City Smarts, にほん Style

I remember a lecture from my Being and Time course in college, where my professor explained Martin Heidegger’s notion of Being-in-the-world and how one’s world can “break down” during international travel. Leading a trip to Germany for undergraduate philosophy students, he became flabbergasted when one of them had a complete meltdown in front of her hotel room door. Why? Because she couldn’t get the key to work. But once his Heideggerian thoughts kicked into gear, he understood what was going on: this student’s sense of Being-in-the-world (our daily interaction with things, norms, and thoughts all around us) was on thin-ice since she had left her normal routine in the States and replaced it with patterns of existence that obliterated the comfort of routine. The keys’ not opening the door was simply the straw that broke the camel’s [ontological] back.

Which is why I love international traveling. I welcome routine, but I also loathe it. Routine — the day-to-day repetition of easily-forgettable tasks — blinds us to other ways of Being-in-the-world, other possibilities for living. This is true not only in the grandest sense, as in what it means to be alive and human, but also in the most mundane sense, down to the way we do laundry and eat our food.

I could go on and on about the deeper differences between life in Japan and life in the United States (individuality versus the community would be a looooong talk), but today I want to focus on those more mundane aspects, the “boring” facets of everyday life. I want to draw attention to these “ordinary” things because, well, their ordinariness does not rid them of their real-world implications. This fact is what we all too easily forget when locked in the embrace of routine. We forget that every facet of our decisions and actions equals a measurable change in the entire world. The unconscious flipping-on of the light switch (which, to be quite honest, you and I hardly ever stop to ponder) equals an seemingly endless chain of reactions that stretches around the entire world.

There is a lot that governments and businesses can do to cultivate sustainable lifestyles. But I also firmly believe in the power of us individuals to head down that track on our own accord. And it starts with the littlest of things, things that I try to notice when I’m abroad. Maybe Japan has discovered a few things that we could adopt back in the States.

1. Sharing household appliances. The apartment building I’m living in has 8 units, and we all share these two washers and two dryers, which are tiny by American standards. Many people do not even use the dryers. Indeed, when you walk through a residential neighborhood in Tokyo, you won’t see people sitting on their porches drinking a beer and chillaxing; rather, you’ll see clothes air-drying in the sun. Sharing a WD unit is just one more iteration of the “sharing economy,” which can not only lessen the resources needed to mobilize our economy, but also help household finance.

2) Jobs for everyone. Job security and economics cannot be separated from sustainability. Japan’s unemployment rate floats just above 3%, despite having a “stagflation” economy for over two decades. I took this picture because I’ve noticed something (after a hint given to me from an ole’ friend, Drew Tyler): Japan creates employment opportunities for the semi-retired and elderly. I snapped this picture while walking through a school zone, where there were no less than 10 people welcoming children to school, helping to ensure their safety and enthusiastically greet them (“Ohayo Gozaimasuuuuuuu!!!!”). The same is true in train stations — almost all the employees there working to guide pedestrian traffic and ensure safety are the elderly. My personal experience suggests that they are grateful to still be seen as contributing members of society (which they are).

3) Plants everywhere. I’m always struck by how green Tokyo is. Again, walk the narrow, meandering alleys of its residential neighborhoods, and you’ll be struck by many anomalies, like how potted plants line the streets. That doesn’t seem significant when you focus on one household. But with 38 million people, things add up.

4) Effective recycling and waste management. Everyday when I wake up, the first thing I do is look at the trash schedule. “What is being picked up today?” I ask. By separating my waste into several different categories, I make Tokyo’s job much easier. They are able to deflect reusable resources back into the system of production, and direct unusable resources to incinerators, which are used to generate electricity. In Austin, TX (where I live), apartment complexes and residences use single-stream recycling bins. I think the evidence is clear — single-stream recycling is not effective, and it threatens the profit margins of resource recovery systems.

5) Multi-modal transit. It’s no secret that Tokyo has one of the best subway/commuter train networks in the world. But its success is ensured by all the ways people get to the train station, which is primarily through foot and bicycle. This is an image of a thoroughfare through Toshima Ward — by no means “downtown” Tokyo. A wide setback allows for ample pedestrian traffic, bicycle traffic, and even landscaping. This is also the case on many auxiliary roads. For the smaller residential roads, one lane is shared among cars, bicycles, scooters, and pedestrians. This sharing actually makes the roads safer, as it trains everyone to be alert and respectful.

6) Waste not. I think that the American, suburban dream was largely built around the desire for convenience. The more easily I can access the plush refinements of the on-sale-gotta-buy-it-but-be-sure-to-throw-it-away-before-the-new-model-comes-out lifestyle, the better. And so, as if the accouterments of daily life were like Amazon Prime, everything needs to be on instant-demand. Not so in Japan. Every time I stay in a residence, I’ve had to manually flip on the hot water heater 10 or so minutes before taking a shower. I wonder how much energy that saves? Remember, there are 38 million people in the Tokyo region alone. This adds up.

7) Maximize the potential of space. I call this particular image “solar landscaping,” and it’s a prominent feature of Panasonic’s Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town (something I’ll reflect on in a later post). But it speaks to something that is simply true in Japan and any other geographic area constrained by its space: the maximal optimization of land, every square inch.

I know, I know — I’m highlighting all the “good things” about Japan, and ignoring all the bad. Point taken. But that’s a discussion for another time and another place. What’s more important now, I believe, is simply mining the world for best practices. These are simply some of them.

(This is the third article of a series on smart cities, during which Patrick will be cataloguing the emergence of the smart city in urban planning discourse and practice. During the month of July, he’ll be exploring smart city initiatives and philosophies in and near Tokyo, Japan. He will continue his research into the fall and spring, with a goal of finishing his Masters thesis in a timely manner . . . or just in time to graduate and nab a job)