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Downtown: London
Walkability: Paris
Traffic: Tokyo
Economy/Job Market: NYC / London
Safety: Tokyo
Education/School: London by far (UCL, Imperial, Kings College, LSE)
Suburbs (not sure)
Nightlife: They are all good and on similar level
Climate: Tokyo
Entertainment: Paris
Restaurants: Paris
Col/housing: Tokyo (cheap food!)
Where would I rather live?: London or Paris. But I don't speak French. So, London it is
LA native currently living in New York and have visited Tokyo multiple times. Can’t comment on London/Paris as I have never been there. But here is my take on New York City Vs Tokyo:
- Downtown-New York. Unlike Manhattan in New York, Tokyo is much more sprawling in a way like LA(places like Shinjuku, Marunouchi, Minato, Roppongi, Shibuya are all different major “centers” surrounding the city and there is no defined downtown in Tokyo. Since we are only talking about downtown, I vastly prefer Manhattan over Tokyo. The sheer energy, class, urban scale, cultural and economic depth and variety of Manhattan can’t be matched by Tokyo, possibly by anywhere on the planet.
- Walkability-New York. I can walk any where within Manhattan or between Manhattan and certain parts of Brooklyn/Queens pretty easily. Not so in Tokyo, where I found to be easier to walk within a certain neighborhood, but not easy to walk between neighborhoods. Would rather opt for the JR/Tokyo Metro than walking if I have to travel longer distance as Tokyo is more spread out than New York.
- Traffic-Tokyo. I found New York to have more car traffic than Tokyo.
- Public Transportation/Airports- Tokyo. MTA is 24/7 whereas JR and Tokyo Metro shut down around midnight. But Tokyo’s public transportation infrastructure are vastly superior to and much much cleaner than NYC. Even many stations in Manhattan(other than a few stations like the 34th St Hudson Yards) look really outdated and dirty. Also, I prefer Haneda/Narita way over JFK.
- Economy/Job Market-New York. It is very hard to find a white collar job as a Gaijin in Tokyo if you don’t speak Japanese and know the Japanese unwritten/written rules well.
- Safety-Tokyo by a significant margin. But New York City is one of the safest cities in the US.
- Education/Schools-New York.
- Suburbs-Probably Tokyo. Kawasaki and Saitama aren’t that bad.
- Nightlife-New York
- Climate-Tie? Probably NY has bigger extremes
- Entertainment/Outdoor recreation-Depends. By outdoor recreation do you mean Central Park Vs Shinjuku Gyoen/Yoyogi Park? Then I take Central Park.
- Restaurants-Tie. As world class cities, both New York and Tokyo have a lot of different dining options ranging from Michelin star restaurants to food trucks/mom pop places.
- CoL/Housing-New York especially Manhattan has significantly higher rent. Tokyo has more expensive groceries especially fruits. But both cities have a lot of affordable options where you can live cheaper.
Although I love the food, the street cleanness, the attention to detail of the Japanese culture and the public infrastructure of Tokyo very much, I much prefer living in NYC and visit Tokyo as a tourist. NYers have much more capacity to accept people/ideas that are different from them.
I live in NYC and have been on a long-ish term stay in Tokyo, so I'll compare the two in depth. I don't know enough about the day-to-day for Paris and London to really rank most of the categories save for maybe downtown, walkability and public transportation.
- Downtown: The lower half or so of Manhattan is extremely dense and bustling in a way that Tokyo's central business districts aren't as much so and I attribute that to three things: one is that Manhattan has more high-rises and skyscrapers densely clustered in a fairly small general area whereas Tokyo has clusters of them in several spots. Another is that Manhattan's daytime and residential population density is actually greater, and finally, Tokyo's downtown areas, which are the three contiguous wards of Chiyoda, Chuo, and Minato, are built in a way that manages density better.
For the last point, the central wards have many, many underground and second story corridors and connecting pathways to distribute people, a large number and density of transit stations that generally have many entrances and exits that often connect directly to large buildings and sometimes at multiple floor levels so that people using transit are not bunched in quite the same way at the limited number of exits and entrances, and Tokyo has very restrictive car parking where curbside parking is essentially nonexistent whereas in Manhattan, the many side streets often have a lane on each side dedicated to such which is ultimately a massive amount of the ground plane taken up by vehicles that are for the most parked and unoccupied. This ends up making Tokyo downtown areas often feeling less crowded compared to Manhattan despite the downtown areas of Tokyo having far greater retail and restaurant density and its transit stations having far higher ridership. In this way, I generally prefer Tokyo's downtowns as it generally has a much denser clustering of things to do and see though NYC's downtowns can often feel a lot more crowded and bustling.
- Walkability: Tokyo by a large stretch when it comes to how pedestrians dominate the streets in Tokyo and the many small side streets make it easy to cut across and there are places of interest along all manners of random side streets. However, the streets are also often less navigable in terms of not having an overarching grid system though it's become much easier to navigate with GPS and the modern smartphone.
- Traffic: New York City has "more" traffic and it seems to have a lot more cars while Tokyo definitely has cars, but the streets seem to be less congested overall. I think much of this comes from having so many streets in NYC, including even in Manhattan, having streetside parking rather than having almost all lanes, especially for all major arterials, be through-traffic or loading/unloading lanes only
- Public Transportation/Airports: Tokyo by a large margin here for both public transportation and airports. I think one thing to mention is that it's not just localized public transportation or mass transit that's good--it's also the ability to easily cover going outside of the metropolitan region by rail in a speedy manner that makes Tokyo better in this respect. Also, while Tokyo's public transportation is even more balkanized than NYC's public transportation is in terms of the number of agencies running them, Tokyo at least has the fare payment unified under one system which I hope NYC one day figures out.
- Economy/Job Market: This is highly dependent on what field you're working in, but working on a lower level service industry job is probably better in Tokyo than in NYC simply because there's a social welfare net that makes relatively meager paying occupations still fairly livable to some extent. I think where it pays off in NYC is in extremely lucrative work that pays well, well above an average median salary. One thing is that white collar professional jobs in Tokyo seem to run pretty long hours with relatively few vacation days, so the work environment for white collar professional jobs seems to be generally better.
- Safety: Tokyo by a large extent and this is pretty well born out by the stats.
- Education/Schools: I think PISA has Japan doing better than the US, but I'm not sure how that localizes to the cities specifically. I know that Tokyo tries to make it so that every district performs well and fairly evenly whether in a ritzy district or not, while NYC has some pretty significant disparities among different parts of the city. NYC has the higher ranked universities though.
- Suburbs: The suburbs of Tokyo are often a lot denser and packed around their train stations compared to NYC suburbs, though not always the case. I think if you're looking to live and work in the suburbs and prize a fairly large house and a couple of SUVs, then NYC suburbs are for you, while if you're looking for something still very walkable with frequent access to other parts by rail, but with a lot more greenery and often surrounded by preserved greenspace, then Tokyo suburbs do a bit better in that.
- Nightlife: Tokyo has the more diverse amount of offerings, and just more nightlife in general, but it's not as diverse of a crowd which can change things quite a bit.
- Climate: NYC. I like having a bit more snow.
- Entertainment/Outdoor recreation: Entertainment is a lot like nightlife in that Tokyo has a more diverse and greater amount of offerings that are accessible, but the crowd is again not as diverse. Outdoor recreation in Tokyo is in many ways a lot more accessible by hopping on a train to get to places, though I do like NYC's large park system.
- Restaurants: Eating out with pretty good quality food is better in Tokyo at almost every price range, and though the city itself is a lot more homogeneous in terms of demographics, the variety and abundance is huge even compared to NYC. The sheer number of eateries in Tokyo is immense compared to NYC, and though a large proportion of these are some variation of Japanese food or Japan's interpretation of the food of other peoples, the sheer number means that there's a large selection of eateries of other peoples readily available. As a side note, the general produce quality in Tokyo seems to be a lot better for the same price point. That being said, NYC is pretty strong when it comes to two of my favorite cuisines which is Chinese food and Mexican food, and while Tokyo does well in the former, it doesn't do as well in the latter.
- CoL/Housing: It is generally lower cost of living in Tokyo than in NYC. The housing in Tokyo is quite different in that places are generally smaller, but that comes with lower price points available.
- Where would you rather live? New York City, and much of that is because I already live there which means I have a lot more friends there than I have in Tokyo. Plus, my Japanese language level isn't even comfortably conversational level. I can order in restaurants and get by fairly well and I know enough kanji from being fluent in Chinese to help piece things together with knowing how to sound out the kanas and a base of words I know, that still isn't enough. While Tokyo is a lot more accommodating to an English-only speaker than NYC would be to a Japanese-only speaker, I still very much know English a lot better than I know Japanese.
I hope that NYC emulates more from Tokyo in terms of eliminating street side parking along all major commercial arterials, greatly improves and expands its mass transit system especially when it comes to leveraging its commuter rail system to being through-running in the urban core and so frequent as to be able to be used as rapid transit in many parts of the city and metropolitan area, unifies fare media payment for mass transit, and improves its K-12 school performance.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 01-29-2020 at 08:53 AM..
Downtown - possible Paris however London has some maginificent streetss.
Walkability - London
London has always had a lot of cuts and backstreets as well as an elevated walkway in the city of London. The current Mayor is making walking a priority and London also has a lot of walkable green space. Paris is also very walkable.
Traffic - London was the first major city to put in place a congestion charge and now has electric taxis and buses to cut pollution. So is actively trying to go carbon neutral.
Economy/Job - All four cities have good employment prospects. London and NYC have more employment for those speaking English and are both global financial hubs.
Public Transportation/Airports - Paris, it's an impressive system and is cheaper than London.
London has six airports, three of which are major international hubs, a decent underground which is 24 hours art weekends, the DLR, South London Tramlink, 24 hour busesm river buses, London Overground, Crossrail (from next year) and Regional/National/International rail services. Paris also has very good system with a good metro and the RER, including the vast new Grand Paris Express. Japan. has a very good high speed rail network (as does France) but local communter and metro services are not as impressive as the high speed system, whilst NYC's subway system has suffered from a lack of investment.
Safety - You are not going to find a safer large city than Tokyo. Saying that all the cities mentioned are relatively safe by international standards.
Education/Schools - London Education system has been preforming very well, and it's Universities such as UCL and Imperial are often in the top ten in the world. Other institutions such as the LSE, London Business Scool, Kings College London are also highly regarded internationally, As are colleges such as the Royal Veterinary College, Royal College of Music, Royal Academy of Music etc etc.
Suburbs - Draw - all have some great suburbs.
London has very green suburbs and a green belt with people communiting from the Home Counties, however all these cities have some very nice suburbs.
Nightlife- Possible New York, however it's close as London, Paris and Tokyo all have very good nightlife.
Entertainment/Outdoor recreation - London.
London and NYC both have world famous theatre districts and lots of music events, however again it's close because Paris and Tokyo have some great entertainment on offer. In terms of sporting events none of the cities come close to London in rekation to stadiums and the sheer amount of sport played, whilst London is full of parks and recreational facuilties.
Restaurants - Paris and Tokyo are both cities with vast numbers of of michelin starred restaurants so it's a tie, however for choice of different global cusine New York and London are very diverse and are great places to visit to try all kinds of global cusine.
CoL/Housing - Drawn
They are all expensive in terms of central areas (downtowns) ad I really don;'t see a clear winner in terms of housing CoL, although London's grocery shopping is quite cheap by international standards but this can be offset by expensive housing and travel.
Personally I would rather live in London or Paris, both are great cities and are only two hours away on the train (which is fairly cheap), so have the advantage of two great world cities within easy travelling distance.
Last edited by Brave New World; 01-30-2020 at 06:30 AM..
For me it is either NYC or London. And I've never been to London, so will have to wait to make that call...
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