The Goddess Shines on America

At night, Ginza, Tokyo, is full of bustling crowds. Although it is already midnight, countless beautifully dressed girls can still be seen walking around. Many boys and girls who don't like to go home also wander the streets with nothing to do. Although they may not have the money to spend on such occasions, their fundamental purpose is undoubtedly to escape the reality of going home.

At the same time, the entire Hachijo Street in Ginza District is full of feasting colors, neon lights flashing dazzling luster, and various businesses are doing everything they can to promote their stores. Naturally, Kabuki Hall 1st Street is not very far from here, and from time to time, a man reeking of alcohol can be seen coming from that direction.

A group of men in the image of business owners are walking out of luxury stores one after another with a beautiful woman in their arms; there are also three or two girls of high school age, wearing ripped jeans and wearing exaggerated haircuts. Hairstyle, jokingly laughing with a group of young people who are equally irrelevant. James stood at the corner of the street with his hands behind his back, sighing sincerely.

"Seeing is worth seeing. This is indeed the most prosperous area in Japan, and it is very different from other areas."

"The economy is developing too fast, the population is too large and the land is too little, so the most essential part is naturally extremely dense. At the same time, because the population and land are too dense, young people face this kind of prosperity. easily irritated."

During the winter vacation, the whole family was dispatched. After the business meetings during the day, it was time to hang out on the streets. Responding to James' emotion, Alice answered, "Think about it, dad, even if you go from Yokohama next to Tokyo to the center of downtown Tokyo, the straight-line distance is only 30 kilometers, and it takes only half an hour by train. The city next door is so convenient, for other residents in the city, isn’t it as easy as walking around the city?”

As she spoke, she looked towards a certain street leading to the outside world, where four or five office workers reeking of alcohol were walking towards her: "Look at Dad, it doesn't take twenty minutes to walk in that direction, and you can get to the song and dance!" Kichocho 1st Street. Ordinary young men and women can walk around most of the most prosperous areas in Tokyo with just a few steps. This amount of information... Hehe, just take a look around."

James nodded and looked around.

As Alice said, there are too many racks gathered in the too small land, so every building has countless billboards with flashing lights protruding horizontally. It feels like clothes are hanging on the balconies of a residential building, and there is an atmosphere of dense fear.

"Hey, sister, you mean Kabukicho?"

Well, because the whole family was dispatched, Oscar naturally heard Alice's words clearly: "Is that the largest red light district in Japan?"

"Don't go!"

Hannah poked him on the side with her hand: "As the little lady in the family, I must take good care of you. If you dare to go to that kind of place...Mom, you should also take good care of Dad!"

Sophie just chuckled aside, but didn't express any opinion, just looked around.

At this moment, they were standing in the very center of the entire Ginza.

Ginza is a very vast area, which is divided into eight streets from Ginza 1-chome to Ginza 8-chome. All eight streets are connected by a central avenue. In fact, the intersection of 4-chome can be called the most prosperous and most prosperous street in the entire Ginza district. The bustling location is also where the family is standing at this time.

On this street, looking from south to north, it is a modern building with a height of about ten floors, but the length facing the street is more than 50 meters. Keio Department Store Shinjuku Branch is a large national shopping mall occupying an area of ​​about 2,000 square meters in Ginza. Its unique and grand shape can directly attract the attention of countless customers from afar.

Immediately adjacent to its east side is another dark blue shopping mall, also in the shape of a flattened cuboid, with the same height of about ten floors, standing side by side with Keio Department Store, two behemoths occupying the area The plate is a good space.

And just to the east of them, a well-proportioned cuboid building rises nearly 100 meters from the ground. It's a big shopping center.

This is just the view from one side of this intersection. On the other three streets, there are large commercial buildings of almost the same size everywhere. That is to say, the street on the southeast side of 4-chome where the family is standing at this time is a little exception. The most eye-catching thing is not other commercial buildings, but a shrine and Tokyo Metropolitan Shinjuku High School.

"Actually, Weiwei..."

Looking at the bustling scene around her, Sophie said, "I think Ginza looks pretty good now. If you really bought several blocks of land and built a whole so-called commercial plaza, Instead, it destroys the diversity that exists now."

As she said that, she pointed around and said, "Look, the commercial street needs to be prosperous and lively, but if according to your plan, a square occupies an area of ​​several hectares and is covered with five or six high-rise buildings with a uniform style, isn't it? Too monotonous?"

Alice is a modest and good child, and it was her mother who spoke, so she pondered carefully, rubbed her chin, and looked at the many buildings with different styles around her, but she didn't say anything for a while.

Hannah also agreed with her mother's statement: "Mom makes sense. As for the commercial street, only the bustling ones can attract customers. As you said before... it should be an office building, right?"

This is indeed something that Alice cannot refute. When she told her family about the idea of ​​"chain commercial real estate", she only talked about the function of leasing, and did not limit whether it is for office leasing or shop leasing. But in terms of architectural style, she easily summed it up in one sentence.

"Indeed, six or seven identical buildings together will make customers feel very tired."

She nodded and said: "Customers are a very visual group. Unless they come here because of the reputation of a certain shopping mall, they usually go to the shopping mall to see which shopping mall is well-built. So, if I buy If the building to be built is to be used as a shop, it is indeed necessary to consider the issue of diversity.”

"This kind of problem is easy to solve, it's just a matter of the functional positioning and shape of each building."

James led the large troop wandering the streets, they walked north along the 4-chome intersection, and had just crossed the intersection at this time. Along Chuo Avenue 500 meters ahead, they still have 3-chome and 6-chome to wander around, and there is an equally vast area in the horizontal direction. Although Tokyo is small, it is also very big.

"You see, according to Alice's idea, she wants to open this commercial plaza in the center of every major city in the country. Then, every large city has many functional areas. If the location of the plaza is traditional The central business district, such as the southern tip of Manhattan, is of course six or seven standardized skyscrapers with a height of more than 100 meters, as Alice said."

As he spoke, he pointed his fingers around: "But Ginza is a shopping mall, and have you seen that there are almost no super high-rise buildings over 100 meters high here. Hannah, Oscar, do you know why?"

The two children shook their heads in unison.

"First of all, do you think that as a shopping mall, customers would rather hang around on a single floor, or go up and down stairs repeatedly?"

Hannah nodded vigorously: "I'm so annoying!"

Oscar also nodded and said, "I came here for shopping, not by elevator."

James patted his son's head and said with a smile: "This is from the perspective of customers. From the perspective of architecture, large shopping malls are not suitable for high-rise buildings because of their large single-storey area."

"First of all, in terms of fire compartments of buildings, high-rise buildings need to be isolated from too many fire compartments, which of course will lead to the shopping center's inability to meet the demand in terms of functions, resulting in a lot of waste. At the same time, in terms of evacuation stairs, it is also necessary to use a lot of Stairs are used to meet the evacuation requirements of each fire compartment on each floor, and the ratio of the area between the stairwell and the elevator is greatly increased in proportion, which is generally uneconomical.”

"Finally, you think that setting up so many stairs and fire-proof floors to connect each floor will definitely lead to supermarkets. This kind of large-scale shopping center cannot be effectively managed. You have all been to supermarkets, and generally the entrances and exits are not too crowded. More than one, if a shopping center is built too high, it will be very troublesome."

While talking, everyone was walking around Ginza. It was indeed as James explained that even the tallest shopping mall would never be built as a super-tall building over 100 meters, and it would be considered super-large if it had 20 floors. property of the consortium. And this kind of quasi-super high-rise shopping mall is also a feature that can only be found in an island country like Japan. You can hardly see the same situation in any city in the United States.

"But if it is an office building, there is a need for super high-rise buildings."

Sophie answered the question, she was satisfied to see Alice thinking about it, and saw the other two children humbly taught: "After all, the company's output value per unit area is much higher than that of the shopping mall, and it is very important to the company. Efficiency is everything, and an office building with a small unit area but many floors can concentrate the population, take advantage of the vertical and horizontal traffic inside the building, greatly shorten the communication distance between departments, and improve efficiency.”

"At the same time, high-rise buildings are far away from the ground area, so they have better ventilation and higher air quality. Moreover, facing high-rise buildings is also a sign of the degree of urban development, that is to say, urban landmark buildings can attract a wide range of business people. Come to invest locally, don’t you think so?”

Alice nodded steadily and agreed.

Indeed, office buildings full of companies are a symbol of a city's wealth, and the more landmark buildings are, the more they can reflect the prosperity of a city and the strength of the companies that settle there. Just like the Empire State Building, when countless Chinese in the 1980s and 1990s heard that Manhattan was able to build a 400-meter-high skyscraper in the 1930s, this incident can be most clearly explained to everyone. The city and country prospered.

"So, this is also an upfront investment."

As the family continued to wander around, her eyes rolled wildly thinking: "There are skyscrapers all over the world, how can I not have my share in it?"