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Backyard Coffee and Jazz in Kyoto

(thedeletedscenes.substack.com)
592 points wyclif | 1 comments | 23 Jun 25 14:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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nomilk ◴[23 Jun 25 17:59 UTC] No.44358364[source]▶
> on the vibrant business and street culture in Japanese cities and the seemingly very, very low barriers to entry for regular people to participate.

An astute observation that allowing markets to operate without onerous licensing schemes and regulations often has wonderful upsides, allowing quirky and niche interests to survive and even flourish.

A similar situation was true of Melbourne's small bar scene vs Sydney's. Sydney's more expensive/onerous licensing requirements were prohibitive for tiny bars. Whereas Melbourne's licensing was more permissive and less expensive, resulting in an abundance of quirky and interesting venues. Possibly my favourite example was a tiny indy video game bar (it shut down during covid, I think). https://barsk.com.au/skgames/?p=done

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lwansbrough ◴[23 Jun 25 19:41 UTC] No.44359274[source]▶
North Americans: the city planners are ruining your life in ways you didn't even know could exist.
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kurthr ◴[23 Jun 25 19:51 UTC] No.44359364[source]▶
I'm all for reducing permit requirements, but realisitically these would be used by McDo and Starbux to externalize more costs while increasing their quarterly profit. Really, you need to have something that is trusted and rational without corporate corruption, which Japan nominally is. The US is going the opposite direction from that.
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mikem170 ◴[23 Jun 25 21:30 UTC] No.44360345[source]▶
It's my understanding that houses in Japan are zoned to allow a percentage of the space to be used for a low-impact business, like the coffee shop in the article, and that bigger businesses are allowed on the bigger roads and in dedicated commercial/industrial districts. Also most houses can be converted to triplexes, too. This helps with density, encouraging more businesses nearby, less need for cars, better quality of social life, etc.

I see what you mean about the potential for abuse - maybe Big Money would buy all the houses and run small businesses from them? But regulations or taxes could be used to dissuade them. Theoretically, anyways.

I wondered if Japan does anything along those lines to avoid the problems you mentioned, but google ain't what it used to be and I wasn't able to find specifics.

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1. ehnto ◴[24 Jun 25 03:29 UTC] No.44362636[source]▶
I understand that to be one of the differences in approach to zoning, zones and buildings are considered on a spectrum of "impact". A high impact building like an industrial plant shouldn't be too close to low impact buildings like a single dwelling. But because it's a spectrum you get a natural mix of low, medium, and high impact buildings. A large residential complex might be considered medium impact and so can go next to a shopping complex that is also medium to high impact etc.

I would imagine that a great deal of Tokyo's megalopolis fits nicely in the medium impact zone, allowing housing, small scale manufacturing and commerce to mingle in an organic way.