I watched a show last night about living in Tokyo and I found it to be the most interesting show. It was on National Geogrpahic for those who are interested. The show centered around how so many people live in such a small place. It detailed various ways that the Japanese have learned how to live in smaller spaces.
In particular the main thing they concern themselves with is better ways to store things. They have much better organizational storage capabilities than we generally do, they use every space they can. They have cabinets that have 4 shelves, thus wasting little. Compare that to our 2 shelves in our cabinets that tend to waste a lot. Their closets often take the whole wall making them with sliding doors that often look like they are the wall. They even have compartments in the floorspace to allow them to use that for storage (why we don’t is beyond me, we easily could as that space is often just empty between boards.
But storage isn’t the only thing. Furniture usage is a huge part of their space saving techniques as well. Everything folds out and compacts. Having multiple tables under each other, or into a wall so that it only comes out when needed. Futons are generally the basic form of bedding, and more often than not futons that are frameless and then put in a closet during the daytime.
All this i think is meant to revel in their space that they do have. After all, having all the furniture compacted, it allows people to have more space available, even in a larger place they would likely do this just to show off how much space they actually have.
I can’t help but think of Americans when watching this. I live in about a 650 sqft apartment, which by their standards would be luxurious and I feel like I live in a small apartment. But maybe this is because I don’t go out much, maybe I wouldn’t care if I did, but how do I go out when everything is out of walking distance and gas is too expensive to drive? This has become the central problem with American city design. Even in large cities, they are often spread out so much that you need a car to survive.
In all this recent talk about living green that we seem to be having these days, it is a wonder no one is really talking about city design in a way where people take a smaller footprint on their city. After all, if we lived in smaller living spaces, that was closer together where everything is in walking distance, we wouldn’t need to drive and own cars and burn gas. We would leave more of our countryside to farms and wildlife creating a more balanced ecosystem. And maybe we would have more respect for our neighbors which of late I think we are seriously lacking. Just doing little things from going from 650 sqft. to 550 sqft. would help immensely the world over, but unfortunately it is unrealistic for us Americans to do it from the ground up. We need the top levels of government and business to start thinking of this. Unfortunately I don’t think that businesses and government will start thinking of the good of the many for a very long time.