188 comments on DrumBeat: December 4, 2007
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188 comments on DrumBeat: December 4, 2007
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I felt a lot of nostalgia looking at the pictures of Japan. I lived there for six years without a car. A second time I lived there three years with my family. We inherited a car from my brother but we rarely used it. We lived at the end of a really narrow street. My wife was always worried that on the way out she'd meet up with another woman coming and that neither of them being able to drive in reverse they'd be stuck there all day.
One of my fondest memories is having Sapporo ramen and a can of beer sitting under the canopy of a street vendor.
Japan is probably rather well prepared for living with fewer (not zero) fossil fuels. As you can see from the photos, it is very easy to live by walking, biking and train riding in Japan. They still have to worry about the fossil fuels needed to propel the trucks and to make plastics.
It would be really hard for the US to live like Japanese do. It would take a generational change. Living in Tokyo is like experiencing Christmas shopping every day.
We are an island that imports 100% of its energy. I shudder when I think of the long term viability of Japan. Especially when Indonesia cuts off our gas in a couple of years.
I must nitpick here a bit. "As you can see from the photos, it is very easy to live by walking, biking and train riding in
JapanTokyo"Outside of Tokyo it is very much a car culture. Ask a Japanese person his/her hobbies and a common answer is driving. Japanese love to drive. And outside of Tokyo or maybe Osaka/Kyoto you must have a car to get anywhere.
It is not so hard to live without a car in the rural areas. They are well served by buses, which will take you to the local train station. I traveled all over the countryside for mountaineering/skiing/etc., including some extremely rural areas, almost entirely on public transit. It is a special pleasure to take a bus to the start of a week-long ski mountaineering trip, and then take the train back.
However, I agree fully that Japanese people love to drive around -- mostly for pleasure rather than necessity. This is a country with seven international car companies, after all.
I want to introduce several examples of real train/walking based cities, instead of the mediocre Portland.
Most countries in the world import almost all their fossil fuels. Not many countries have meaningful fossil fuel deposits. Japan is no different there than France, Italy, Thailand, Korea, Argentina, Spain, India, etc. etc.
I want to introduce several examples of real train/walking based cities, instead of the mediocre Portland.
I would like your input on real train/walking based cities. Do you feel they exist in the US? What qualities other than narrow streets do you feel make a city successful? They cannot be "winter" cities ie narrow streets make snow removal/storage pretty tough. I am living in Santiago Chile now, great town, tough air pollution in the winter, many parts are walkable & it has a good metro. Local culture here is car centered. Valparaiso on the coast is very cool and a walking city.