About this episode

Joe McReynolds discusses urban lessons from Tokyo and contrasts them with New York's policies.

Joe McReynolds has two jobs. By day, he's a national security analyst tracking Chinese information warfare. Nights and weekends, he's a Tokyo obsessive with a PhD in progress, a private digital library of hundreds of Japanese-language urban studies books, and a story about the time he frantically called his boss to manufacture an emergency just so he could fly to Tokyo and show Ezra Klein around. Jamie sits down with McReynolds to talk about what New York could actually learn from a city where you can open a bar in your living room for $2,000, health inspections happen every five to seven years, and grandmas sell homemade lunchboxes off folding tables without anyone hassling them. Also: public toilets, the 1961 down-zoning that broke everything, and why Joe is terrified about the short term but quietly hopeful about geoengineering. For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

People in this episode

Host: Jamie Rubin

Guest: Joe McReynolds

Topics covered

• urban studies
• information warfare
• public policy
• geoengineering
• Tokyo
• New York

Keywords

• Tokyo
• New York
• urban studies
• information warfare
• geoengineering
• public toilets
• health inspections

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Vital City

Places: Tokyo, New York

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