The city became the biggest in the world partly because it's affordable (and it's affordable partly because it's the biggest).
Do you know that old New Yorker cover that shows the city stretching to the Hudson River and, beyond it, nothing but grass until the Pacific Ocean? |
A few years ago, I wrote a piece about Minneapolis's efforts to build more housing and the lessons that other cities — including New York City, which desperately needs to build more housing — might learn. I received several notes from New Yorkers telling me more or less politely that Minneapolis was not what folks in the real estate business call a "good comp." |
Last year, when I wrote about California's promising efforts to build more housing, I received similar responses. Once again, I heard from people who did not think New York City had anything to learn from a place with, as they saw it, no real cities. |
So earlier this summer, I decided to cross the Pacific and write about the lessons from the world's biggest city: Tokyo. |
Big cities in the developed world have largely stopped developing. Paris is a living museum of the 19th century; New York City is a living museum of the 20th century. But Tokyo has continued to grow and to change. It has remained affordable by becoming the world's largest city. It has become the world's largest city by remaining affordable. |
The numbers are impressive, but what I really wanted to understand, and to share with readers, were the benefits and costs of life in a city where affordable housing is abundant. |
As I spent time in Tokyo and talked with its residents, I was increasingly struck by the connection between relatively low housing costs and the city's dense and defining fabric of small businesses: six-seat restaurants and neighborhood stores and craft workshops. |
Building housing doesn't just allow people to participate in the life of the city. It also creates that city — the kind of place New York used to be, and could be again. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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