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The Surprising Plan to Move the Capital of Japan from Tokyo
It remains official Japanese government policy to move some functions to a new city
Tokyo is by many measures, the biggest city in the world. Within the city limits, the population is a whopping 14 million. Including the surrounding suburbs, there are a mind-blowing 41 million people clustered around Tokyo. That’s a lot of people.
For comparison, New York City has 9 million in the city and 20 million in the metro area. The largest city in Europe is Paris, with only 2 million within the city borders and 12 million total.
The high population in a small area gives Tokyo the highest population density of any city in a developed country. That makes it painfully expensive to live in. Hour-long commutes on sweaty, sardine-packed trains are a way of life.
At the peak of the economic bubble, it was estimated that the 1.15 sq km of the Imperial Palace grounds in the center of Tokyo, if it were sold for development, would be worth more than all the real estate in the entire state of California. After the bubble burst, land prices dropped precipitously, but Tokyo still remains one of the most expensive places for housing in the world.
