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.
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Jamie Rubin: You’re listening to After Hours with Jamie Rubin, a Vital City podcast. Today’s episode is a totally fascinating conversation with Joe McReynolds, who came over to talk to me on a Sunday a few weeks ago. Joe currently serves as the chief for global information operations and cyber at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, the China Security Studies Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, and as a co-founder of the China Cyber and Intelligence Studies Institute. He’s the lead editor and co-author of the book “China’s Evolving Military Strategy,” as well as the upcoming “China’s Information Warfare.” In addition to his foreign policy work, he’s an urban studies scholar affiliated with Keio University’s Almazan Architecture and Urban Studies Laboratory in Japan, where he studies Tokyo’s approach to urban policy. He is also the research editor and co-author of the book “Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City.”
A theme to keep in mind is the picture Joe paints of Tokyo as a place where anything can develop in any neighborhood and support a vibrant, economically self-sufficient community. He talks about how many restaurants and bars Tokyo has, particularly in comparison to New York. I found myself wondering whether New York City really can be a place like Tokyo in that sense — if we fixed regulatory issues, could we support small businesses run by anybody who lives there?
Joe, thank you for being here on a Sunday afternoon. Tell me where you actually live.
Joe McReynolds: Depending on the year, different places, but at the moment I am splitting my time half and half between DC and Tokyo.
Jamie: Exactly what is it that you do for a living? You seem to have seventeen different flavors of employment.
Joe: My day job is as a national security analyst focused on China, Chinese military development, and especially Chinese information warfare. But then nights and weekends, I am an urban studies researcher focused on Tokyo and what American cities can learn from Tokyo.
Jamie: But your PhD work is in what?
Joe: PhD work is in urban studies — it is basically “Tokyo-ology,” building off of the book “Emergent Tokyo.” I became obsessed with cities and how they work differently. Tokyo was the most interesting because of the human experimentation and dynamism in people trying out different ways to live and form communities. I already spoke Japanese from public school in California. I was using Chinese in my day job, then realized I was obsessed with Tokyo and started collecting primary source materials in the 2010s. Finally, the Japanese Ministry of Defense brought me over for a year as an exchange; I’d do China information warfare stuff for them, but really I wanted to understand why Tokyo works the way it does. That was the genesis of the book.
Jamie: I was thinking about you this morning because of an article in the Times about the renovation — or destruction — of the East Wing ballroom. Architects explained why the designs made no sense, and it made me think of the notion that there should be less scrutiny and more of a “let a thousand flowers bloom” approach. How does that fit into your conception of a city?
Joe: I’ve been thinking about this recently because I’ve been involved a bit with the folks building California Forever, that new city project in California. They hired people out of SPUR, the Bay Area urbanism think tank, to talk about Tokyo-style neighborhood design.
Jamie: California Forever is this effort to quietly aggregate land, led by Jan Sramek and funded by wealthy Silicon Valley types. Are they actually building a city?
Joe: They didn’t really account for the political realities of zoning, but they hit on a solution: get a neighboring city to absorb you with a sweetheart deal that grandfathers every existing resident in as a king with financial incentives. By being absorbed into an existing city that can set its own zoning, that solves the farmland zoning problem. My answer to the city question is that you have to have a degree of trust in people, which goes beyond architecture to land use. One of my biggest takeaways from Tokyo for American cities is to let people do more things with their own residences.
In Tokyo, the “exclusively residential zone” includes the right to open a small restaurant, bar, workshop, or boutique on the ground floor. People are entrusted to do this, and nuisance issues are negotiated with neighbors. We are designing our cities in such a defensive crouch from any possible harm that we lose something in the process. I don’t think the answer is that we can’t trust people; setting rules with guardrails that allow for individual flexibility could be a happy medium.
Jamie: You have written a couple of articles for Vital City. One was about public toilets. Explain that situation in Tokyo.
Joe: The piece on public toilets is as much about transit systems as it is about toilets because they are intertwined. About eight or nine private train companies run about half or more of the stations in Tokyo. They operate the rail itself, commercial shopping hubs above stations, and build out bedroom communities around them. They even operate tourist attractions at the end of the line. They are fundamentally in competition to make their commuter lines the best places to live. Public toilets are part of what they offer — clean, well-appointed amenities, always inside the fare gates.
The infrastructure is spatially doable in New York; the plumbing hookups are there. It is a question of prioritization and the MTA’s relationship with the city.
Jamie: You mention cleanliness — is it downstream of Japanese culture?
Joe: No. Anyone who has been on a drinking street in Tokyo when the salarymen are going hard knows they have the same bad aim as drunk men everywhere else. It is about expectations. In New York, it is rare to have bars or restaurants above the second or third floor. In Tokyo, you’ll see eight-story buildings where every floor has something. Real estate developers in New York say they don’t do that because New Yorkers are not accustomed to looking up. That then rewires the economic logic for developers. We are used to not expecting much in the way of public toilets, so there isn’t pressure on City Hall or the MTA.
Jamie: With the MTA, it’s a budget issue. Relatively small things like a million dollars of revenue don’t seem worth it to an organization that big, even if it would change the experience. Mayor Mamdani has made a public commitment to more toilets. In the city, they found a Riverside Park toilet that has cost $3 million so far and still isn’t built. How much of that is an issue?
Joe: It’s a huge issue, but reform of the contracting process would unlock a lot of urban improvements. We have been in the urban political wilderness by accepting that better things are not possible. Mamdani’s campaign compared to Eric Adams’ City of Yes shows a political pendulum swing toward boldness that people are hungry for.
Jamie: People often talk about Tokyo’s housing development. How many units do they develop?
Joe: About 150,000 every year, though that includes units being torn down and built anew.
Jamie: The population of the greater Tokyo metro area is about 40 million, while New York is 8 or 9 million. The other interesting piece is the restaurant and bar scene.
Joe: Tokyo has about ten times or more bars and restaurants compared to New York. It is a question of zoning, liquor licenses, and health inspections — which only happen once every five to seven years in Tokyo. I know a Japanese American woman who opened an eight-seat bar in a nice area of Tokyo; her total startup cost was under $2,000.
New York restaurant owners’ jaws drop when they hear that. It is possible because of by-right zoning, $50 liquor licenses, and permissive regulations for mom-and-pops. In Japan, mom-and-pop businesses get to keep the sales tax they collect up to a certain point as an incentive. In any residential neighborhood, someone can operate a business out of the ground floor of their house. You get older couples who rent their ground floors to young people to bring energy to the community; they aren’t trying to maximize profit.
I studied this in New York and found survivability often depends on special landlords — like a co-op that likes having a bookstore downstairs or a family that bought the building forty years ago and likes the continuity.
Jamie: Is what you’re describing a luxury good, or does it matter beyond how it feels? If we tried it in New York, would it only end up in fun areas like Park Slope or Downtown Brooklyn?
Joe: When you give people flexibility, the optimal result for a given area can naturally emerge through micro-scale choices. In Tokyo, you have grandmas selling homemade lunchboxes out of their ground floors for $4. When you allow people to cook for their neighbors and monetize it without hassle, it is a pocketbook positive for entrepreneurial cooks and provides affordable food. That would arise organically in economically depressed areas.
Regarding housing, I was shocked at the extent to which New York is nominally zoned for housing but 80% is considered at capacity. This is an artifact of floor area restrictions.
Jamie: Let’s close with a lightning round. Commercial-to-residential conversion?
Joe: I find it more interesting to turn offices into other forms of commercial space, like micro-commercial hubs, to break the norm of New Yorkers not looking up.
Jamie: Ezra Klein and “Abundance”?
Joe: I actually took Ezra around Tokyo when he was writing that. I fundamentally agree with the message. He’s arguing for a political prioritization. My prediction for Zoran is that he won’t dramatically transform the future of New York housing, but he’ll get more political credit than past politicians because he’s shown an appetite for boldness.
Jamie: You have two sides to your life: foreign policy and urban issues. Are you an optimist about where we are in history?
Joe: Short-term, I am very terrified. We are seeing a move toward dramatic development of military technologies and the shattering of old consensuses. Long-term, I am more optimistic that we’ll solve climate change because of advances in geoengineering technology. The youth scare me, but they also seem to be self-correcting and embracing in-person connection. I just turned 40, so the youth have informed me I am now an “unc.”
Jamie: As a 58-year-old, I can tell you it’s liberating. Joe, I appreciate you coming by. Thanks for listening to After Hours with Jamie Rubin.
