Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities

Honestly, even though I love the idea of Japan and the idealized vision of Japan that's often presented in the media, I can't help thinking that a lot of this stuff can be found much closer to home in Europe. The BBC didn't need to go all the way to Tokyo - they could find this in pretty much any Spanish city.

The only people in the background that I could see were people, young and old, travelling to and from school, offices, workplaces and so on.

The video was long and if i were to travel one day to Tokyo i would definitely follow the same route. Fresh air, nature, backstreets, all sorts of engineering and views.

How is it possible that a city of 35M in the heart of Tokyo, he barely passed a few bicycles and people outdoors enjoying life during a trip that went all over the place for hours ?

Is that living ?

As western tourists always seem to find out when they land with their gigantic suitcases, many Tokyo train stations require stairs to enter or exit.

Before reading the article, I guessed that it would ultimately be about human cooperation. Most discussions about human activities seem to come back to how people work together and respect shared spaces.

I also think this idea extends to environmental problems. In the end, they still boil down to human cooperation. If we want to solve environmental problems, we first have to solve problems of human cooperation. Simply put, to reduce conflict between humans and nature, we must first reduce conflict among humans.

Some cities in Europe have town-centers in every neighborhood within walkable distance. This is extremely valuable for a livable city.

Getting to work without car requires good public transport. Again, some European cities very good at this.

Cities and any polity or group of people cannot be created by some abstract rules or enforced. You need it to be composed of individuals who are disposed to act harmoniously with each other and have a culture (which is basically a bunch of jigging to aid harmonious interactions, you cannot create top down the manners you don't want people to violate). Everyone acting in their own self-interest ends up creating a harmonious organization because all of their self-interest corresponds such that their self interest is reflected in the good of the whole.

Just as a feedback system, if there is something wrong in a city or organization if the person who encounters it sees it as contrary to their own self interest and is capable of dealing with it themselves they will.

If this internal principle does not exist you rely on top down surveillance and enforcement which is basically delusional if it works will only be through violent enforcement against the people. Again in terms of a feedback system, if the polity is constructed out of a bunch of individuals who have a self-interest that corresponds with the good of the whole, there is no need to propagate that information to some manager. The persons directly involved with it are capable of dealing with it mindful of it's impact on the good of the whole because it's good for them. If you do not have that you would need a system of management, evaluation, and enforcement which basically demands the disruption in question is something easy to communicate and form policies around. Anything that cannot be just cannot be dealt with and the system falls under it's own weight. That's why technocracy is a delusion that is always doomed to fail, if the individual units in a system are unable to deal with aberrations on their own it requires the whole mass of bureaucracy to evaluate, construct policies, enforce etc. That is only capable of handling anything which is understandable to that kind of system, which is a small fraction of actual disruptions.

I appreciate the efforts of people trying to emulate the positives of Japanese cities mimicking the externals of it and enforcing it on other people is the opposite of any actual organic system and itself prohibits the more dynamic system that is required for an actually stable polity. If someone sees a wallet on the street they have to see it as their own self-interest not to steal it. If people do not see themselves as having a shared self-interest with those around them there is no enforcement or rules or policies that can make that polity stable or harmonious.

The BBC forgot - or, as is more likely, refused to mention - rule #0: ensure a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour.

To the person or persons who flagged this comment, please explain. What is it that got you to flag this comment? If there is one thing Japan is known for it is for having a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour. Is the truth so hard to accept that it needs flagging? Those Japanese cities without Japanese culture would look totally different and in some ways not nearly as 'liveable', in other ways probably more interesting.

If you don't agree with a comment there is the reply link to let us know. This is a discussion site after all. If you just don't like a comment without being able to put into words why just give it some more thought, the words may come.

Well - the article does not talk about the more recent hostility to gaijin in Japan.

Example (article) from a year ago:

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/09/21/j...

You can find similar articles by other media outlets. Japan has changed - and is changing. I've also noticed this on youtube, e. g. Paolo from Tokyo suddenly praising new restrictive laws. That was a strong indicator that Japan really fundamentally changed here. An old chinese stratagem is to hide the dagger behind the smile: https://www.echineselearning.com/blog/chinese-slang-hide-a-d...

I am not in any way applying that this applies to all japanese as such, of course; but I am more referring here to a trend where things are changing to the worse. Also, cost of living is high and there is an overcrowding problem in many of the cities. Even then I think the only city that would interest me is Tokio.