What are you talking about? That sounds like the kind of accommodation so rare that it gets articles written [1] for being so innovative. Apartments in Japan are small, but I have never seen one like that except on the internet, or in Hong Kong.
As a counterpoint, the typical small single occupant housing I saw in Japan had the following characteristics: solid concrete construction, a narrow kitchen (double burner with fish broiler, sink, counter, rice cooker, and microwave, with cupboards above and below), a small living room plus a small tatami bedroom to the side (though these spaces likely aren't separate in denser cities), a closet-sized toilet room, and a larger room with bath.
So yes, they are certainly smaller than anything you find in most western countries - but that is because zoning makes it illegal.
{1} https://www.livingbiginatinyhouse.com/tiny-tokyo-apartment/
I have also heard that prefab is really common - in fact just walking around Tokyo it does look like there's a ton of prefab houses. That said I've toured around some and been inside some, and they were very comfortable, more so than my current rickety San Francisco apartment and similarly to brand new NYC ones I've been in - so I don't consider them lower quality than what I typically see in American cities just because they're prefab. Rather it's far more efficient and that keeps costs down.
There is something to be said about traditional Japanese living being more space-efficient - folding out your futon means that you don't have to have separate permanent bedrooms, dining rooms etc like a Western apartment would have, which allows for you to have a decent living in ~220 sq ft like I did - but if you want to live like a Westerner, you will have to pay up for that, and I do hear that Western style apartments are more popular these days.
After living in San Francisco, I felt like I had hit the jackpot, but as it turns out that's just "normal" in a functioning city.
1: https://www.i-domehouse.com/case/project_house/plan_00004.ht...
The fact is that it’s perfectly fine, even normal, to live in a “one room” in Japan. No one is going to shame you for it.
I actually think some one-room apartments are super cozy, and feel like nice dorms.
If you consider sento/public baths, you’ve got your shared public resources.
So that's the reputation American cities are getting internationally. Something to really be ashamed about.
1. Japan didn’t dump all of their institutionalized mental people on the street.
2. For whose who are actually poor and need help there is subsidized housing (eg UR Chintai) and ok benefits if your income is low enough.
3. There is a large and bored police force, so people acting out and drug addicts don’t last long on the street.
https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/05/18/as-crime-dries-up-...
Police officers spent a week of their time watching an unlocked trap car with a crate of beer inside it.
That being said, I’ve seen much worse in India and SE Asia, but developing countries will be like that.
There is a woman who runs a program to move homeless men from the cities to rural areas that are short on labor. Her organization offers to relocate them and train them for agricultural work. Most of the homeless men she finds are willing to work but have fallen into a spiral of shame and are paralyzed by it.
Japan is a tough place if you have thin skin or are prone to self pity. You can basically be cut from the team if you aren’t a player. You’ll find hikikomori and others who can’t keep up lurking beneath the surface—-often they fail a test or disappoint someone and never recover. Usually, these people have a home, though, with family or someone who takes them in.
Local landowners would lose their minds though.
The specific "guidelines" for places I've lived are:
https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/...
http://default.sfplanning.org/publications_reports/residenti...
The San Francisco guidelines are particularly onerous, but the Victorian guidelines still set e.g. minimum sizes for bedrooms and living areas.
https://jorgefontan.com/micro-apartments-minimum-apartment-s...
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-supervisors-back-...
https://la.curbed.com/2019/3/27/18281150/santa-monica-micro-...
Of course there are. FAR limits, zoning rules, all manner of review processes inhibiting construction, et cetera.
That’s the article’s point. Housing shortages are a political choice.
I'm not a Londoner, but my american city of about 1 million people has more than 60 different residential zonings. My home can be a single family home, a day care, or a coffee shop with up to 2 employees who reside off the property itself. Additionally, the house is in a historic district and no changes to the exterior may be made that are visible from the alley or street can be made with out approval by the city via application and subsequent public forum.
I can see how this would strangle growth of housing supply as the place grows.
Real estate is going up due to foreign investment. We are watching in real time as the slowdown in China is showing a direct correlation with west coast US and west coast Canadian real estate markets cooling. Buffalo, NY, and many other rust belt cities, have seen significant increases in housing prices while their populations decrease rapidly.
I second how boring listening to the trope about Japanese real estate prices when it has nothing to do with attitudes towards building. North Dakota has little to no zoning restrictions and we certainly don't see those prices staying in reasonable amounts.
It is so obviously false to anyone even remotely involved in investment or real estate, that I sometimes wonder if there is some kind of agenda that pushes this nonsense outside of your typical internet obsessive ideologies.
For this delight there are people being charged $1000 per month or more in rent.
Add in the fact that Japanese have an extremely different relationship to property culterally (and due to earth quake fears) means propeerties are often knocked down and rebuilt (the article notes this - 600000 new homes for an ageing population seems like most of those are going to immigrants).
A lot of people in Europe prefer the shared living, and it is better use of resources - you only need one bathroom/one living room per 3 people and those can be MUCH nicer than these micro appartments.
London and the west also have different cultural values about building high rise property and overlooking neighbours. It's fine that Japan doesn't mind a sky scraper being built overshadowing their homes but for Londoners or elsewhere this is simply unacceptable to suggest we can change our whole culture to Japanese values and magically solve housing problems.