According to the General Affairs Bureau of the Tokyo Metropolitan Goverment, the population of the Tokyo Metropolitan District was 0.89 % higher on January 1st of this year than a year earlier. This marks the 12th straight year of increase and the move of a million persons into the TMD over the last decade.Furthermore, the rate of increase grew greater the closer one drew to the center of the TMD. In the core 23 wards, where 2/3 of the population lives, the rate of population growth was 1%. In the central Minato and ChuĊ wards the annual rates of population growth were a stunning 5.33% and 2.94%, respectively.
The Tokyo Shimbun report on the TMD population increase can be found here.
I do not know about you, but upon reading this report, my first instinct was to immediately demand more road construction in the countryside.
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Looking southwest from Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building
Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo Metropolitan District
August 19, 2006
Photo courtesy: MTC
Maybe the government could require people in the countryside to maintain a house in Tokyo, and live in it every other year. Then non-Tokyoites would start to see the wastefulness of the road system, and start to identify with the logic of putting everything where it rightfully belongs, in the capital.
ReplyDeleteWe can't have everything. Right now they are busy with the never-ending dredging and rerouting of the Tamagawa (River) and the simultaneous re-contouring of its banks. As soon as they are done, they start over in another part which they just finished a year ago. If that cycle is ever finished, then they can build more roads out in the sticks.
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