* transportation: the outlays of programs like Five Commuting directions in Tokyo was a direct contributor to the collapse of JNR, which led to the government assuming all JNR debt and privatizing the railways as JR Group

* housing production in Tokyo is great, but to put this in context today's Japanese housing market essentially happened after the bubble pop in the '90s. Prices from 1991 to 2004 had declined by 64% due to the pop. In that context, deregulation was palatable because people were already underwater and didn't bother as much to fight things that would lower property values. (In fact, it could've raised them.)

japan has pretty much 0 immigration and 0 population growth

Tokyo also bans Airbnb, period. Something most people here don’t understand.

Japan (including Tokyo) legalized short-term rentals (minpaku) in 2018. However, there are reasonably toothy licensing requirements and you're capped at 180 days per year.

So Airbnb is facilitating illegal renting of properties?

https://www.airbnb.com/s/Tokyo--Japan/homes?adults=2&refinem...

Why wouldn't the government crack down on this?

Sorry as the poster above has said they’ve been legal since 2018. I had inaccurate out of date information.

> If so what was unique about Tokyo?

Japanese culture would be my guess.