🚕 The Man Who Single-Handedly Built a Country

📣 Beep beep! This is the Taxi Cab. A fun newsletter for city lovers, urbanists, and travelers.

Today’s Ride

• Why Tokyo Works

• This Man Who Single-handedly Built a Nation

• Autonomous KFC Cars in Shanghai

🛑 Why Tokyo Works

After WWII, Tokyo faced a decision: either adopt the American automobile-focused city or rely on public transportation. They chose the second.

That was the best decision they could’ve made. Today, Tokyo’s metro station is ranked #1 in the world. By contrast, Tokyo has an incredibly low car-ownership rate at 0.54 cars per household — (compared to San Francisco’s rate of 1.10 and London’s 0.74).

Tokyo’s center is a void. Whereas most Western cities have a square, church, or bank at its center — where people gather, do business, and exchange ideas — eg. Times Square in NYC, Notre-Dame in Paris, or Puerta del Sol in Madrid — Tokyo’s Imperial Palace is a giant green fortress surrounded by an unassailable moat. Instead, Tokyo is decentralized. While stations like Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ikebukuro, Tokyo, Shinagawa, and Ueno all meet the criteria of a city center — none of them are.

Read the full story here.

🛑 This Man Who Single-handedly Built a Nation… in 1949

One day, Russell Arundel, a fisherman, was blown out to sea and landed on a flat island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada.

After watching sheep graze, a crazy idea entered his mind: “What if I made this my own country?”

And so the “Principality of Outer Baldonia” was born. And he crowned himself the “Prince of Princes”. Nearby tuna fishermen were bestowed the rank of eight-star admiral of the Baldonian navy.

To solidify his rule, Russell builds a 20-by-30 foot castle on the island.

And it gets even crazier.

He issues passports, coins his own currency (the Tunar), and establishes a “Declaration of Independence” from Canada.

The constitution says, all loyal fishermen of the realm are given the right:

• to lie and be believed

• be free from questions, nagging interruption, women, taxes, politics, war, and monologues

• to sleep all day and stay up all night

Somehow, Russell’s princedom lasted 24 years (!) (1949-1973) until he grew frail and died.

Now the place is a bird sanctuary.

🛑 In Shanghai they now have autonomous KFC cars that roam around and allow you to buy food without human interaction

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