A couple months ago (while I was living in Phoenix, Arizona), I was listening to traffic reports on the radio, while driving in my luxury 4-door sedan, a genuine 1995 Saturn Sl1.
While driving on the freeway and trying to get around traffic I started wondering about the actual source of the problem. Most of the time while driving in your car, it’s usually far too late to listen to a traffic report that matters (by the time you’re listening to it, you’re already stuck in traffic). But… why does traffic have to happen especially at 9AM and 5PM? Is it necessary for the majority of people to go to work at those hours? Is it more efficient? Why am I driving 15-20 minutes in a car to get to the closest grocery store in Phoenix anyway? (if you’re familiar with the layout of Phoenix, you’ll know what I’m referring to, if not, check a suburban map some time 
)
Finding patches (traffic reports) to minor problems (traffic) when not looking at the root (driving long distances for essentials, the majority of employees starting and leaving at the same time). I’m not going to make the correlation of Eastern versus Western medicine… because that would be silly.
But why we are driving cars around and killing ourselves every day to try and get to work faster at 9am and planning our lives around it?
Perhaps this isn’t the way life has to be for us. Perhaps stepping back and looking at everything from another perspective will allow you to see clearly that maybe even money isn’t even necessary to thrive or raise those 6 kids you (think you) had too early. Perhaps you dont need to eat out every day. Perhaps I use the word perhaps too much.
Tokyo (where I’m currently living) is the size of Phoenix and has 23 million people stuffed into it. That’s a bunch-load more than most suburban/urban capitals in the states, and they have an excellent public transportation system. How did that happen? On the flip-side, Budapest (where I lived for three years) is smaller than Phoenix in size (and way less people than Tokyo, obviously), and has a terrible public transportation system… BUT I never used a car while I lived there and never once ran into traffic problems.
What’s my point?
Back in the USA… for now.
Merry Christmas, New Developments, and Upcoming Articles
Budapest, Warsaw, Chicago, Phoenix, Jetlag
The Lazy Man’s Way to Tokyo, Day 19
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Your point is you drank too much saki last night which induced a moment of perfect clarity in which you were able to discern the intrinsic complexities of traffic and the very base of its creation but didn’t decide to write about it until you woke up and it was sligtly fuzzy again. Perhaps.
I haven’t drank sake in a week or so do to my recent illness and general business. But you may be on to something there, since I wrote the first half in Phoenix, it’s entirely possible.
Perhaps
Necessity is the mother of invention, the Japanese are tech savvy and have been dealing with space constraints for a while whereas Americans aren’t crammed yet and, hence, have the luxury of being lazy when it comes to transportation planning. As far as Budapest goes, I don’t know.
But… but, where they dealing with space constraints since ancient times? Even on this supposedly tiny island, when I look at the countryside of Japan, there is a crap-load of wide-open untouched land (you know, like that green stuff they keep showing in the background of movies), just ripe for turning into a giant parking lot of shopping mall… but they never did. And the houses they built have been small dating back until forever, why didn’t they expand out and stretch their legs more? Necessity? Laziness?
I’m not entirely certain, but my guess would be it’s cultural. Be it tradition (it was easier to build small abodes when technology was limited and they continued to keep with that mentality as their culture progressed) or just a respect for nature. Another thing to keep in mind is when the USA was founded, it was by people already technologically advanced. I know that sentence doesn’t make sense so let me elaborate. In Japan, they’ve got more than 2000 years of history, starting with 600 B.C. tools/equipment/weapons/etc., whereas the US only has a couple hundred (and started with technology much more advanced compared to B.C. standards). I think the mindsets were vastly different. Am I making sense? It makes sense in my head but I don’t know if it’s coming out right. As I’m writing this, I’m thinking about how, going from west to east, cities grow more condensed in the US. Maybe as the 13 colonies expanded, people just got greedy for more land and that’s where the sprawling-mentality began.
B-Dawg may have a point in his example of metropolises becoming more spread out as you head west from the east where America was founded. In the east you have NYC, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Boston, condensed cities with skyscrapers galore. Head further west and you do not see another one until you make it to the west coast in L.A. and Seattle where again people crammed themselves into the coast. I am thinking it is a matter of being short on land and preserving the beautiful country of Japan that limits the expansion of Tokyo.
My question is do the Japanese build small buildings because they are regarded as short in comparison to the world or are they shorter because they built their buildings small since ancient Japan?
I’m thinking people were cold and they wanted to live closer to each other to save on heating
Also applies to the East Coast vs West Coast example above, with the exception of Los Angeles. Too many factors to think about… but I think you may be right to some extent. I think a sense of community and being within closer walking distance to everything you need (grocery, bank, etc) mattered as well.
Most European cities (especially urban ones) are very similarly laid out with small apartments/houses and walking distances to everything as well.
Or it could just be that the Japanese are the smartest people on this planet.
There are dumb people in every country. It’s part of the 80/20 rule