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Comment by rb808 | Hacker News Reader

I remember hearing how in Japan the railway company builds a new line to somewhere then owns and develops the land itself, is that really true? Is a neat idea.

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That's mostly true - JR develops the land above and around the stations, but not huge tracts like you'd think of an American subdivision. The MTR in Hong Kong has a similar grant of rights, but invests mainly in shopping malls rather than residential or office developments.

Jr does the same thing in Japan. Its mostly malls and shopping venues, not residential areas and rarely offices.

Almost every single shopping mall in HK seems to have residential on top of it. It leads to massively good flow and all the good things that come of that - the customers come to you (assuming you don't completely suck).

And it's super convenient, you can get off the train and pick up groceries on the way home -- or just stop and have dinner at the station, you'll have dozens of restaurants to choose from.

Have time to kill before your long distance train? You can go shopping while you wait knowing that you only need to be at the train a few minutes before departure time.

It's how a lot of cities were built in the old days of rail. Land grants to build the rail (incentivizing private infrastructure), then the railroads themselves would build towns around stops.

It's not always a good thing. See the land ownership in the Sierras around Truckee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_town

I don't think that would really apply to an existing urban environment - that sounds like the public transit equivalent of subdivision development.

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