Update: JWalking now has its own website at jwalk.ing: go check it out!
For as long as I’ve been travelling, I’ve always walked places. I don’t know exactly why; probably because I hate crowds and other tourists, and it’s just too expensive and impersonal to taxi everywhere. But it’s also because I find I get a real feel for a place by walking it instead of making a beeline from A to B inside a vehicle.
So, welcome to JWalking—a literal play on my name, Justin “J” Pyvis, combined with a not-so-literal wink to its mostly-illegal namesake—which is all about understanding the economics behind how cities actually work, from the ground up, by walking through them.
Each post takes observations from walking a city and investigates why it exists—combining what you can see on the street with the economic and regulatory forces that shape it.
Tokyo, Japan#
I spent a couple of days walking the streets of Tokyo in late 2025, observing the city’s ‘anything goes’ approach to zoning that lets people build, trade, and experiment in ways Australian cities can’t.
For further posts, please head to jwalk.ing.