People spend about 78 minutes a day getting around, on average. As Japan's population ages and people move more slowly, could its cities start shrinking? ▼ About This Episode One night, stuck in a traffic jam on the way home, Sakura and Haru stop at a highway service area for a can of coffee. The traffic sign still says three more hours. Haru says tonight is unusual: a study of 43 countries found that people spend about 78 minutes a day getting around, on average, whatever their location, wealth or transport. And when vehicles get faster, people don't save time. They just go farther, live farther from work and shops, and cities spread outward. Researchers call this idea a "travel time budget": people spend a fairly steady amount of time traveling each day. An older rule of thumb, Marchetti's constant, puts it at about an hour; the newer 43-country study puts the average at about 78 minutes. Berlin shows it in numbers. Around 1800, its radius was about 2.5 kilometers, small enough to walk across. Horse-drawn railways, streetcars and then the subway each made travel faster, and by the mid-twentieth century the radius was about 20 kilometers: 64 times bigger in area. On an American business-news show, the hosts said transport tech has hit a ceiling, and that cities may have reached their peak size. Now the opposite. As people age, they can't walk as far, and they walk more slowly. And Japan's population is getting older, even in the cities. If daily travel time stays about the same, Haru wonders whether cities that kept spreading might start to shrink. In Rome toward the end of the Middle Ages, people clustered along the riverbank, where water was plentiful and boats brought in goods; today, people might gather near stations and bus stops. But water pipes, roads and bus routes that stretch far out can't shrink right away. If a city goes back to a size that fits people who move more slowly, what would your town look like? ▼ Featured Links - "Anthropological Invariants in Travel Behavior" (Cesare Marchetti, 1994) — the source of the Berlin numbers: https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/4071/1/RR-95-04.pdf- "Restoring the Ancient Water Supply System in Renaissance Rome" (Karmon, 2005) — on where people lived in late medieval Rome: https://waters.iath.virginia.edu/karmon.html ▼ Timestamps (Chapters) 00:00 - A Traffic Jam and a Service Area Break 00:30 - The 78-Minute Rule: Faster Vehicles, Farther Trips 01:14 - Berlin: From a Walking City to 64 Times Bigger 02:00 - Have Cities Reached Their Peak Size? 02:23 - Aging Japan: What If Getting Around Slows Down? 02:55 - Where Would People Gather? Rome's Riverbank and Today's Stations 03:28 - Fewer People, Same-Size Pipes, Roads and Bus Routes 03:57 - A City Sized for People Who Move More Slowly 04:21 - The Traffic Moves Again ▼ Connect with Us - Twitter/X: https://x.com/NarrativeJapan- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/narrativejapan/ ▼ The Sources Behind Each Episode Every episode starts from Japanese-language reporting. Our free newsletter walks through it in English and links you to every source we used. One email per episode: https://narrativejapan.substack.com/ ◆Note The content of this program is intended solely for informational purposes and reflects the personal views of the creators. Please make any investment or business decisions based on your own judgment and responsibility. This program does not endorse or recommend any specific financial products or investment strategies. 🎵Music by Ivan Ohanezov from Pixabay #JapanBusiness #JapaneseCulture #NarrativeJapan #JapanPodcast #AgingJapan #UrbanPlanning
