit: Their public transit system enables the density and variety of uses that makes Japan so enjoyable. Making space for car to travel and park has a negative impact. 

5. Easier short-term actions: Some of these things might take a while to convince cities and neighbors to accept. What could be slightly easier to start adding mixed uses is allowing for Accessory Commercial Units to be allowed by right. My friend Muhammad Alameldin and East Bay For Everyone are working on this in Berkeley and Oakland. These commercial spaces will benefit neighbors by making commercial businesses like corner stores accessible and convenient to walk to. It will also benefit property owners by giving them a source of revenue by leasing or starting their own businesses. Cities will also benefit from the increased property values and sales generated by these businesses.

If a community allowed a wider variety of uses and building designs we could provide the services and amenities families need in the neighborhood. Parents could walk or bike their kids to child care or a park instead of chauffeuring them around from one end of a town to the other. Families could cut down from four cars to two or one. Jobs would no longer be centered in one business district but could grow across different parts of the community giving workers options on where to live that’s close to their jobs. By limiting ourselves we’ve chained ourselves to building communities and habits that are isolated, farther apart, and more expensive but marketed as providing family-friendly and affordable communities.