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Relatively few Americans have been to Tokyo, and I think most are under the mistaken impression that it looks like Lost in Translation or something. They would probably be shocked to learn that there are TONS of single family homes in Tokyo's core, often on quiet streets. There are almost no SFH in Manhattan.
The truth is core NYC is simply busier, by a longshot. But Tokyo's urban geography is vastly greater. Tokyo is more like a giant, denser LA, but with trains instead of freeways. It doesn't have a "center of the world" feeling with a dominant, monumental core; it's more like hundreds of transit nodes stitched together.
Now Hong Kong has crazy density (though over a very small geography). Tokyo is just medium dense over a huge area.
Hong Kong is more like a hybrid of NYC(Financial district, skyscrapers in Central) and SF(natural beauty and high hill roads in the city)
Tokyo is a city with NYC’s vibe and pace but with a city layout similar to LA.
Unlike Manhattan(LowerManhattan, Midtown Manhattan, Uptown Manhattan) being the center of NYC, there is no defined downtown/center in Tokyo and you can’t say Shinjuku, Harajuku, Roppongi, Odaiba, Ikebukuro, Marunouchi/Otemachi(Tokyo’s version of Manhattan) as the center or downtown of Tokyo.
Last edited by SnobbishDude; 09-19-2019 at 12:56 AM..
LA native. Studied Japanese as my minor for three years in college and absolutely love Japanese culture. I have also visited both Tokyo and NYC many times over the years.
Contrary to some of the above posts, I would say Tokyo is the better city for short term visit(Food, infrastructure, customer service and street cleanness are certainly top notch, possibly the best city in the world in these categories), but NYC is hands down the better city to live in the long term and the superior city of the two.
You can live in Tokyo for twenty years and still be a clueless Gaijin trying to figure out all the written and unwritten social rules. I much prefer the NYer’s bluntness(“In Your Face”) type social interactions and NYer’s open-mindness to accept different cultures/people who are different from you.
Would you say that Tokyo looks more like LA than NYC? Because Tokyo sprawls a lot more, granted it's a dense sprawl, and rather than having a centralized core like Manhattan it has multiple cores/CBD's such as Shinjuku, Shibuya, Roppongi, Maronouchi, etc.
As someone that has been to Tokyo... not at all. It does sprawl out as far, but that’s about where the similarities end.
Everything in Tokyo is human scaled, and many people live within a 15-30 minutes walk of cerything they could need in life. In LA, that is largely untrue. Even though it’s more urban and walkable on certain levels, in certain ways **** the world city most synonymous with car culture still IMO.
Tokyo is very lush and park like, LA is relatively arid I think.
Tokyo, and Japanese urbanism in general are really just different from that ofanywhere else in the world. The scale, set up, even building style has to be visited to be understood. Things aren’t necessarily the most aesthetically pleasing everywhere, but public/road space there is shared space... just about everywhere.
Been to both and have to say Tokyo feels bigger and is a lot easier to get lost in.
Tokyo has like 5 downtowns, NYC only 2.
Nah, NYC has at least 3 big downtowns. Brooklyn has one of the biggest downtowns in the U.S. and people keep thinking of NYC as Manhattan, but the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn are huge, not to mention the smaller ones of the Bronx and Staten Island.
I never got this "loooks bigger" question. There is no place in NY where you can see more than a couple of blocks down the street, so it never looks bigger than Skaneateles NY. And places in NYC that resemble Skaneateles.
I never got this "loooks bigger" question. There is no place in NY where you can see more than a couple of blocks down the street, so it never looks bigger than Skaneateles NY. And places in NYC that resemble Skaneateles.
Manhattan (particularly Midtown + Lower Manhattan) is the largest, most continuous "downtown" area in the world, with much of it filled with crowds, noise, traffic, and tall buildings, producing this claustrophobic canyon effect for miles upon miles. For a downtown, Manhattan feels and IS ENORMOUS. This is why Manhattan has a "center of the world" vibe to it that is just not present in Tokyo nor just about anywhere else.
In contrast, when you walk around Tokyo and realize that the crowded centers of places like Shibuya and Shinjuku are only a few to several blocks long (and centered around the transit hubs), however big they may "feel", the overall effect is less impressive.
Some people argue that the multimodal effect makes Tokyo "feel bigger". I argue that is partially what makes it feel smaller. I suspect that the mistake some people make in their minds (for those that have actually visited Tokyo), is that they step out of Shibuya or Shinjuku and mentally extrapolate what they see there as being the case all over Tokyo. Many people's comments on this thread read like this. The reality is far different as much of the rest of Tokyo is just not very similar to places like Shibuya or Shinjuku. I suspect that some of these folks have not seen much of Tokyo on foot outside of these major transit hubs.
Outside of the 5 boroughs, the NYC metro is relatively low density. Thus, on a "metro level", Tokyo does feel bigger and more crowded. However, on a city level, no it doesn't.
As the question says, this is specifically about how subjectively large, massive, crowded, impressive, prominent each city feels, not a general which city you prefer, or which is more multicultural.etc...
I've been to New York and will be visiting Tokyo in October, so I'm curious as to how different they'll feel.
Tokyo obviously wins in terms of population - it's metro boasts 35 million vs 22 million in New York (I only really care about metros). It is also still the city with the highest GDP in the world. On the other hand, New York is still to me the original 'big city' and still just feels huge.
In area I'm not sure which is larger (depends how you measure it), but I think the area of the 'unofficial downtown' or built-up area is more important than the metro. NY's outer 'burbs like in Long Island can be rather low-density, while Tokyo is probably more uniformly dense. Tokyo has surprising few high-rises though, considering it's size and population, while NYC has quite a few.
Like most New World cities Manhattan is based on a grid pattern, so it feels like one cohesive mass of urbanity and skyscrapers. Avenues flanked by concrete, steel and glass canyons stretch to the vanishing point in New York, while Tokyo's layout seems more akin to London, more bends and broken up into more distinct 'neighbourhoods.' Central Park is a perfect rectangle so doesn't seem to break up the city form so much.
In terms of crowds, Shibuya and Times Square can certainly be packed like sardines, and both boast tons of neon billboards. Much of Tokyo is like Times Square though.
Daytime crowds in each are probably similar, in excess of 3 million people. Manhattan has about 1.6 million, I'm not sure what area in central Tokyo would have a similar population.
Traffic in both is of course no doubt heavy, and both cities boast two of the most busy and extensive subway systems in the world. Tokyo's is busier, but New York's is so iconic and is 24/7.
I hear Tokyo is surprisingly quiet after midnight in many parts, and trains stop running soon after midnight, while the New York subway runs 24/7, 365 days a year.
New York's worldliness/globalness and multiculturalism might subjectively influence how prominent it feels although I don't think it should be part of the comparison.
Be especially interested to hear from those who have quite a bit of experience in both.
I have been to New York City New York , and presently plan on going to Tokyo in one year.
I voted for Tokyo because I compared both of the Metro areas to made my decision. I'm the type of guy that measures a cities by the metro area not just the city proper.
I have been to New York City New York , and presently plan on going to Tokyo in one year.
I voted for Tokyo because I compared both of the Metro areas to made my decision. I'm the type of guy that measures a cities by the metro area not just the city proper.
Metro area population is useful but it does not tell the whole story. You can still have a metro area that has a high population that is spread over a very large area even if the city does not feel that big.
Plus, a good fraction in the metro area may not even commute into the core city, but rather to a satellite (in the case of the Tokyo-Yokohama area).
A better rubric is daytime population (which includes commuters and travelers) vs nighttime population in the core area(s). I think that is a better dynamic for quantitatively assessing how big a city really feels.
I have family in Spanish Harlem NYC (been there 8 bazillion times) and have currently lived 45 minutes south of Tokyo for 3 years (Yokosuka Naval base). They feel completely different due to how they are laid out, but I'll do my best to compare.
The sheer size and scope of Midtown & Lower Manhattan is the definition of sensory overload but it's still very manageable in terms of navigation due to the grid pattern. Tokyo on the other hand is a cobweb of roads and because the city is multi-nodal (Shingawa, Roppongi, Ginza, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Odiaba etc..) they are clustered and far removed from each other (think LA on crack, cocaine and meth) so it's substantially harder to walk/drive the city (both have 1st tier metro systems)
In terms of how packed/busy they feel.... Times Square and Shibuya Crossing are both so crowded it makes more or less no difference on which one has "more", but because Tokyo is built around multi-nodal train stations the crowds are substantially more centralized, where as Manhattan is substantially more uniform in terms of how busy & lively it feels across the entire island. There also seems to be this myth that Tokyo goes quite after dark... lol. Even with Tokyo's handicap of the subway closing at midnight, any of the bigs nodes I just named are just as packed and rowdy as any of NYC's night spots. They are both through and through 24/7 cities.
Stepping away outside of their core(s) into the city propers the biggest difference is housing stock. NYC has substantially more big 30 story pre-war high rises and then a **** ton of 6-7 story apartment rows in Brooklyn, Queens & Bronx. Tokyo on the other hand is nothing but sea of 10-20 story apartments sardined on top of each other with absolutely zero room in-between.
You step further out into the metro and the comparison ends... NYC has moved onto single family homes and the burbs. Tokyo is still maintaining that absurd level of density into Yokohama (some 15 miles south) and Yokosuka region (+30 miles south) and well into the foothills of the Yamanshi region to the west.
In short NYC feels bigger when you are in the heart of Manhattan, but the further away you get from Manhattan, NYC rapidly shrinks. Tokyo is the inverse, it's core(s) feel individually smaller but the cities urban breadth and sheer scope rapidly expands and unveils itself the further away you get from its core(s)
Last edited by Joakim3; 09-26-2019 at 06:24 AM..
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