Dave Amos of City Beautiful recently made a trip to Tokyo and gushed about its quiet, urban streets. Tokyo’s wide arterials can leave an impression that cars dominate the city, but secondary and tertiary streets can be very calm and quiet in very dense urban spaces, as Amos shows. Consequently, Tokyo’s small streets make for ideal places to walk and bike. Paired with a very good transit system, city data shows non-driving rates are unsurprisingly skyhigh in Tokyo.
Stephen is a professional urban planner in Puget Sound with a passion for sustainable, livable, and diverse cities. He is especially interested in how policies, regulations, and programs can promote positive outcomes for communities. With stints in great cities like Bellingham and Cork, Stephen currently lives in Seattle. He primarily covers land use and transportation issues and has been with The Urbanist since 2014.