Ever since ditching car culture and joining the urbanist cause (on the internet at least but that has to change), I’ve noticed that some countries always top the list when it comes to good urbanism. The first and most oblivious one tends to be The Netherlands but Germany and Japan also come pretty close. But that’s strange considering that both countries have huge car industries. Germany is (arguably) the birthplace of the car (Benz Patent-Motorwagen) and is home to Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Japan is home to Toyota, Honda, Nissan and among others. How is it that these countries have been able to keep the auto lobby at bay and continue investing in their infrastructure?
It may not be as bad as the US, but Car culture in Germany has left it’s impact on german citys as well. Both Munich and Berlin for example have massiv highways going right through them. And keeping that at bay or even reversing it is an ongoing struggle.
Source: lived in both citys
I thought Munich was bad (lived there and in its suburbs for most of my life) but I recently moved to Leipzig. Jesus Christ.
Still those are much smaller than in some US cities.
Every time I hear about highways in the US my mind keeps going back to that part of the I-10 in Houston
Lol, have you been to Germany? It’s not a concrete hellscape like some of the US, but it’s very car centric if you compare it to e.g. Denmark or Netherlands.
Edit: also, German car lobby is powerful, that’s why their highways are free to use and constantly maintained and kept at a high quality. Trains on the other hand are constantly being delayed and have to slow down due to bad rail quality
German asphalt sucks though, compared to Dutch asphalt
Just use Belgium as the baseline, then everyone in Europe has great asphalt
I am very certain that here in Belgium they simply don’t put on the top layer of the finer wearing layer.
I watched the workers work on a road as I biked to and from work. They were done in 2 days and they put down 1 single layer on top of the base layer that they tore down too. It was extremely course, not nearly liquid enough (probably not enough binders), and after a week or so now of medium traffic, it acts only a little better than a loose gravel road.
It will probably be a wreck in a year because that is a high traffic road by the container park with a lot of trucks moving.
Not surprising. The Netherlands has way more money per square meter.
Both germany and japan have really strong car culture and fucked up rural infrastructure . The cities having nice public transit ≠ the country.
You can take a train to nearly every corner of japan. Japanese cities make sure you have a parking spot before you can buy a car. There is very little on street parking so many streets are open. The streets are narrow and often able to be shared between pedestrians and slow traffic. Roads specifically meant for cars are often seperated from pedestrians.
Japan has done a lot more than most other countries. Rural areas will always be more difficult to service due to their density but i still think japan has done better there than most.
Thier housing culture also makes it easier to move where you want to, which should make moving from rural to the city more feasable for those whom can’t handle the rural lifestyles.
In the popular perception sure. Having lived in Japan, reality is far different. Anywhere outside of cities has no sidewalk, in places where there would be some in europe. Train stations that are rural have no bus connections at all (having grown up in switzerland, this was hard to get used to). Cars are seen very highly, to the point where they have priority over everything else in planning.
And for tourists, sure the shinkanzen is cheap, because the tourism tickets are affordable, but the average person can barley afford it. And most use planes to get around where could be covered by shinkanzen.
Japan is similar to France, excellent tranit in between cities (fast trains; but expensive), cities have a robust network. But the rest of the country is unlivable without a car.
Switzerland is very car centric too, and we’re less good at high speed trains and comprehensive urban transit. But man, the rural trains + buses means you can get literally anywhere without a car. Japan doesn’t have that at all, despite being extremely dense like switzerland.
Im plagued by a north american perspective where anything more than hourly bus service is considered excellent transit service. I’m steps from downtown in my city and even downtown there are streets with sidewalks only along one side, causing extra time and crossings for pedestrians.
Japan absolutely hasn’t commited to car priority, if they did they would have abolished proof of parking spots for ownership and would jave opened nearly every square inch of their cities as free on street parking. They may be giving cars more space and priority than in the past but they havent bulldozed half their city for surface level parking and 6+ lane roads (or at least they haven’t done so as extremely as north america). Japan can still shift away from car ownership being madatory for life, much of north america is already trapped in that mindset.
I’ve also lived in Japan and my experience is that people rarely fly domestically and almost always take the train. But since domestic travel is so expensive, their vacations are often international instead of within Japan.
Definitely not the case where I lived (rural Niigata prefecture), but I was friends with people who were definitely poor.
Switzerland is very car centric too, and we’re less good at high speed trains and comprehensive urban transit.
Maybe, but Switzerland has the most rail usage per capita making it arguably the most rail centric country in the world.
we do. But still everything is built for cars and train is a second thought. We have great infrastructure, because in the past this was different. But currently, we’re barely investing in the train system, the infrastructure is starting to bottleneck (the Geneva - Lausanne axis is a disaster already), whilst we are adding more and more highway lanes. The far right party has had control over the transport ministry for a while now, and it is showing.
Well, cars are certainly important everywhere in the world and still too important in Switzerland. But relatively speaking compared to other countries they’re really not that important.
Right now there’s a vote coming up to build more highways, it’ll be interesting to see how that turns out.
To put some numbers on things, we spend 4-5 billion per year on rail, we spend 8.8billion over the next 3 years on road maintenance plus total another 11 billion until 2030 for new road infrastructure. I wouldn’t call that ‘barely investing’, it seems roughly equal to me.
One factor that may ‘help’ japan in getting less car-centric over time is that the japanese rural areas and the smallest rank of cities are basically depopulating (dying out), with young people (and not so young too) moving to large cities and metropolises (like Tokyo). So, more % of japanese people will live in the not car-centric areas. Tourism will of course exist for some rural and small urban areas, but that occasional use can be served by short term car rentals.
Anime Manga <> Reality
Dunno… Maybe because the companies are not in charge of running the country?
And on top of that, i believe most of those cars are sold in the US…
For most german automakers the biggest market has actually been China for a while.
Ahh right on. Either case they are an export item that’s not staying in country.
But they are. Lobbyism is literally the problem why nothing is happening to further prevent climate change.
As others have said, Germany is not as bad as the US (at least as far as I can tell looking at the US from the outside), but it’s still fucking terrible and will likely get worse under future governments, which are all but guaranteed to be right-wing, quite possibly including the outright fascists of the AfD.
Public transport is useless, especially the train network, which is horribly outdated technically and has been gutted by quasi-privatisation. Trains are frequently late or cancelled (which counts as on time for German Rail’s statistics). If you don’t live in a city you basically have to own a car because of this, especially in smaller towns where there might only be like two busses a day (or none at all). There are some small improvements being made in cities, but they are hugely lacking and slow. They will also likely not survive future governments, which are promising car-centric policies and trying to import the anti-cyclist culture war from the US.
So yeah, it’s bleak and the future looks even bleaker. With how things are going politically at the moment urbanism will be the least of our worries though.
I always thought Germany had a solid public transport system (I’ve been there like 1 time maybe), but as you are describing it it sounds awfully similar to Italy.
I suppose the perspective is relative. Frequent cancellations of trains is bad, but not as bad as no PT at all, as is all too common in US.
Bleak, bleaker, the bleakest.
It certainly seems to me like the majority of people (in cities) welcomes less cars and more pedestrian / bicycle infrastructure. At least if the removal of street parking happens NIMBY. Certainly cities are pushing for this, throughout all the parties, maybe not the afd and the fdp when they tried to scratch 5% of voters from the bottom of the barrel in the east with their “more cars into the cities, less pedestrians and cyclists”. Even the adac (huge german car interest group) thought this was a stupid idea.
The news and readers comments in local newspaper were way more cycle infra critical some years ago. I think german cities are moving in the right direction, it is getting better, although slowly, i don’t share your pessimism.
Sure, the FDP is mostly irrelevant at the moment, but the AfD got the 2nd most votes in the recent EU elections, right behind the CDU/CSU which are also very much pro car and anti bike infrastructure. In the east the AfD often got more votes than any other party in most places. The upcoming state elections won’t go any better either. None of the current ruling parties are going to be in the next government when Germany has its federal elections next year. It’s going to be a right wing government and I have zero faith in the CDU/CSU not to form a coalition with the AfD when the time comes. Things are really fucked here at the moment and they are going to get much worse before they get better (if they get better at all).
I don’t quite share your sentiment. Although FDP tends to yap a lot about car infrastructure, investments into train infrastructure in Germany are at a record high. Still far too low, I agree, but it’s not getting worse. And I don’t see AfD joining any government on national level anytime soon. Also, cycling infrastructure is more a local topic and most cities are still center-left. Outside of cities I don’t see biking infrastructure improving either, though.
So having been to Japan and ridden the trains there I genuinely can’t imagine Tokyo where everyone drives. And once you have that and the Shinkansen you may as well build out a strong train network. But also, in bumfuck Japan everyone drives. Just because you can take a train to the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean you don’t need to drive when you get there
Germany should not be in the same conversation as Japan when it comes to urban planning. Germany is very much car centric and most German cities are hideous.
You can usually get around the bigger cities without a car but once you leave the cities its horrible. Also, our railway system Is ducked to a point where driving schedules can’t really be calculated anymore.
…while Japanese cities are beautiful…LMAOOOO
They’re cleaner and more pleasant than German cities. I haven’t been to a Japanese city as gross as Frankfurt.
or rather you haven’t been to the parts of Japanese cities which are. In Osaka and Tokyo you can find areas that match Frankfurt 1:1.
It’s pretty easy to avoid those areas in Tokyo. It’s damn near impossible in Frankfurt.
So you are shifting from them existing to how easy it is to avoid them. See how that makes me take your arguments not for those of a serious person who knows what they’re talking about? Blocked.
Your reading comprehension is atrocious.
“The auto lobby at bay” sounds weird in the ears of a German whose city is being flooded with cars and whose life is being endangered by reckless drivers every day…
It’s not as bad as the US but it’s far from good. Germany is car brain country, and it shows in ugly ways.
Generally i agree, is far from good. Where is it good though other than the Netherlands and a few select cities?
You got that right: The point is that it’s good in only a very few places. The people complaining are not whining or so - car brainism really is a big, big problem all over the world.
So you’re focused on withstanding road brain.
After WW2 everyone was broke. In Germany there was no money to build new massive freeway projects. No one had money to buy cars anyway. You can watch the movie “Judgment at Nuremberg”, it’s fiction but one thing that stuck out to me was people riding bicycles. They also had a lot of things to focus on. It took a long time to get things back on track.
Japan also had no money, though they did try the car thing for a while afaik. There were many problems. First was there was not much room for the cars and car parks. Land is tight there. Second was there was no massive domestic gasoline production. I think they finally realized that if everyone drove like Americans, that they would be sending a ton of money outside the country for oil.
As for how Japan became home to massive car companies. First the lack of resources led to the Japanese car companies making a new production technique called Just It Time manufacturing. Instead of lots of inventory of parts to assemble, they timed everything to arrive just in time. Sometimes called lean manufacturing. It may not sound like much but it leads to much cheaper production. And they committed to high quality with “Andon” which was a pull cord workers could pull to stop the line and call management over to quality or production issues. They really got the manufacturing process down because of necessity. Finally they really needed things to export, cars were one of them. Cars are high value and relatively easy to export.
The German domestic market was still big enough on its own to keep their companies aloft. I’m not sure how those expanded.
I don’t think this is the cause of it though: No money for buying cars. My guess is, it’s because there were more alternatives such as trains and public trams and cities are more densely build out of history.
Despite the US, Germany(& Europe) and Japan had a huge railway network spanning all cities and even smaller cities. The area I lived in Germany had the first railway 1840. Japan 1872. US 1827. However, if you look into the network expansion the US never reached the density and complexity of both others due to it’s sheer size.
With the advent of trains all bigger European and Japanese cities began to build public tram systems. To such an extent that it spans most of the citied nowadays. This is still not the state in US. One can literally see the difference when visiting US, German, and Japanese cities todays.
Moreover, US hadn’t cities that grow organically throughout the centuries. And there is much space available. No dense historic city centers, no growing city rings. E.g. you can easily cross an one million city such as Cologne by bike in 1-1,5 hour. (And adding traffic jams and parking lot search time, bike is more efficient and easy)
Interactive map railway network Germany: https://interaktiv.morgenpost.de/bahn-schienennetz-deutschland-1835-bis-heute/
Video railway network Japan https://jref.com/threads/video-150-years-of-japan-railway-network.504981/
Video railway network US https://youtu.be/a8lX5A2q-Eo?si=-zjdLE1Wz8TlyCbt. Wiki https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transportation_in_the_United_States
Public tram systems in US https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streetcar_systems_in_the_United_States
there were more alternatives such as trains and public trams
Which is the cause and which is the effect?
If people have no money for cars, they will demand transit. If the government has no tax money for massive infrastructure projects, but people are still demanding something, they will give buses which are cheap. Then the demand and mentality is to upgrade those to trains.
As the engine car was invented in 1886, I would say trains and trams were already there. Way before the car entered the scene. Just later at 1908 with Ford T cars became affordable for the non-rich.
People at that time hadn’t a huge radius of movement. There wasn’t simply not much need.
Yeah that’s why I talk about people not being able to afford them after ww2. And government not behind able to afford infrastructure after ww2. I don’t know why you insist on looking at the ancient past when post WW2 is the important part here. Heck WW1 too, it cost a shit ton. These were the pivotal events that shaped the modern world.
Okay, I might sound too negative. After WW2 car culture took off in Germany and Japan as well. May be a bit later due to overall wealth.
However, the OT asked how it comes that both countries have different urban planning - not building the city around cars despite having big car manufacturers.
My point is simply that the structure of German and Japanese cities were already shaped when cars were invented. Sure, there were bigger „modernizations“ with big streets cutting some cities in halves. But that’s more a niche.
The US had a population boom after WW2 and so the cities start to spread. Build car-friendly. https://marketsize.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/USPop.jpg
It’s a matter of degree. Yes they have cars and car infrastructure in Germany and Japan, but not nearly to the same extent as the US. That was OP’s original point and question.
You should do more digging, most cities in the US (the middle part anyway) were also set. But they spent the money to buy out plots, tear it down, and build massive infrastructure. Why? Because of what I said: they could afford it on both govt level and personal level. Europe was devastated because of back to back world wars which cost a shit ton. On the other hand the US profited from that. Even when you have relatively green field construction you still have to buy the land and still have to build, aka it’s still expensive. I’m just repeating myself so I think I’m out.
It’s due to different reasons, but very little to do with car manufacturing.
Cities in Europe are blessed and cursed with being established long before cars. This makes it expensive to expand the roads, and it is also difficult to increase the size of cities outwards, because there’s not a lot of available land anywhere. So when populations increases, it makes sense to make public transport better, because it’s the cheaper and only option.
It’s not all good though. Only the largest cities have good public transport. Smaller towns are increasing outwards because rural land is cheaper. Parking is limited or costly in the centres, so people drive out of the town for shopping where parking is free and easy. This kills the businesses in small town centres despite their population growth. A large group of the population living outside the capitals is currently getting more and more car dependent, not by choice, but by necessity.
Japan is different. They simply planned ahead and invested heavily in public transport in the years after the war, 1947-1987 before their population grew. They literally built railroads and the Tokyo metro before it was needed. With huge success. The cities grew with the public transport.
Another historical difference is that while both European and Japanese public transport started as government projects and both have since been privatized, the fragmentation in European states and municipalities have made it difficult to do in a profitable way. It’s usually government subsidized, and therefore still depending on local political will to budget for it, while the larger Japanese railway companies are (somewhat) less dependent on local political budgets. In short: JR rail can more easily add another departure if they think it makes sense, whereas a European railroad company would need to know how much the government is willing to pay for having more departures etc.
I do have hopes that Europe will catch up again, because the long term environmental pledges are pushing politicians in the right direction. It’s no longer enough to only consider the cost and corporate interests. The people want less pollution and traffic and vote accordingly.
Many cities is europe expanded beyond their medieval borders. Their cities are built better because they are designed better and more thoughtfully. The American methods is more like a cookie cutter, just place the same things anywhere they can fit.
Europe is better designed because people actually took the time to plan their cities, not just because they are old.
Europe is generally planned according to 1000 year old desire paths.
James May of Top Gear fame actually went into this in an episode of “Cars of the People” season 2 episode 1. Basically, he claims it was actually World War II that set things on that course. Pretty enlightening episode IMHO. Worth a watch for a history lesson.
I think for Germany it’s simply the fact that our infrastructure grew in large parts before the invention of the car, plus it’s, compared to the US, very densely populated. So it’s easier to create a useful rail system, there isn’t enough space in the cities for to many cars, even though there are way to many for my taste.
Large export markets.
Honestly germans seem to love to dunk on their own infrastructure. Pedestrian, bicycle and public transport infrastructure truly is on another level compared to the US. Why this is the case? I believe its because cities where already in place when the car was invented. In the US they were built for the car as a mode of transport when European cities where built in a way that was a lot more pedestrian friendly.
While the punctuality of DB (German railway operator is a mess) local regional trains can be pretty consistent and overall cities have a well built out priority, since we had to accommodate for so many peoples transport withoutbeingg able to built them as car friendly since the urban centers where already built. while the funding somewhat lacks today, this made public transport also an important thing people look out for.
Bicycle infrastructure can also be hit or miss depending in the region, but generally it is also on the radar of planners and there’s plenty of routes, although they’re nothing like the Netherlands.
Germans also really like shitting on their own country and being really critical which comes with its own upsides and downsides. For rural areas the car is definitely really important for getting around tho
Haha yes, the car is the German’s favorite child, and complaining their favorite pastime.
That being said, I think there’s more factors to it. Keep in mind that most German cities were in ruins after WWII, and plenty of buildings have been demolished to make room for cars.
The difference in electoral systems might play a role, where a green party could slowly, but steadily gain influence.
Railway infrastructure was already quite dense before mass motorization.
A lot of money has been spend to get through traffic out of town centers.
There’s probably more to it …
Railway infrastructure was already quite dense before mass motorization.
the US used to be quite well connected via rail
In the US they were built for the car as a mode of transport when European cities where built in a way that was a lot more pedestrian friendly.
Indeed!
I believe its because cities where already in place when the car was invented.
Nope!
Japan focuses on overall health and how a building fits into its environment rather than focusing solely on urban development and expansion as a means unto itself, its urban planning is very environment and people- focused.
their priorities are better, so they plan and execute cities, factories and planned environments that fit into an existijg system and are better for people.
it doesn’t mean that capitalism and development doesn’t have a place in their society, but it does mean that it has a specific place.
Anime and Manga and a one week trip which I spent in Akihabara is my only source of Japan knowledge moment
