AHC: An American city like Tokyo

Your challenge is to make any American city seem like Tokyo, with its omnipresent rail and subway lines, good underground connections, and high population density. Bonus points if you manage to let it also have a cool elevated expressway system.
 
Your challenge is to make any American city seem like Tokyo, with its omnipresent rail and subway lines, good underground connections, and high population density. Bonus points if you manage to let it also have a cool elevated expressway system.

WI: New York actually bothered to upgrade its subway system.
 
1979 islamic revolution spreads to Iraq and the gulf. End result is you get a tokyo-level NYC due to the energy shortages. You also get no shortage of atrocities in the middle east too but it fulfills OP's requests.
 
WI the Los Angeles tram system weren't bought out and torn apart by Big Auto?

Well, eh, when the LA tram system was bought out it was already struggling. Rider numbers declined through IIRC the 30s and 40s, or at least the latter, as cars became the preferred mode of transportation. Big Auto killed the trams through making cars more than by direct intervention.
 

DougM

Donor
The challenge here is similar to that any US mass transit and or anti sprawl thread. The US has to much land. Thus we can spread out.
Let’s be honest you will NEVER get people in the US to WANT to create a city with the density and traffic of Tokyo. Tinny tinny apertments and rediculus bad commutes are not something that people typically want. Heck I don’t think Japan WANTS Tokyo the way it is. I am sure if you gave them the opritunity they would glad spread out a bit.
So I don’t see how you get this in the US we just sprawl out and or move elsewhere.
 
What if New York actually bothered to upgrade its subway system.
I can remember watching a video about that – the way the financial organisation of the system is split between the governor, state legislature, and mayor is just a complete mess. Shame really as the couple of times I visited back in 1998 and then a few years later the system still seemed–at least from what I recall–to be in good running order, it got us around the city to wherever we wanted to get to well.


What if the Los Angeles tram system weren't bought out and torn apart by Big Auto?
Except that they didn't.
 
The challenge here is similar to that any US mass transit and or anti sprawl thread. The US has to much land. Thus we can spread out.
Let’s be honest you will NEVER get people in the US to WANT to create a city with the density and traffic of Tokyo. Tinny tinny apertments and rediculus bad commutes are not something that people typically want. Heck I don’t think Japan WANTS Tokyo the way it is. I am sure if you gave them the opritunity they would glad spread out a bit.
So I don’t see how you get this in the US we just sprawl out and or move elsewhere.

And as I have said to you multiple times as well, in the case of some major American cities - New York, San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Seattle, New Orleans - this doesn't apply for geography reasons, and for cities with dense cores and a lack of ability to build highways - this applies to Chicago and Washington most of all, but Portland, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, even Detroit and Los Angeles to an extent - the possibility of much-improved public transport is entirely possible IF - and this is a big if, but several cities prove its possible - the cities aren't specifically designed for cars. New York's average commuting times are below the North American average, whereas many cities with low population densities tend to be towards the higher end. Spreading out is no help to commuting times, even when you have expressways to help with that. I will give you that tiny apartments are generally not seen as desirable, though the development of taller residential buildings starting about 1930 makes the prospect of higher population densities and larger living spaces NOT mutually exclusive.

Now, to go to the OP of this thread, the question of American city like Tokyo really needs to be better defined. High population density is possible in several of them - all of the cities I mentioned above with geographical limits can have this happen. Elevated highways are generally frowned upon in North America, particularly in seismically-active areas - remember what happened to I-880 in Oakland in the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989 - but also in other areas because in most cases highways were built to complement existing arterial roads and as such building over said roads wasn't a good idea. (The Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle and the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto are notable exceptions to this - they both were built over existing roadways.) The state of most North American cities at that time added to this, as urban renewal was encouraged and so clearing out broken-down neighborhoods for highways was seen by many as a positive.
 
NYC already has a higher population density than Tokyo, with 10194 people/km^2 vs 6225 people/km^2. Tokyo, however, covers a MUCH larger area. The regions around NYC are also highly populated, but the regional infrastructure lags behind Tokyo for some of the following reasons: 1) The NYC metropolitan area lacks political unity (spread across part of three to four states and at least 20 different municipal governments). 2) Developments in US law during the 1960s gave private individuals and organizations far more ability to block large scale building projects for a variety of different reasons (environmental, historical preservation, etc), which makes building infrastructure in the US far more expensive. 3) The Great Crime Wave from the mid 60s to early 90s and the mass exodus of middle class families. Changing any two of those three factors probably achieves the desired result.
 
The greater San Francisco area could be a good candidate for this. High density residence combined with a highly educated, car-averse population that has an obsession with new fangled gadgets and technology.
 

manav95

Banned
The greater San Francisco area could be a good candidate for this. High density residence combined with a highly educated, car-averse population that has an obsession with new fangled gadgets and technology.

Not to mention high liberalism, presence of minorities like the LGBT community, and strong Japanese communities could contribute to SF uniting the Bay Area and building transit.
 
Worse oil crisis in the 1970s, more widespread Islamic revolution in the 1980s, and faster growth of the tech and Green movement in the 1990s might do it.
 
The greater San Francisco area could be a good candidate for this. High density residence combined with a highly educated, car-averse population that has an obsession with new fangled gadgets and technology.

You'd need consolidation between multiple political jurisdictions to effectively run the desired transportation infrastructure. I lived in Mountain View, Palo Alto, and San Jose for years, and the existing BART infrastructure is lackluster compared to NYC, or even to DC.

Most of the region was fairly rural and underdeveloped until quite recently, but it's grown tremendously since the 1950s. So fast that it's hard to see how to make it grow faster, given the existing geographic constraints on building and the difficulty in rapidly expanding the water supply. Therefore, achieving Tokyo levels of density would require the Bay area to have an earlier population boom. One way would be to have CA admitted as two states, North California with a capital in San Fran and South California with a capital in LA. That will draw additional people to the region in the 19th century to become part of the state government, while Sacramento remains a sleepy town who serves as the seat of an agricultural/rural county. If the region can still become a major center of DoD research facilities (I see no reason why it wouldn't), then it can still become Silicon Valley and get that additional in-migration population boom as it draws engineers and scientists. Asian immigration is likely the same as OTL.

That kind of growth still would face severe water constraints and space constraints for housing, and would also be an ecological disaster for the wetlands in the Bay even worse than OTL.


Not to mention high liberalism, presence of minorities like the LGBT community, and strong Japanese communities could contribute to SF uniting the Bay Area and building transit.

San Fran was quite conservative until the hippy migration of the 1960s and then the explosion of tech companies since the 1970s. If the Bay area grows to Tokyo level population, more of the growth comes earlier. With a higher base population, that domestic in-migration will change the regional composition less, though more population in government means it will be left leaning. It's probably not going to develop quite as radical a reputation, but rather be more akin to NYC.
 
You'd need consolidation between multiple political jurisdictions to effectively run the desired transportation infrastructure. I lived in Mountain View, Palo Alto, and San Jose for years, and the existing BART infrastructure is lackluster compared to NYC, or even to DC.

Most of the region was fairly rural and underdeveloped until quite recently, but it's grown tremendously since the 1950s. So fast that it's hard to see how to make it grow faster, given the existing geographic constraints on building and the difficulty in rapidly expanding the water supply. Therefore, achieving Tokyo levels of density would require the Bay area to have an earlier population boom. One way would be to have CA admitted as two states, North California with a capital in San Fran and South California with a capital in LA. That will draw additional people to the region in the 19th century to become part of the state government, while Sacramento remains a sleepy town who serves as the seat of an agricultural/rural county. If the region can still become a major center of DoD research facilities (I see no reason why it wouldn't), then it can still become Silicon Valley and get that additional in-migration population boom as it draws engineers and scientists. Asian immigration is likely the same as OTL.

That kind of growth still would face severe water constraints and space constraints for housing, and would also be an ecological disaster for the wetlands in the Bay even worse than OTL.




San Fran was quite conservative until the hippy migration of the 1960s and then the explosion of tech companies since the 1970s. If the Bay area grows to Tokyo level population, more of the growth comes earlier. With a higher base population, that domestic in-migration will change the regional composition less, though more population in government means it will be left leaning. It's probably not going to develop quite as radical a reputation, but rather be more akin to NYC.
As a native of San Jose, I've aways wondered--is there a way to mold the mostly urban Western ad South Western Bay Area (say, from Mountain View/Cupertino/Santa Clara up to SF) into a NY-esque burrow system for the sake of creating an overarching authority? Admittedly, this would be a novel concept in competition with the County system, but the Bay Area already has precent for that, what with SF existing concurrently as both city and county.
 
As a native of San Jose, I've aways wondered--is there a way to mold the mostly urban Western ad South Western Bay Area (say, from Mountain View/Cupertino/Santa Clara up to SF) into a NY-esque burrow system for the sake of creating an overarching authority? Admittedly, this would be a novel concept in competition with the County system, but the Bay Area already has precent for that, what with SF existing concurrently as both city and county.

It would probably require enabling legislation from the state government, acquiescence by the municipal and county governments, and a strong desire by the residents. I don't view it as likely IRL.
 
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