The Location & Economy Of The Tokyo City
Tokyo case study
The case study I’ll be discussing is about the largest megacity in the world and that is Tokyo. The location of this city is in Japan and its island by the sea filled with volcanos, giant mountains and a lot of rough land. And I’ll highlight and explain the problems of such a high-density city and the way the government deals with this amount of people and the pros and cons of such density of humans in a small location.
Japan consists of a couple large cities such as Kyoto, Yokohama and Chiba however the main city which is also the capital, Tokyo is also declared as the largest megacity in the world with its extremely high 4,400 people/km2 population density and it just shadows the neighboring cities next to it that I mentioned (Kyoto, Yokohama and Chiba). And the fact Tokyo accounts for more than 11% of the country’s total population lives there.
And considering the fact its 127 million people in total and Tokyo is just 0.6% of japans space (km2) the two main reason mainly being the factors that affected the population in Tokyo are: historical influences when the Tokyo was set as the capital of Japan in 1868 where people moved in and economic reasons being that Tokyo is the largest megacity therefore people would move in because of that.
And yet despite the over 9 million people in an area of 2,188 kilometers squared people can travel efficiently across the cities borders and within the city, how’s that possible? Well the city invested in expertly engineered bullet trains, and extremely efficient roots all around the city, and the way that the stops are placed are a way to decrease jams within the train stations and for them to be efficient in dropping, picking up, comfort and speed.
That is one of three factors that the government decided to implement in order to make living for such a crowded area possible and comfortable, the other way of allowing such amount of people living in one place is that fact that the city, now, has started to grow vertically or more commonly referred to as vertical growth in mega cities, this is the stage where buildings are typically rising vertically to conserve space horizontally for other cities a great diagram to display this.
You could see that the same amount of people horizontally could fit all in one sky scraper, and that’s exactly what’s happened in Tokyo. Another thing is they decreased the living space per person in order to fit even more people one way is for cheap hotels to use “capsules” where a person has enough space for a bed and a table and a small 17 inch tv, all in a usually 3x4 meter box or in some cases even smaller.
Socially, you might assume, that since everyone is living almost shoulder to shoulder they might be socially active however, you must also highlight the fact that technology is extremely advanced, people don’t usually find a need to get married, as for them it’s mostly a waste of time to show affection to a person and live with them and also pay for them, video games play the main factor for males in that country thus decreasing the amount of birth or child per family drastically. And due to this, some people don’t find love or a purpose in life hence why the city owns the title of most suicide rates of any developed nation. And studies believe that the isolation of one ignites this thought of death.
And this overall decrease in fertility rates meaning population is decreasing however since they have expert technologies and overall good health care the elderly population is increasing due to increase in life expectancy. However, this aging population might me a political issue as the retired elderly have to get paid by the government without them having to work, which causes the overall economy to sink but the huge corporations such as Kawasaki, Mitsubishi, Yokohama and many more mechanical industries are mainly what help and support the economy to rise, they also provide a lot of employment space to those who need it.
Employment is not an issue in Tokyo or Japan in general, all, even farmers have a way to make income, by selling crops to Tokyo where no farming land is available. Literacy rates are around 99% in Japan, including Tokyo meaning all are educated. Another economic factor that may cause problems in the future is the source of energy, where they mainly depend on electricity and gas when they stopped reeling for oil, these natural gasses are the main source of pollution in the city of Tokyo, that and fuel gas from exhausts.
One of the other environmental problems in the city include the fact that at some point there would not be enough water to support over 10 million people, that is if Tokyo reaches that amount of people, also waste and particularly non combustible waste where an attempt has been made to recycle them instead of dumping them away, a method they use is turning the recycled waste into islands where the metals and non-metals are separated and turned into building blocks or materials, all that to keep Tokyo remarkably clean. The person who seems to be “in charge” or in power and decision making, of the Japanese government and Tokyo is the prime minister Naikaku-sōri-daijin.
The future of the country depends on whether the economy becomes stable or not, if it were stable then the amount of people living in Tokyo will keep rising to a point where energy and food and resources will not be enough to support the population living in Tokyo. And since most of the terrain in Japan is inhabitable due to natural disasters such as volcanos or Radiation, the area the government must locate must be flat, has a source of water, and is not venerable to natural disasters.
