What are you talking about? Localities sent a smog alert, made announcements on the speaker, and there was a whole thing. It was a particularly hot day as well.
I don’t have that many reference points to be fair, but almost every time I’ve checked general air quality (at least according to the first site that describes AQI) for Paris has always been worse than Tokyo.
Of course things can be massively improved. There is a lot of noise pollution. But the conversations are relative to other places. My reference points are limited but on points like air pollution or smoking other major cities fare worse IMO.
Though this is all super subjective, and even within a city various parts of it have a vastly different vibe.
Don’t really care what Paris is like, tbh. Shit air is shit air. Saying it’s shitter somewhere else isn’t super compelling.
The whole point of my original comment was that people elevate Japanese cities in ways they don’t deserve.
Yep I know - but did you check how many monitoring sites they use and where they’re placed? It’s not representative of the actual experience of living here. If you’re walking, or cycling, you’re constantly in extreme close proximity to tailpipe emissions from cars and diesel trucks. The city also famously has lots of construction activity, almost always also belching diesel.
I've witnessed the construction in Tokyo. I'm greatly impressed by the steps they take to monitor and reduce impact. I've seen many sites with noise monitors displaying in decibels the current noise inside and outside the construction site.
When a building across the street from my apartment was renovated I was sent detailed construction plans. The work was scheduled so that any noise would never interrupt sleep or evening relaxation. Also include was how the sunlight and shade from the new construction would change. Included was steps to take if one wished to protest the construction.
I think “Tokyo has better air than other metropolises” is a kinda verifiable thing, and if you grant that it’s kinda normal to consider that! There’s a reason lots of people end up here from other countries, and it’s not the pay!
There is loads of research showing a marked drop-off in the danger to humans from vehicle emissions as you move away from the kerbside. Even walking on the far side of a wide curb can significantly improve your prospects. My point here is that people are living in extreme proximity to tailpipe emissions, all day long.
It is a perfect candidate - perhaps the best candidate city in the world given how much else it gets staggeringly right on urban design - for strict tailpipe emissions regulations. Ban diesel trucks, introduce congestion charges, incentivise the adoption of EVs.
That is unlikely to happen, however, as Toyota in particular famously is one of the biggest global lobbyists for the internal combustion engine - a fact covered numerous times at length here on HN. That’s a fascinating political and economic story in its own right and one I’d encourage people to read up on.
Tokyo’s air quality is a story of corporate and political greed. Nobody does anything about it because no one talks about it.
Shitty is always relative, especially if you're comparing policy decisions.
Likely the same extended lifespan that's been prevalent in Japan over the past century of smoking, diesel and construction (along with the occasional nuclear catastrophe). Humans are apparently more ruggedized than they look on paper.
Shortness of breath is something doctors report as a more and more common symptom of city dwellers.
Not reported on the news because nobody -- apparently you included -- cares, but I've been to doctors lately, and they complained that the lung and heart doctors are overbooked lately while the others have a normal load.
Generally, it takes a lot of pollution to counter the positive health effects of active commuting. It was a while since I did the research, but someone estimated that you need to cycle for more than sixteen hours per day for the pollution to outweigh the cardio benefits in the 90th percentile of cities ordered by pollution. There was no city for which any mount of cycling would have made you worse off.
Granted, walking is probably slightly lower in intensity, but still.
So yeah we gave up and just go eat out. :|
So not only is the air bad, the walkable places are few and far between, strongly discouraging people to even go where the better air is or, as you said, just have the cardio from walking/cycling to improve your health.
It’s been 15 years I commute daily by bike and worry about the side effect on my lungs… sometimes the road stinks so much, especially when too much trafic jam. Trying to slow my pace to breathe « less deep » but not a fun things to do.
I used to live in NYC. Tokyo is a very quiet city. Not all parts for sure... you can have an apartment by a train crossing or they might build a highway outside your 6th floor window, but I would say that most of the parts where people live is pretty quiet.
Is it worse than SA, London or any other megacity of the world?
Everybody wants clean air, they just live with the bad one because the big city pays well (though when you correct it for costs of living, it gets muddier).
The point of my original comment was that Tokyo gets a hall pass because y’all apparently loved Akira.
This is a political problem and as long as the Japanese auto lobby has the LDP in their pocket, we who live here live the consequences.
IMO, what other cities do (and the results they get) is relevant when discussing what’s good, bad, or practically possible.
Where’s the inconsistency?
The comment you responded to was about how this low noise experience is not unique to Europe, and saying Japan has similar experiences.
You came in with "Tokyo has shit air" as a response. Now you claim the others are "whataboutists" when they are merely continuing the original conversation topic comparing Europe with Japan.
Which non-Japanese cities are you comparing it to here?
While Tokyo does have no shortage of highways and cars they do have plenty of mixed zone medium density, walkable areas that are free from car noise. That is not a feature of any part of most US cities. It is also much more uncommon to find stroads in Japanese cities, while a stroad is the default for many western cities.
The neighbourhoods you’re referring to - walkable areas free from car noise - are open to the wealthy only. The absolute vast majority of people in Tokyo live with constant traffic noise and terrible air quality. Not to mention cramped living conditions.
Tourist areas are always by definition in nicer parts of the city because the tourists pay for it.
And if you have enough money most cities have nice parts. But how does the “average” working stiff live?
According to [1], yesterday's peak of PM2.5 (not the 24 hour average) in Tokyo was at 22 µg/m3, whereas according to [2], the WHO's (extremely strict) limit for 24 hour average is set at 15 22 µg/m3. Where did you get your data from?
[1] https://www.aqi.in/dashboard/Japan/tokyo
[2] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(ou...
https://www.accuweather.com/en/jp/tokyo/226396/air-quality-i...
Clicking on the Learn more from Plume Labs takes you to the air quality data source.
https://air.plumelabs.com/air-quality-in-Tokyo-7Lj5
You can see graphs with the tabs named Live, Week, Month, Year. We can check past data there. The weekly graph shows 72 AQI on May 18th. The yearly graph shows the annual average of 39 AQI.
Can you confirm that you see the same data?
As someone who moved to Japan it's always funny. I think people literally get their impression from Japan solely from neo-Tokyo sci-fi from the 80s. The country has taken some of the worst cues from the US.
Many cities like Tokyo are 75% suburban, single home, it's in fact the largest suburban region on the planet. The number of cars in the country is much higher than in the rest of Asia and many cities are extraordinarily sprawlish. From the air Tokyo literally just looks like a sort of denser LA (https://i.redd.it/mghcpc5xvt761.jpg)
> As someone who moved to Japan it's always funny. I think people literally get their impression from Japan solely from neo-Tokyo sci-fi from the 80s.
Yes, I have visited Japan several times, multiple cities. My wife is Japanese.
But don't let that stop you. Please, continue.
I’m sure the total absence of zero emissions vehicle options has absolutely nothing to do with the political influence of the Japanese automotive lobby.
It’s not NA-focused, by the way. The guy lives in the Netherlands. The reason NA cities come up for pillorying so often is because he’s originally from London, Canada, and because of the special historical circumstances that led to cleansheet design-by-car for a huge number of NA towns and cities.
Didn’t seem off-topic to me.
I love aerial photos of megacities like this. But I would say "a sort of denser LA" is understating it a little; each of the small buildings in the Tokyo aerial that are too tiny to make out are probably 5-6 stories at least.
Whereas, an aerial of LA (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Los_Ange...) shows that very quickly out of the downtown area, the small buildings are in fact single-story single family homes.
Even where there are large roads, like near Shibuya station, there’s no street parking and cars are passing through, not driving across the sidewalk to every storefront. Pedestrians definitely come first. The parkades are often attended to direct traffic and pedestrians.
I can’t comment on yesterday but PM2.5 levels are often on the news.
Construction sites? Yeah, it’s a city. But most construction is fast. I now live in a small But growing European city and part of the sidewalk downtown has been closed down for three years for ongoing demolition of a building. Now it looks like construction is just starting. And this is for a 5 or 6 stores building.
Smoking areas outside of stations are gross in Japan but it’s rude or forbidden to smoke in crowded areas. In Europe people smoke on the train platform, at the bus stop and right outside of every restaurant.
I did think of one thing that is loud and annoying in Tokyo though: 50cc scooters. Making those quiet ought to be low hanging fruit.
In practice, when combined with the high density, it means that people are spending a lot of time outside, unprotected, in very close proximity to the tailpipe emissions from large volumes (often 4 or 6-lanes) of gasoline and diesel-burning trucks and cars. Often with narrow sidewalks or no sidewalks at all. They shop along the main road, their kids’ school is on the main road, their workplaces, gyms, dry cleaners, station, etc.
Lol at the people in this thread chiming in from their 3rd floor balconies in Moto-Azabu Hills. The absolute vast majority of people living in Tokyo are breathing trash air day in day out.
It’s reprehensible. They need to ban diesel trucks immediately, and they need to actively encourage people to switch to EVs.
If you still think, in 2023, that humans can skate by with no consequences from relentless exposure to the by-products of fossil fuel combustion, I’d invite you to crack a book.
I actually like the no sidewalk small streets, they have no parking and while some are sketchy they are more often like a mixed use path where pedestrians clearly have the right of way.
PM2.5 levels in Tokyo yesterday were like 6x WHO limits and absolutely no one on the local news was talking about it. Every morning I see pregnant and new mothers with infants or small children squeezing between belching diesel trucks, relentless car traffic, construction sites and smokers areas and wonder what the cost of all of this will be.
This is not a model for the future. It’s a relic.