The Greater Tokyo Area contains around 40 million people—roughly as many residents as in the entire state of California—all living within a region the size of Los Angeles County.
I think it was in Ezra's article that I read an amazing statistic about Tokyo.
Two people working for min wage full time can afford to live in a midrange 2 bedroom apartment in most places in Tokyo.
When I do the math using US wages, 2x min, times 40, times 4 weeks, minus SS taxes, times a third which is the most anyone should spend on a place to live, I come up with $669 dollars a month. That's for a midrange apartment, not the cheapest. In an extremely safe clean city.
When I do the math backwards an average apartment in NYC is $4,000. A couple would need a min wage of $41 per person to afford the same, and eliminate almost all crime, homelessness, drug use, etc.
Excellent reporting. We once attended a professional baseball game in Japan, and watched in amazement, when everyone in the stadium began to help clean, after the game ended. Every scrap of trash was picked up. Fans brought rags, to wipe down their seats.
Cultural differences aside, crime has to be the starting point, if US cities are to rise from the ashes. Most Americans do not realize in many Blue cities, thanks to bail reform, if a criminal is not standing over a dead body when arrested, there is little chance of pretrial incarceration.
Once, those accused of rape or child molestation, crimes with very high recidivism rates, were nearly always held pretrial, without bail, or released only on a very high bail. Now even those accused of violent and sexual crimes, often walk out of the police station, before their paperwork is finished. The justice system relying on the honor of the accused, to return to stand trial.
Toss in joke jail sentences, even when there are convictions. The 2 illegal immigrants charged with the murder of an LA father a few days ago, had been convicted of numerous serious CA felonies, but never saw the inside of a prison. They spent mere months in County lock up, before being released. To say nothing of the dozen times, they could have been deported. The man's wife is now facing cancer alone, as she attempts to raise 2 young children, with her husband, the family's sole breadwinner, gone forever.
We know how to end the chaos. Bring back broken window policing. Charge and incarcerate the maximum. Most Americans and migrants are law abiding, but tolerating the few that commit dozens of crimes without real punishment, leaves the majority of the law abiding, at the mercy of the criminal few.
It is worth pondering why European cities used to work like Tokyo but now look more like American cities. Not the worst American cities but probably the mid-range. It was the mayor of London that said something like crime and terrorism is a necessary component of city life and people should just accept that. At any rate, crime is out of control and I think no-go areas is a term coined in France. I don't know if they have single party government but they have made much the same bad choices as American cities with the same results. American drivers may seem crazy to Japanese but they are sane compared to Europeans. Rome is completely insane though I have been told that Athens is worse. The urban-rural divide is as bad if not worse. Urban disorder is rampant though of a somewhat different character than American disorder-more ideological lunacy than clinical lunacy.
This is all common sense that is ignored too often in too many places (see California coastal cities). One caveat to incentivizing cities to increase housing stock is preserving the character of historic neighborhoods. Arlington, VA, my former home, is going through a controversy around their "Missing Middle" initiative to allow multi-housing units to be built in historic (more than 50 years old) single-family neighborhoods. NIMBY instincts take over in a hurry, especially when the infrastructure is already stressed from traffic and people. I'm not sure what the answer to that is, but in Arlington and its close proximity to DC, moving federal government jobs outside the beltway might actually help.
I wish people would listen to this. We live in a suburb of a major city that is seriously so overrun with crime that people from that city will tell you not to go there after dark and even during the day to certain areas. I think I would absolutely love living in a city, especially with my disabled adult son. He loves art museums and so do I. However, we can't even consider it. I wish we had well ordered, safe cities.
I expect that the 3 goals you list are shared by the vast majority of people living in US cities, regardless of party affiliation, including me. Tokyo is overwhelmingly a mono-racial society with 98% of the population being ethnic Japanese, and the remaining 2% being Korean, Chinese, Philippine, British, American, Brazilian, and Peruvian. That kind of homogeneity describes nowhere in the US.
Japan opened up to immigration a long time ago., mostly from other Asian countries so non-locals can't tell the newcomers from the native born. says Noah Smith
Multiculturalism combined with liberal progressives running government derives chaos and decline.
Every country where the cities are well run have populations that are culturally and ethnically homogeneous. Many of those cities are run by people that match up ideologically with American liberal progressives and have strong socialist leanings (although all of them also have strong capitalist leanings).
It is only when you have both... liberal progressive power control of government, and cultural and ethnic heterogeneous populations that things go to crap.
Look at London for example.
It is easy to understand why. People from other places don't have the same connection with the place... the same love of place... the same care of place. They see themselves as outsiders with part of their alliance remaining with the place they are from. Their lack of care results in bad behavior... more crime, graffiti... less compliance with the rules of conduct that help a place be more cohesive and well run. Instead of their contribution to the greater good, they exploit every loophole and opportunity to take. It is human nature.
Multiculturalism is the thing that we should eliminate. Because eliminating liberal progressives in control of major cities is impossible.
One-party regimes: There are legislatures. No party may hold more than 40% of the seats. (idea courtesy Leland Modesitt, Jr in a series of novels) Civil service is in some part replaced by patronage appointments.
These are suggestions of the needed scope, not necessarily the right answers. Different cities can try different answers. There is one city in CA that does not have a homeless problem.
I'm wondering if it would be more useful to show some cities that are not Tokyo or even in Japan or the East. The structured environment there is safe and efficient, sure, but at a cost. A technocrat's dream, but hardly utopia. The cultural and bureaucratic rigidity is unlikely to be compatible with the more individualistic values of the West. Socially it would probably be repulsive to most Americans. The work ethic is unrelenting and many many men just work and then get ridiculously drunk. Nobody wants to have sex, so the guys get sex dolls and AI girlfriends. Their fertility rate is only 1.26. Anyway, I'm completely unwilling to hold up Tokyo as a shining example of what I want our cities to be. Not to say I'm not completely fed up with progressive cities. I live in Seattle (for 45 years) and every day I consider relocating to someplace where at least the rule of law prevails. I agree with your idea to not have uniparties in charge. Seattle certainly needs to get more moderate Ds and moderate Rs into office. But we're stuck in perpetual adolescence it seems.
Bangkok is certainly unstructured and hardly bureaucratically rigid. Judging by traffic people do as they please. A quarter of the people grew up speaking a language different than Thai. Sex is not something they avoid. Yet one can walk through the poorest neighborhoods in the middle of the night. Min wage won't get you a mid range apartment but it certainly covers a cheap one. Seattle can do it too.
Mark - good column and I like you but there is NO WAY IN GODs GOOD NAME democrats (or anyone) will give up absolute political control.
I’ve lived in : Atlanta, Chicago, nyc, Seattle, Miami and now Boston in my life. Miami was the only Republican run city and was the best run one (not saying alot).
Democrats I hate to say - today truly can not run anything other than an insane asylum.
Sadly the gop is only marginally better but at least better.
As long as democrats favor the color of ones skin (or the genitalia of the person they sleep with) over the competence of their character, we are doomed. Only when the public revolts because they can’t stand it any more (gulianni and Bloomberg) will change come. And sadly it’s only temporary (who doesn’t remember how glorious de blaso’s reign was??)
It is pretty easy to write #1 but it's not like no one in my town, Chicago, has ever thought that it would be nice to reduce crime before. Eliminating crime and drugs is not as easy as saying it should happen. As to #3, Chicago elections are non-partisan but basically featured a race between the teachers union candidate and the police union candidate last time. The teachers union candidate won and will probably not be re-elected.
I could be wrong, but it is my understanding that Chicago is the only US city that no longer considers weight, in drug charges. A friend that lives there, jokes you can be caught with a semi truck full of dope, and only held pretrial, if you drive over a Pritzker, while driving it into Chicago. Sitting in the middle of the country, with lax drug laws, and the worst bail laws in the the US, is a recipe to increase most other forms of crime.
As a long-time municipal government employee with experience as a professional engineer, public works director, and assistant City Manager in a small city near a large one, I have to say that this is the worst article I have read on this platform.
You are incredibly ignorant on how cities work, and the impact of state laws on cities in most US states. In most US states, municipal governments are political subdivisions of the state, with state law having major impacts on what cities can and cannot do. Your article oversimplified a very complex problem into the same old, tired, and factless argument that leftists ruin everything.
It really is despicable that you wrote this without educating yourself on the very simple reality of state control of transportation systems, tax systems, and public transit funding.
You don't even touch on the big city movement to successfully create more open space, greenspace, walkable environments, and public spaces - there have been some really great quality of life projects happening in major cities across America, and you don't even touch on it.
I'm sorry man, but your really need to delete this article, or completley rewrite it. If you would like some help improving it, I would be happy to help give you some fact-based information which I think would have a huge impact on most of the arguments you make.
You are correct - Japanese culture is completley different, and in some ways, results in superior outcomes in large Japanese cities in certain specific ways - but it is not an across the board superior system. It is far more complex than that. You completley ignore some of the very serious problems in major Japanese cities. Sure, they are different from our problems, but not less significant. Are you aware of the incredibly significant impacts Japanese cities and culture have on true quality of life for Japanese people? See, in Japamese culture, anger, depression, and failure are internalized - there are tens of thousands of Japanese people living in tiny closets in large cities, trying to find work, separated from their families, in severe depression because of their perceived failure. This model has huge impacts on wellness and wellbeing - hence the incredibly high suicide rates Japanese men have. I could go on, but in a commen section that is not productive.
Lastly, your position is just really shallow - I mean, I can pick a random large city in any country, compare it to one in a different country, and there are going to be a whole lot of deep reasons why over 100+ years, things ended up the way they are... culture, wars, economics, natural resources, access to materials, funding mechanisms, and funding priorities all come into play here.
I really hope you take another look at this topic and do more research and correct yourself. Your arguments and blame in this article are just really awful. Sorry buddy - it is really really terrible work on yoir part - and I know you are a very intelligent person who has written some great stuff in the past.
Sorry, but isn't crime going down in the US? According to Jeff Asher at "Jeff-alytics", crimes against both persons and property are at multi-decade lows. Homicides spiked in 2020 (while Trump was POTUS and COVID was about) but are now receding back to pre-pandemic levels Car theft spiked due entirely to an on-line video that demonstrated how easy it was to steal Kias and Hyundais, now a subject to a class action suit against the automakers. https://jasher.substack.com/p/vehicle-based-crime-plunged-in-2024
I agree that the homeless problem has been handled poorly. Involuntary in-patient treatment for non-compliance with out-patient medication for opiate addiction and schizophrenia should go a long was towards dealing with the worst aspects, but this will cost money. We should have tent villages with communal bathrooms, showers, trash collection, mail boxes, etc, with 24hr/day supervision for them to live in, but will also cost money.
Re: affordable housing and social anomie, IMHO this problem is due to the single family dwelling / automobile-centric development pattern in post-WW2 North America. Getting rid of R1 zoning, "free parking"/parking requirements (Donald Shoup RIP), building public transportation and other public spaces, and Georgist Land Value Taxation like in Singapore (look it up) would go a long way to solve these problems.
The world is quite different for people of different IQ levels. And there isn't much that can be done about it. Do all you want about criminal behavior, but people with low IQs will still engage in more of it.
Halpin part 2 needs to be the transition of your precious Tokyo from a U.S. style blue urban hellscape to the urban utopia you pine for.., oh that’s right it never went through that phase
I think it was in Ezra's article that I read an amazing statistic about Tokyo.
Two people working for min wage full time can afford to live in a midrange 2 bedroom apartment in most places in Tokyo.
When I do the math using US wages, 2x min, times 40, times 4 weeks, minus SS taxes, times a third which is the most anyone should spend on a place to live, I come up with $669 dollars a month. That's for a midrange apartment, not the cheapest. In an extremely safe clean city.
When I do the math backwards an average apartment in NYC is $4,000. A couple would need a min wage of $41 per person to afford the same, and eliminate almost all crime, homelessness, drug use, etc.
Excellent reporting. We once attended a professional baseball game in Japan, and watched in amazement, when everyone in the stadium began to help clean, after the game ended. Every scrap of trash was picked up. Fans brought rags, to wipe down their seats.
Cultural differences aside, crime has to be the starting point, if US cities are to rise from the ashes. Most Americans do not realize in many Blue cities, thanks to bail reform, if a criminal is not standing over a dead body when arrested, there is little chance of pretrial incarceration.
Once, those accused of rape or child molestation, crimes with very high recidivism rates, were nearly always held pretrial, without bail, or released only on a very high bail. Now even those accused of violent and sexual crimes, often walk out of the police station, before their paperwork is finished. The justice system relying on the honor of the accused, to return to stand trial.
Toss in joke jail sentences, even when there are convictions. The 2 illegal immigrants charged with the murder of an LA father a few days ago, had been convicted of numerous serious CA felonies, but never saw the inside of a prison. They spent mere months in County lock up, before being released. To say nothing of the dozen times, they could have been deported. The man's wife is now facing cancer alone, as she attempts to raise 2 young children, with her husband, the family's sole breadwinner, gone forever.
We know how to end the chaos. Bring back broken window policing. Charge and incarcerate the maximum. Most Americans and migrants are law abiding, but tolerating the few that commit dozens of crimes without real punishment, leaves the majority of the law abiding, at the mercy of the criminal few.
How to stop the chaos my man… turn off Fox News
We see all of the chaos in our country, and never once have watched Fox News.
It is worth pondering why European cities used to work like Tokyo but now look more like American cities. Not the worst American cities but probably the mid-range. It was the mayor of London that said something like crime and terrorism is a necessary component of city life and people should just accept that. At any rate, crime is out of control and I think no-go areas is a term coined in France. I don't know if they have single party government but they have made much the same bad choices as American cities with the same results. American drivers may seem crazy to Japanese but they are sane compared to Europeans. Rome is completely insane though I have been told that Athens is worse. The urban-rural divide is as bad if not worse. Urban disorder is rampant though of a somewhat different character than American disorder-more ideological lunacy than clinical lunacy.
This is all common sense that is ignored too often in too many places (see California coastal cities). One caveat to incentivizing cities to increase housing stock is preserving the character of historic neighborhoods. Arlington, VA, my former home, is going through a controversy around their "Missing Middle" initiative to allow multi-housing units to be built in historic (more than 50 years old) single-family neighborhoods. NIMBY instincts take over in a hurry, especially when the infrastructure is already stressed from traffic and people. I'm not sure what the answer to that is, but in Arlington and its close proximity to DC, moving federal government jobs outside the beltway might actually help.
I wish people would listen to this. We live in a suburb of a major city that is seriously so overrun with crime that people from that city will tell you not to go there after dark and even during the day to certain areas. I think I would absolutely love living in a city, especially with my disabled adult son. He loves art museums and so do I. However, we can't even consider it. I wish we had well ordered, safe cities.
I expect that the 3 goals you list are shared by the vast majority of people living in US cities, regardless of party affiliation, including me. Tokyo is overwhelmingly a mono-racial society with 98% of the population being ethnic Japanese, and the remaining 2% being Korean, Chinese, Philippine, British, American, Brazilian, and Peruvian. That kind of homogeneity describes nowhere in the US.
Japan opened up to immigration a long time ago., mostly from other Asian countries so non-locals can't tell the newcomers from the native born. says Noah Smith
Multiculturalism combined with liberal progressives running government derives chaos and decline.
Every country where the cities are well run have populations that are culturally and ethnically homogeneous. Many of those cities are run by people that match up ideologically with American liberal progressives and have strong socialist leanings (although all of them also have strong capitalist leanings).
It is only when you have both... liberal progressive power control of government, and cultural and ethnic heterogeneous populations that things go to crap.
Look at London for example.
It is easy to understand why. People from other places don't have the same connection with the place... the same love of place... the same care of place. They see themselves as outsiders with part of their alliance remaining with the place they are from. Their lack of care results in bad behavior... more crime, graffiti... less compliance with the rules of conduct that help a place be more cohesive and well run. Instead of their contribution to the greater good, they exploit every loophole and opportunity to take. It is human nature.
Multiculturalism is the thing that we should eliminate. Because eliminating liberal progressives in control of major cities is impossible.
These are good adjectives describing what the solutions should yield. What are the nouns specifying actual steps to get us there?
..sclerotic bureaucracies ...Solution Eliminate civil service.
One-party regimes: There are legislatures. No party may hold more than 40% of the seats. (idea courtesy Leland Modesitt, Jr in a series of novels) Civil service is in some part replaced by patronage appointments.
These are suggestions of the needed scope, not necessarily the right answers. Different cities can try different answers. There is one city in CA that does not have a homeless problem.
If aliens landed on our planet I would take them to Tokyo to show them what humans are capable of.
You should probably include Auschwitz on your tour too to show them the range.
Since I'm in charge of the tour, I'm only showing them the best we humans are capable of.
I'm wondering if it would be more useful to show some cities that are not Tokyo or even in Japan or the East. The structured environment there is safe and efficient, sure, but at a cost. A technocrat's dream, but hardly utopia. The cultural and bureaucratic rigidity is unlikely to be compatible with the more individualistic values of the West. Socially it would probably be repulsive to most Americans. The work ethic is unrelenting and many many men just work and then get ridiculously drunk. Nobody wants to have sex, so the guys get sex dolls and AI girlfriends. Their fertility rate is only 1.26. Anyway, I'm completely unwilling to hold up Tokyo as a shining example of what I want our cities to be. Not to say I'm not completely fed up with progressive cities. I live in Seattle (for 45 years) and every day I consider relocating to someplace where at least the rule of law prevails. I agree with your idea to not have uniparties in charge. Seattle certainly needs to get more moderate Ds and moderate Rs into office. But we're stuck in perpetual adolescence it seems.
Bangkok is certainly unstructured and hardly bureaucratically rigid. Judging by traffic people do as they please. A quarter of the people grew up speaking a language different than Thai. Sex is not something they avoid. Yet one can walk through the poorest neighborhoods in the middle of the night. Min wage won't get you a mid range apartment but it certainly covers a cheap one. Seattle can do it too.
Mark - good column and I like you but there is NO WAY IN GODs GOOD NAME democrats (or anyone) will give up absolute political control.
I’ve lived in : Atlanta, Chicago, nyc, Seattle, Miami and now Boston in my life. Miami was the only Republican run city and was the best run one (not saying alot).
Democrats I hate to say - today truly can not run anything other than an insane asylum.
Sadly the gop is only marginally better but at least better.
As long as democrats favor the color of ones skin (or the genitalia of the person they sleep with) over the competence of their character, we are doomed. Only when the public revolts because they can’t stand it any more (gulianni and Bloomberg) will change come. And sadly it’s only temporary (who doesn’t remember how glorious de blaso’s reign was??)
It is pretty easy to write #1 but it's not like no one in my town, Chicago, has ever thought that it would be nice to reduce crime before. Eliminating crime and drugs is not as easy as saying it should happen. As to #3, Chicago elections are non-partisan but basically featured a race between the teachers union candidate and the police union candidate last time. The teachers union candidate won and will probably not be re-elected.
I could be wrong, but it is my understanding that Chicago is the only US city that no longer considers weight, in drug charges. A friend that lives there, jokes you can be caught with a semi truck full of dope, and only held pretrial, if you drive over a Pritzker, while driving it into Chicago. Sitting in the middle of the country, with lax drug laws, and the worst bail laws in the the US, is a recipe to increase most other forms of crime.
Ya yer wrong
John,
As a long-time municipal government employee with experience as a professional engineer, public works director, and assistant City Manager in a small city near a large one, I have to say that this is the worst article I have read on this platform.
You are incredibly ignorant on how cities work, and the impact of state laws on cities in most US states. In most US states, municipal governments are political subdivisions of the state, with state law having major impacts on what cities can and cannot do. Your article oversimplified a very complex problem into the same old, tired, and factless argument that leftists ruin everything.
It really is despicable that you wrote this without educating yourself on the very simple reality of state control of transportation systems, tax systems, and public transit funding.
You don't even touch on the big city movement to successfully create more open space, greenspace, walkable environments, and public spaces - there have been some really great quality of life projects happening in major cities across America, and you don't even touch on it.
I'm sorry man, but your really need to delete this article, or completley rewrite it. If you would like some help improving it, I would be happy to help give you some fact-based information which I think would have a huge impact on most of the arguments you make.
You are correct - Japanese culture is completley different, and in some ways, results in superior outcomes in large Japanese cities in certain specific ways - but it is not an across the board superior system. It is far more complex than that. You completley ignore some of the very serious problems in major Japanese cities. Sure, they are different from our problems, but not less significant. Are you aware of the incredibly significant impacts Japanese cities and culture have on true quality of life for Japanese people? See, in Japamese culture, anger, depression, and failure are internalized - there are tens of thousands of Japanese people living in tiny closets in large cities, trying to find work, separated from their families, in severe depression because of their perceived failure. This model has huge impacts on wellness and wellbeing - hence the incredibly high suicide rates Japanese men have. I could go on, but in a commen section that is not productive.
Lastly, your position is just really shallow - I mean, I can pick a random large city in any country, compare it to one in a different country, and there are going to be a whole lot of deep reasons why over 100+ years, things ended up the way they are... culture, wars, economics, natural resources, access to materials, funding mechanisms, and funding priorities all come into play here.
I really hope you take another look at this topic and do more research and correct yourself. Your arguments and blame in this article are just really awful. Sorry buddy - it is really really terrible work on yoir part - and I know you are a very intelligent person who has written some great stuff in the past.
Sorry, but isn't crime going down in the US? According to Jeff Asher at "Jeff-alytics", crimes against both persons and property are at multi-decade lows. Homicides spiked in 2020 (while Trump was POTUS and COVID was about) but are now receding back to pre-pandemic levels Car theft spiked due entirely to an on-line video that demonstrated how easy it was to steal Kias and Hyundais, now a subject to a class action suit against the automakers. https://jasher.substack.com/p/vehicle-based-crime-plunged-in-2024
There was a video discussion on the Liberal Patriot not long ago that was disappointing in how superficial it was in that it didn't seem to be based in statistical reality. https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/policing-perceptions-crime-stats
I agree that the homeless problem has been handled poorly. Involuntary in-patient treatment for non-compliance with out-patient medication for opiate addiction and schizophrenia should go a long was towards dealing with the worst aspects, but this will cost money. We should have tent villages with communal bathrooms, showers, trash collection, mail boxes, etc, with 24hr/day supervision for them to live in, but will also cost money.
Re: affordable housing and social anomie, IMHO this problem is due to the single family dwelling / automobile-centric development pattern in post-WW2 North America. Getting rid of R1 zoning, "free parking"/parking requirements (Donald Shoup RIP), building public transportation and other public spaces, and Georgist Land Value Taxation like in Singapore (look it up) would go a long way to solve these problems.
It can hardly even be mentioned these days, but everybody knows it when they are whispering it: IQ.
Japan has the highest average IQ (https://www.tokyoweekender.com/japan-life/news-and-opinion/japan-tops-iq-list-as-worlds-smartest-nation/)
Criminals have low IQs.
The world is quite different for people of different IQ levels. And there isn't much that can be done about it. Do all you want about criminal behavior, but people with low IQs will still engage in more of it.
Halpin part 2 needs to be the transition of your precious Tokyo from a U.S. style blue urban hellscape to the urban utopia you pine for.., oh that’s right it never went through that phase