I went to a cafe in kyoto near the bamboo forest where it was literally an old ladies house and in the moment, being there conjured deep resentment within me towards urban planners and zoning.
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In the US our zoning is done very restrictively: in this place you can build a detached single family home with this kind of set back and up to this height. In this spot you can build low density commercial. Etc you can ONLY build what the zoning board says. Then there are also complications from HUD, like they dont give FHA loans for condos or if developments have straight roads.
In japan the national government has a zoning policy. The most common zoning is “light industrial”. But if you have a zoning policy, you can build anything at that level or below. So in light industrial you can build a coffee shop, or a house or an apartment or a machine shop.