http://megalopolisnow.com/2012/08/04/tokyo-glittering-excess/

Tokyo, about 12.5 million inhabitants, is the core of the japanese region of Kanto , that, with over than 35 million inhabitants, is the most great and integrated area of all the world. It’s the most populous metropolis. A global city like London and New York, Tokyo has been described as one of the three “command centers” for the world economy and in fact it is considered an alpha world city. Majority of the city is constituted of small apartments with small rooms built one over the other while the big companies are in tall buildings and skyscrapers  along Shibuya, Ginza and Omotesando. It’s a polycentric high density city featured by a scattered structure and  by a population rich and homogeneous. Over the 80 per cent of the employees go to work by public transports, one of the most high percentage in the world. After the 90′ years financial crisis the city  tried to react and now, after Fukushima and because of the present crisis, is trying to find again new strategies to promote a bigger density in in the central zones and to restore new spaces on the long sea open to  the population.

The world’s most livable megalopolis by the magazine Monocle ,Tokyo is built on the Honshu island, in the Pacific ocean, and water is its big resource but  it’s a risk, too. The city is leaning on some oceanich trenches , also 10.000 m, in one of the most seismic areas in the planet. Tokyo has been destroyed many times, it’s a city subjected to many environmental risks,  for example earthquakes and floods,  so the concept of temporary and the sense of challenge is deeply rooted in the japanese soul and it is reflected also in Architecture. Tokyo is still now  the biggest city in the world and all the visitors and tourists are surprised by the amazing difference with the european or also american city. On the one hand Tokyo seems chaotic, huge, impossible to control it, similar to Los Angeles for its extension but featured by a major verticality and density, but on the other hand it’s friendly, efficient, clean, dynamic, kind and rich of culture. A glittering excess.