It’s interesting to look at Tokyo from space, what you’ll see is a type of sprawl but it’s an dense urban sprawl. In the us we have taken to trying to constrai

It’s interesting to look at Tokyo from space, what you’ll see is a type of sprawl but it’s an dense urban sprawl. In the us we have taken to trying to constrain growth to small specific areas to drive up density, but that wasn’t needed in Tokyo to achieve density. It tells me that in some ways our attempts at urban planning through zoning have been ineffective. The reason why a location 5 miles from a city center can only house a single level big box store isn’t due to cars or the great expanse of America. That piece of property could be put to better use if people were able to build as they do in Tokyo. On the other hand, if we aspire to be like Tokyo, we might consider what the Tokyo area originally looked like as a natural environment and how the unchecked growth in density turned most everything to concrete.