Kyoto Rejects Bladerunner Skyline

[Mulboyne]

IHT: Japan's ancient capital Kyoto to ban rooftop billboards, blinking neon signs
Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto plans to ban billboards on top of buildings and blinking neon signs to improve the city's landscape, news reports said Saturday. Kyoto, dotted with old temples, shrines and other historical sites, is known for its beauty and is a popular tourist destination. But just like many other big cities in Japan, Kyoto's streets are not free of eyesores such as gaudy billboards and glaring neon signs. Critics often blame Japan's lax regulations. Kyoto plans to ban all rooftop billboards as well as neon signs that flicker...The city plans to revise its regulations on outdoor advertisements by March and rooftop billboards and blinking signboards are expected to be removed completely in six years...more...

[Tsuru]

Too little too late... and I fear nothing will be done to stop the ongoing concretization of Kyoto which seems to be in its final stages anyway.

They should have started preserving Kyoto a long long time ago, like right after WWII.

[AssKissinger]

Too little too late

I don't agree. In time, Kyoto could take on a more traditional and finally a very traditional appearance if appropriate regulations are enforced. Personally, I like Kyoto Eki though.

[akatsuka]

Whats wrong with modern living alongside old anyway?

(says a girl who doesnt like kyoto.. "temple overdose")

Isnt that one of the niceties of Japan as a whole? In Kyoto there is the old which is nicely preserved (would be better if they rid the 'touristy' feel of it all), and then the new - Kyoto station.

Blinking neon signs are annoying and can ruin the view sometimes, and in these cases, they should be removed, but removing them everywhere is pointless.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Too little too late

Word up. Kyoto's an ugly concrete dump like the rest of Japan's cities.

[Tsuru]

Word up. Kyoto's an ugly concrete dump like the rest of Japan's cities.

Well, Kyoto's rich in bright spots, I'll give it that much... it's just the complete lack of authenticity of the other 99% of the city like you get in many classic European cities because they only focused their preservation efforts on the attractions. The rest of the city got the same treatment as all the other Japanese cities... in some places you could be forgiven for mistaking it for the outskirts of Osaka.

Needless to say I don't like it. It's a collection of temples and shrines with nothing special left to hold it together as a city. And even then most of the auxiliary buildings of places like Toji are in a sorry state.

[AssKissinger]

All I know is I had a great time and was very impressed when I was there.

[Samurai_Jerk]

And even then most of the auxiliary buildings of places like Toji are in a sorry state.

Not to mention the ugly-ass guidance signs, advertisements, and loud speakers that pollute the beauty and serenity of the temple and shrine grounds.

AK, I love Tokyo and Osaka too but I can't deny that they're ugly cities. Kyoto looks pretty much the same with just a few more traditional sites per square kilometer.

[Tsuru]

What's more, is when we visited Kyoto we got lost very frequently because our usual technique of navigating by big landmarks or shops and stores didn't work... it's pretty hard to tell one douri from the next.

[dimwit]

Kyoto is worse than the rest. Most other cities can blame the WWII bombing and the immediate need to rebuild any kind of housing for their ugliness, Kyoto doesn't have that excuse -they did it to themselves.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Kyoto is worse than the rest. Most other cities can blame the WWII bombing and the immediate need to rebuild any kind of housing for their ugliness, Kyotot doesn't have that excuse -they did it to themselves.

Good point!

[Mulboyne]

Time: Kyoto, Heal Thyself

Visit the temples that grace the hills of Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital, and it's not hard to see why the city seems like the perfect birthplace for the global-warming pact that was named for it...Kyoto's temples show how humans can live in nature and actually add to it, not just take from it...Then I caught a cab back to the city center. The moment we left the temple, we struck gridlock on Kyoto's narrow streets. As we crawled toward the train station, I had ample time to look at the garish neon signs that seemed to sprout from every rooftop, transforming the scenery even as they spent energy. It was a reminder that while Kyoto embodies the aspirations of that famous protocol, it is still a modern city, with all the energy, cars and carbon that implies...more...

[Tsuru]

Can everybody please stop propagating all that nonsense about "ooh carbon... carbon baaaaaaad... we need to stop producing carbon now!"

Every organic fuel on this planet I know is made from fucking carbon molecules and when you use it YOU GET CARBON OXIDES. That also includes some of the processes in the human body. The only way we can stop producing CO2 is when all 6.5 billion of us stop fucking breathing.

We need to do more to preserve the trees, plants and plankton that convert CO2 back to CxHx and oxygen and limit the more dangerous byproducts of inefficient internal combustion (airborne particles, PCAs, NOx, CO), not having all this bollocks about "not using energy" spread by idiots who don't know what they're talking about.

[GomiGirl]

Oh - the number of arguments lately that are about the real effects of global warming is quite funny. Especially if you get into arguments with people familiar with pre-historic history.

Buy my brother a beer and ask him to explain. Too long for me to do this here.

[Charles]

Can everybody please stop propagating all that nonsense about "ooh carbon... carbon baaaaaaad... we need to stop producing carbon now!"

Every organic fuel on this planet I know is made from fucking carbon molecules and when you use it YOU GET CARBON OXIDES.

That is a tautology, "organic" means it contains carbon, for example, organic chemistry deals only with molecules containing carbon. Just to give you a counterexample, hydrogen fuel does not contain carbon.

The point is not to eliminate carbon emissions, it is to reduce them. Nobody needs to drive a Hummer to the corner store when a Prius would do just as well, and emit a fraction of the greenhouse gases.

[FG Lurker]

[...] when a Prius would do just as well, and emit a fraction of the greenhouse gases.

Completely OT, but from first-hand experience here in Osaka, Prius owners are horrible drivers. Terrifying. Never know what they're going to do. "Gee, I'd like to go over THERE! I'll just cut across these four lanes without signaling... Laaaadedaaa..."

I think the Prius by its nature attracts people who do not like cars (and by extension driving). Most of them should go back to public transport.

/rant off

[Tsuru]

The myth about hydrogen engines only producing water vapour as exhaust is complete bollocks. 20% of what any atmospheric engine breathes from the air is oxygen, nearly all the rest is nitrogen, or N2. The air itself is also being combusted in engines, creating NO and NO2 molecules, the amount of which depending on the temperature of the reaction. And you know what the funny thing is? Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas approximately 350 times more powerful than CO2.

But no matter if you use hydrogen cars or not, as internal combustion engines as well as turbine engines become cleaner and more efficient, they start combusting their fuel at higher temperatures, producing more and more NOx anyway.

But back to hydrogen. hydrogen is not a fuel, it's a conveyor of energy, where the energy itself is introduced in a hydrolysis plant. To produce hydrogen you first need to split water molecules (H2O) into 2 parts hydrogen (H) and one part oxygen (O) through electrolysis, the inverse chemical reaction of what happens inside an engine powered by hydrogen or a power cell. If you want to do it cleanly, the power needed to produce this pure hydrogen will either need to come from nature (geo-thermal, solar, wind, etc.) or nuclear sources, adding onto the currently existing energy demand of -in case of nuclear fission- 68000 tons or fissile uranium. Now, to produce 1 kilogram of fissile uranium you need to process about 340 kg of uranium ore, which is extracted using sulfuric acid or other solvents. To meet current global demand we already need to dig up 23 million tons of uranium, which we are already only able to manage for about 57%, the remaining 43% coming from existing inventories (weapons), re-worked waste and other secondary sources that are bound to run out within a decade at the current rate of production. I don't think I need to illustrate the environmental effects of a typical uranium mine, let alone if we intend to cut back on oil and replace the balance using more nuclear power.

Our only real hope lies in fusion and vehicles that produce no emissions at all.