Asian cities will often have buildings that look something like this:

In this particular case -- Tokyo -- the building type is referred to as zakkyo. And apparently, it is something that emerged over time:

Another is the city’s iconic multistory zakkyo buildings covered in neon signs, like those lining the famous Yasukuni Avenue, which house a spectacular variety of businesses. Zakkyo largely started out as office buildings and transformed over time to house everything from mahjong parlors to karaoke boxes. Almazán and McReynolds point out that these buildings offer a density of destinations rarely found in the West because they offer a vertical—not just a horizontal— dimension to walkability, with elevators that open onto the street and take customers directly up to businesses. Zakkyo are on narrow lots that pull pedestrians along the streets that they line. Unlike larger U.S. office buildings, their small lot sizes also facilitate the easy reuse of zakkyo space for different purposes.

Okay, so small lot sizes seem to help. But what else is needed? Is there a world where this is possible anywhere in the West? It's probably hard to imagine. Conventional real estate wisdom would tell you that multi-storey retail buildings don't work.

But they work in Tokyo, and probably for two reasons. The first is density. Tokyo is dense and I am told that zakkyo buildings tend to emerge around train stations, where foot traffic is high and people are generally looking for things to do and/or consume.

The second has to do with rules. Tokyo has an overall policy framework that allows for micro-spaces and micro-businesses. Said oppositely, Tokyo hasn't erected so many barriers that the only way to open a business is with scale and lots of money.

Liquor licenses are a perfect example:

So maybe these are possible in the West, after all. Assuming you have any sort of meaningful pedestrian density, the only real prerequisite might be to just get out of the way of small business.

And I think this is a powerful way to think about cities. We often think about doing new things to elicit certain outcomes. But what outcomes are we missing out on and not seeing because of the rules that we've already put in place?

Many of you probably didn't click through on this link in yesterday's post, but it was a link to a book called Emergent Tokyo -- Designing the Spontaneous City. What this book is largely about is the idea that Tokyo -- usually considered to be the largest urban region in the world -- is more the result of bottom-up actions than top-down actions. In other words, it is a kind of complex and self-organizing system.

Some of you may be reading this and thinking that the result would be chaos. But the opposite is, in fact, true. Despite being the largest urban agglomeration in the world, Tokyo is consistently viewed as one of the most livable big cities in the world. How is that possible?

One topic that we've been talking about on this blog recently is the planning approach of mandating ground-floor retail in new developments. While certainly good intentioned, this is one example of top-down planning. We are saying, "retail needs to go here because."

The problem, as we have talked about, is that the market may not want it. It may not actually be viable or desirable. Of course, it is a delicate situation. Because if you don't provision for it, then you might block it from ever being possible on sites where it clearly makes sense. (We spoke specifically about this, here.)

There is also the opposite question of: where are we not allowing retail?

Maybe there are places where retail activity would be viable today, except it's currently not permitted. One concrete example of this is Toronto's laneways. Right now, we only allow residential (throughout our "Neighbourhoods"). But there many people, including myself and planner Blair Scorgie, who have been arguing that they should be mixed-use:

Would office and retail uses actually work in Toronto's residential laneways? I frankly don't know. Because they're not allowed today, it's largely impossible to know. If we allowed these uses and nothing happened, then we'd have a better idea that there's little demand for it. (I say a better idea because there still could be other obstacles in the way.)

On the other hand if we decided to mandate non-residential uses in our laneways and nobody did anything, two things might then happen. One, we'd be similarly led to believe that there's little to no demand. And two, we'd probably be sacrificing the residential use, for which we can say today there is clear demand.

There are also the considerations that demand will almost certainly change over time and be inconsistent across different locations. For instance, maybe retail doesn't work in this laneway, but it will work in that laneway. Can we actually plan for this?

Top-down approaches generally assume that we know all or many of the answers. It presumes that we know that this street should have ground-floor retail and this street should not. It's also about control. More bottom-up approaches admit that it's impossible to plan for everything and that there could be latent potential that we're not even thinking about.

Of course, there is something naturally unsettling about this approach because it is, by definition, unknowable. And it relinquishes a certain amount of control. Maybe a restaurant will appear here or maybe it won't. Maybe someone will open a small office in this laneway or maybe they won't. Either way, the potential for change exists.

But I think this should be seen as empowering, transparent, and highly efficient. It is a way of reducing the barriers to entry and allowing more urban creativity and ambition to shrine through. I believe, for example, that if we made it easier, cheaper, and possible to open a small restaurant (perhaps in a laneway), we would have more and overall better restaurants in the city.

And as we have seen in the case of Tokyo, the result of more flexibility is not necessarily chaos. It can be a highly livable city that has people wondering, "how did they manage to plan such a large city so well?"

Photo by Kentaro Toma on Unsplash

Asian cities will often have buildings that look something like this:

In this particular case -- Tokyo -- the building type is referred to as zakkyo. And apparently, it is something that emerged over time:

Another is the city’s iconic multistory zakkyo buildings covered in neon signs, like those lining the famous Yasukuni Avenue, which house a spectacular variety of businesses. Zakkyo largely started out as office buildings and transformed over time to house everything from mahjong parlors to karaoke boxes. Almazán and McReynolds point out that these buildings offer a density of destinations rarely found in the West because they offer a vertical—not just a horizontal— dimension to walkability, with elevators that open onto the street and take customers directly up to businesses. Zakkyo are on narrow lots that pull pedestrians along the streets that they line. Unlike larger U.S. office buildings, their small lot sizes also facilitate the easy reuse of zakkyo space for different purposes.

Okay, so small lot sizes seem to help. But what else is needed? Is there a world where this is possible anywhere in the West? It's probably hard to imagine. Conventional real estate wisdom would tell you that multi-storey retail buildings don't work.

But they work in Tokyo, and probably for two reasons. The first is density. Tokyo is dense and I am told that zakkyo buildings tend to emerge around train stations, where foot traffic is high and people are generally looking for things to do and/or consume.

The second has to do with rules. Tokyo has an overall policy framework that allows for micro-spaces and micro-businesses. Said oppositely, Tokyo hasn't erected so many barriers that the only way to open a business is with scale and lots of money.

Liquor licenses are a perfect example:

So maybe these are possible in the West, after all. Assuming you have any sort of meaningful pedestrian density, the only real prerequisite might be to just get out of the way of small business.

And I think this is a powerful way to think about cities. We often think about doing new things to elicit certain outcomes. But what outcomes are we missing out on and not seeing because of the rules that we've already put in place?

Many of you probably didn't click through on this link in yesterday's post, but it was a link to a book called Emergent Tokyo -- Designing the Spontaneous City. What this book is largely about is the idea that Tokyo -- usually considered to be the largest urban region in the world -- is more the result of bottom-up actions than top-down actions. In other words, it is a kind of complex and self-organizing system.

Some of you may be reading this and thinking that the result would be chaos. But the opposite is, in fact, true. Despite being the largest urban agglomeration in the world, Tokyo is consistently viewed as one of the most livable big cities in the world. How is that possible?

One topic that we've been talking about on this blog recently is the planning approach of mandating ground-floor retail in new developments. While certainly good intentioned, this is one example of top-down planning. We are saying, "retail needs to go here because."

The problem, as we have talked about, is that the market may not want it. It may not actually be viable or desirable. Of course, it is a delicate situation. Because if you don't provision for it, then you might block it from ever being possible on sites where it clearly makes sense. (We spoke specifically about this, here.)

There is also the opposite question of: where are we not allowing retail?

Maybe there are places where retail activity would be viable today, except it's currently not permitted. One concrete example of this is Toronto's laneways. Right now, we only allow residential (throughout our "Neighbourhoods"). But there many people, including myself and planner Blair Scorgie, who have been arguing that they should be mixed-use:

Would office and retail uses actually work in Toronto's residential laneways? I frankly don't know. Because they're not allowed today, it's largely impossible to know. If we allowed these uses and nothing happened, then we'd have a better idea that there's little demand for it. (I say a better idea because there still could be other obstacles in the way.)

On the other hand if we decided to mandate non-residential uses in our laneways and nobody did anything, two things might then happen. One, we'd be similarly led to believe that there's little to no demand. And two, we'd probably be sacrificing the residential use, for which we can say today there is clear demand.

There are also the considerations that demand will almost certainly change over time and be inconsistent across different locations. For instance, maybe retail doesn't work in this laneway, but it will work in that laneway. Can we actually plan for this?

Top-down approaches generally assume that we know all or many of the answers. It presumes that we know that this street should have ground-floor retail and this street should not. It's also about control. More bottom-up approaches admit that it's impossible to plan for everything and that there could be latent potential that we're not even thinking about.

Of course, there is something naturally unsettling about this approach because it is, by definition, unknowable. And it relinquishes a certain amount of control. Maybe a restaurant will appear here or maybe it won't. Maybe someone will open a small office in this laneway or maybe they won't. Either way, the potential for change exists.

But I think this should be seen as empowering, transparent, and highly efficient. It is a way of reducing the barriers to entry and allowing more urban creativity and ambition to shrine through. I believe, for example, that if we made it easier, cheaper, and possible to open a small restaurant (perhaps in a laneway), we would have more and overall better restaurants in the city.

And as we have seen in the case of Tokyo, the result of more flexibility is not necessarily chaos. It can be a highly livable city that has people wondering, "how did they manage to plan such a large city so well?"

Photo by Kentaro Toma on Unsplash