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Comment by rhacker | Hacker News Reader

I think the basis for this feeling is that people keep moving here. We feel it when traffic gets worse, etc... Not really sure IF there's a real solution. The more people there are, the worse things get in small spaces. We have an entire country that is mostly empty.

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> I think the basis for this feeling is that people keep moving here. We feel it when traffic gets worse

A city in Japan would build new dense neighborhoods and a new commuter rail line to serve them. A city in California would refuse to build new homes nearby, so people are forced to live in a far-away suburb and commute 2 hours by car. Then Californians complain about increasing traffic congestion.

https://www.reddit.com/r/movingtojapan/comments/7g9n6e/music...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ImTheMainCharacter/comments/11aqayg...

Japanese people are NOTHING like Americans. Stop saying CA should build like Japan unless you're willing to kick out the loud assholes.

Japan may have a lot of problems but as a generally quiet person, I respect that attitude and wish it was more of a norm here in the UK.

Construction zones in Japan have barriers erected around them with digital noise meters (in decibels). Painted next to the meters are the legal limits, and a phone number to call the authorities if they're exceeded. Try that in the U.S.!

California is mostly empty too. It's larger than Japan and has almost 3x fewer people.

Japan actually has about 3.25× California’s population. OTOH, California has a lot more land area that is, say, desert than Japan does, so there’s that (it also has a lot more that is controlled by a separate sovereign; 47.7% of California is federal land.)

The federally-owned land in California is mostly deserts and mountains.

Besides, even if we're generous and say that half of California is too mountainous to live in and another quarter is too desert-y to live in, leaving only a quarter of the state's area suitable for habitation, that leaves roughly 40 million people living in roughly 40,000 square miles, or about a thousand heads per square mile. That's comparable to Israel or Belgium in terms of population density, and certainly not as though people are packing into Kowloon.

Hell, even Los Angeles is mostly empty

https://noparkinghere.com/

Yeah, but you can't move to the empty space either. People will complain that's a desert and nobody should be allowed to live there cuz water. Or that its uninhabitable because the current population is distasteful to coastal sensibilities. Or it's too hot and humid or too cold and windy. Or whatever.

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