Kyoto and Walkability
Despite its unique and highly accessible urbanism, Japan is strangely absent from the urbanist conversation on human-scale walkable development. In my recent trip there, which spanned both rural and urban regions, I was struck by its ubiquitous (and sometimes seemingly neurotic) obsession with pedestrian well being and accessibility.
Japan’s urbanism is easy to miss. Aesthetically, Japanese streets bear many totems of thoughtless modernity which we generally associate with dead, lifeless streets. Concrete utility poles draped with thick ropes of electrical wire line every street. Entire neighborhoods lack sidewalks, where their utility is seemingly obvious. Instead they have a single asphalt surface with only paint markings suggesting where pedestrians and cars may go. One of the most common popular images of the transportation system of Japan is of white-gloved station attendants shoving commuters into claustrophobically over-packed trains.
This cosmetic blight obscures many examples of highly cultivated, sustainable, human-scaled urbanism which ought to be celebrated, studied, and replicated.
In this essay, I will break down the urbanism of Kyoto, a mid-sized city widely considered to be the cultural and religious center of Japan. Kyoto is an ideal subject for this examination because it successfully integrates its modern downtown region with a largely intact (yet still thriving) ancient city.
Kyoto was spared from the worst of the World War II bombing campaigns, and so retains more of its original character than other cities. Yet it has also participated in Japan’s subsequent growth and urbanization. The resulting hybrid of old and new, and the careful efforts to manage the intermingling of the two, make Kyoto a unique case study in transportation and growth.
The Trains:
The heart of Kyoto’s transportation infrastructure is its central train station, which connects the commuter rail to the regional bus and subway system. Importantly, Kyoto Station also serves the Shinkansen (bullet train), which is generally used as a cheaper, faster, and more convenient alternative to domestic air travel. Kyoto Station anchors the entire downtown district, which is largely composed of mid-sized commercial office buildings separated by broad four lane roads. Like most cities in Japan, the train station is adjacent to large malls full of hundreds of ramen, sushi, and street food restaurants, multiple department stores, and dozens of boutiques, often featuring coveted international brands.
Downtown Kyoto is largely indistinguishable from other Japanese cities in this regard. For many years, the city fought the development of Kyoto Station, which was seen as an incursion into the city’s carefully preserved and curated culture. Fortunately, the station and its tentacles of railway seemingly form a wall separating the charms of old Kyoto from the adjacent sprawling industrial exurbs of neighboring metropolis Osaka. The immediately surrounding office buildings and retail corridors provide Kyoto with a foothold in the global economy, without which tourism and related industries would likely overwhelm the cities local culture.
Kyoto proper takes up about ten square miles and is compact enough for the adventurous to navigate entirely by foot. However, its transit system facilitates easy commutes from the largely residential old city to the downtown business district. Kyoto is bordered on three sides by mountains, and the Kamo River marks the city’s core. Subways traverse the length of the river, and provide access to Kyoto’s more rural suburbs and far flung temples. A network of buses fill in the gaps when stations are too distant to easily walk to.
One of the joys of modern tourism in Japan is how its remarkable infrastructure makes the entire country easily navigable with only a map navigation app. I never found a destination that was outside the range of a 3G wireless connection and reliable public transit. It was unnecessary to purchase tickets, or even do more than the most remedial planning in advance.
Even the Shinkansen Bullet trains departed every 20 minutes meaning I could travel from Kyoto to Nagoya, 90 miles away, on a whim (which I did). At 175 miles per hour, the journey (which would kill an afternoon in America) took less than 40 minutes. While signage was only intermittently in English, by relying on the brigades of station attendants and instructions from my iPhone, I rarely got lost.
Biking Infrastructure:
Kyoto’s streets are arranged in a strict grid system, broken only by rivers and canals. Even the old city, which is largely composed of traditional style merchant houses, adheres to a strict grid, one of the oldest in the world. Blocks are small and varied, with proudly kept inns, restaurants, and shops lining every street. Because of the relatively small size and limited kitchen amenities of dwellings, people tend to eat out more, meaning that streets remain bustling and vibrant both day and night. This creates an ideal habitat for walking and biking, which are both ubiquitous means of transportation in Kyoto.
Most streets in Kyoto lack sidewalks or street parking, forcing pedestrians and cyclist to negotiate with motorist for access to the same roads. One would think that this arrangement would create a stressful environment hostile to walking much as in the American suburbs, which also lack sidewalks. Fortunately, car dominance is mitigated by several factors.
First, many streets are narrow one lane, two way roadways. This means that drivers must constantly be on the lookout for oncoming traffic. When two cars pass, one must wedge onto a shoulder, much as in prewar American villages where narrow roads lined by on street parking forced vehicles to creep along at a pedestrian friendly pace.
The design of Kyoto streets were reminiscent of the nordic traffic engineer Hans Monderman’s controversial urban plans, in which all sidewalks and road markings were removed. This planned chaos had the effect of calming traffic by foisting more responsibility and caution on motorists, who were forced to be on constant alert for pedestrians and other obstacles. In retrospect, I am surprised that I have never seen the Japanese urban experience cited as a precedent to those plans.
Virtually all streets in Kyoto are dotted with ‘sharrows’, icons painted on the pavement indicating cyclists have a right of way. In the United States, sharrows have been shunned by walkable urbanists as a fig leaf token concession to cyclists which are often placed on dangerously fast roads where they are unlikely to be obeyed. But in Kyoto they literally line every street; the abundance of sharrows seems more like an assertion of bicycle dominion, a constant reminder to motorists of who’s in charge.
Almost everyone cycles in Kyoto. Grocery stores often have space for a dozen or so bikes in front. Many railway adjacent parking lots have been repurposed to store commuter bikes, complete with vending machine operated lockers. Construction sites afford spaces for their worker’s bikes. Hotels provide bikes. Even Kyoto’s notoriously fashionable professional class cycle, and office workers can be regularly seen sporting suits, loafers, heels, and skirts that conform to the seemingly mandatory Japanese chic style, yet are durable and breathable enough to survive a morning commute. Cycling has no class, age, or gender connotations. Everyone just does it.
Because Japan is one of the lowest crime countries in the world, bikes can be left anywhere unlocked. Many bikes have a flimsy mechanism that locks the rear wheel and would keep a marauder from riding it away, but these devices seem both futile and excessive. Anyone could just pick the bike up and pick the lock in private. The point is, they don’t.
The Covered Markets & Canals
Kyoto’s old city is occasionally bisected by a four lane, two way road lined on either side by a wide covered sidewalk. Unlike the freeways that bisect many American cities, these streets were not created by razing and paving over existing neighborhoods to accommodate vehicles .Rather, the thoroughfares have long been part of the urban fabric of Kyoto. For hundreds of years, the wooden city reliably burnt down every decade or so. These broad roads were planned as fire breakers, and were only retrofitted as vehicle thoroughfares more recently.
Today they are lined with offices, hotels, department stores, and other squat buildings. The sidewalks were recently widened to improve walkability with great effect. Especially in the rainy season, when unpredictable storms can add stress to commutes, the covered thoroughfares create a convenient conduit for pedestrians. While they diminish Kyoto’s old time charm, they are beloved as public spaces and serve as a hub for the city’s bus system. With any luck, Kyoto will continue to reclaim additional vehicle road space for public use and further discourage private passenger vehicles.
Notably, even when the streets are clogged with cars in Japan, the effect on the well-being of adjacent sidewalks is nowhere near as destructive as it is in other counties. For one thing, Japanese drivers do not use their horns as a stress management tool. I went entire days in dense Japanese cities without hearing a single horn. Similarly, ambulances use their sirens far more sparingly than in the United States, where even the suburbs are haunted by their seemingly inescapable shrieks. Japanese cars are significantly smaller, more efficient, and less polluting than cars in American cities, and their drivers are in general more courteous. These cultural factors contributed markedly to the favorable living, walking, and cycling conditions of Japanese cities.
Fortunately, where the thoroughfares primarily serve large commercial retail shops and national chains, Kyoto has plenty of venues for the traditional shops that give it authenticity and life. Particularly, the city hosts dozens of covered markets; long, narrow pedestrian alleyways lined with merchandise and protected by a clear gabled roof.
The most famous of these is Nishiki Market, which is profiled in most tour books and caters to a tourist market. However these markets are used by locals and are numerous enough that a casual wanderer will encounter many over an afternoon. They contain ramen and udon shops, cafes, antique stores, taverns, fish markets, dollar stores, vintage western-ware shops, bookstores, print-shops, kimono tailors, knife shops, and more. Most stores embrace the ‘bazaar’ aesthetic, with an eclectic assortment of goods on display lining the streets in front. Each is carefully curated and patronized by a rolodex of loyal (sometimes multigenerational) customers.
Many of these markets provide an artery of commerce and a venue for social connection through otherwise sleepy residential areas. They give neighborhoods a focal point which are essential for them to form a sense of place and direction. Yet because the shops are so small and meticulously well kept, they do not conflict with the restrained scale and calm of surrounding neighborhoods.
At nighttime, the center of urban life shifts from the streets and markets to the rivers and canals. Kyoto’s waterways are all lined with elegant stone stone banks and generous pedestrian promenades. In daytime, these provide additional conduits for pedestrian and bike traffic. Many Japanese travelers take a secular pilgrimage along the cherry lined ‘Philosopher’s Walk’, said to have been traversed daily by Kitaro Nishida, one of Japan’s most cherished thinkers.
By night, the canals transform. Inns and taverns come to life with patrons, young Japanese loiter and form cliques along the banks. These regions are lit only by the light from discrete restaurant signage and windows, creating a subtle and calming ambiance, ideal for date night strolls or loitering with your entourage. On weeknights, the domestic tourists animate the streets; many embellish the occasion by dressing in traditional attire, complete with wooden sandals and kimonos. On weekend nights, tourists are joined by local youth, who add a mischievous bustle to the scene.
Everything that happens on these promenades is softly reflected by the swift but smooth waters that rush by. The dim lights shimmer and the shadows of passers by dance about on the surface of the water. It is magnetic to nightlife and calls to mind the provincial ambiance of Meiji era woodblock prints of the golden ‘floating city’ era. The preservation of canals is an essential source of Kyoto’s magic.
The Suburbs and Rural Regions
As one departs the city center and approaches the three mountain ranges that encircle Kyoto, fewer commercial ventures take up street space. Eventually, mixed use commercial and residential neighborhoods give way to bedroom communities composed entirely of single family homes. Unlike the suburbs of the United States, however, these regions still have vibrant, safe, walkable streets that foster local character and community.
How? Three things.
Adjacent Homes
Even in rural Japan, homes are adjacent and mixed use. Residents get many of the benefits, freedoms, and amenities of the city with few compromises associated with light density free-standing development models.
Even in rural regions of Japan, most homes are clustered together, sharing bearing walls and public areas. A small collection of 10 or 15 homes can form a street with a palpable sense of community and shared experience. These highly woven communities are reminiscent of Jane Jacobs’ now nostalgic descriptions of East Coast tenement communities where the silent gaze of watchful grandmothers served as an integrated security system and social safety net.
The outer reaches of Kyoto seamlessly transition to this more sedate development pattern; there is really no American analog to it. Japanese homes are often inhabited by a single family for generations at a time. They are meticulously maintained by the owner and they are largely preserved in the traditional style with ornate ceramic roof tiles and facades of iris like wood grain.
This commitment to maintenance and preservation is probably enforced by the fact that the homes are adjacent and therefore share a common structure. The deterioration of one would diminish and threaten its neighbors; pests, leaks, and other disorder would likely spread to adjacent homes were disrepair allowed to fester too long. The fact that the homes are adjacent both guarantees and requires continuous engagement between neighbors, lest the entire community literally rot away.
Contrast this with the American style of free-standing suburban home, each divided by hedges, lawns, and white-picket fences. Engagement with neighbors, to the extent that it happens at all, is rare and highly mediated. Most American suburbanites are more likely to pass their neighbors while enclosed in their cars than in person. The fact that each home is situated on a parcel of land often many times larger than the footprint of the structure means that everyone and everything is further apart, making efforts at public transit of commercial retail ventures all but hopeless. This distance hinders social connection and prevents the formation of social bonds.
2. Proximity to Retail/Mixed Use
Residents of the outer reaches of Kyoto are never more than a few minutes walk from a variety of restaurants and fresh food markets. For more specialized goods, they can walk, cycle, ride a train, or order a taxi to the city center. While car ownership is not unheard of, it is rarely the quickest or most convenient option due to the short block sizes and the many intersections which would frustrate most drivers.
In this way, the suburbs of Kyoto enjoy many of the amenities and benefits of city-like walkability: easy access to healthy food, proximity to cultural institutions, strong community life, and access to the national economy via the nearby city. Yet they retain much of the calm and tranquility that draw people out of the city, as well.
3. No Freeways
Many cities are divided from their suburbs by freeways and beltways that are magnets for traffic and lack the human scale required to support a healthy mobility habitat. Because Kyoto has historically fought such developments, and more recently has worked in a concerted manner to promote walkability, it has largely evaded the discontents of a ‘modern’ mobility system of roads and highways.
It is tough to explain just how important the absence of freeways are to city life. Freeways introduce noise pollution and dirty the air. They invite reckless driving near pedestrian zones. They erode local retail by drawing people to malls and big box shops, and create an irresistible incentive to demolish buildings to install parking lots. They create artificial boundaries through cities around which racial and class barriers form and fester. They introduce all of the dysfunction and isolation of suburban life while simultaneously dissolving the benefits of the city. You get the worst of both worlds; a pattern that has come to characterize most American cities.
Simply by doing nothing… by not building freeway infrastructure, Kyoto avoided many of the compounding issues that too often suffocate urban and suburban life both in Japan (see figure) and the world over.
Conclusion:
Because it lacks recognizable symbols of human-scaled development like sidewalks, benches, and street trees, it is easy to overlook Kyoto’s unique urbanism. However, it is just as easy to mistake symbols of urbanism for the thing they represent. Even the most lavishly appointed sidewalks will lay fallow and unused when they line the cul-de-sacs of suburban super-blocks (as many do). Aesthetics have little bearing on how people use a place (and whether or not they enjoy it). It is far more important that public spaces be well defined, have a walkable scale, and conform to less tangible conventions of accessible and humane development.
To me, this was the most interesting part of observing the public life and urbanism of Kyoto. Most cities with strong walkability and preservation movements are heavily influenced by the City Beautiful and Garden City aesthetics, which tend to be conflated with humane urban scale. Yet Japan’s urban spaces are culturally divorced from these ideas, and sometimes completely devoid of trees, landscaping, or any evidence of nature whatsoever.
The dedication to transit, and the preservation of adjacent housing, a tight street grid, and narrow streets demonstrates that a cosmetic makeover is unnecessary to create human scaled cities that are accessible, well-loved, and vibrant.
