Once again ambitious plans to rebuild Tokyo were made which would remedy the lack of green space and a modern, comprehensive infrastructure system. For example, 10% of the urban areas were to be allocated to parks, and 100-metre wide boulevards with extensive promenades and linear parks would subdivide the city in clusters of 300,000 residents each. An ambitious land readjustment project sought to reorder almost all parts of Tokyo outside of the area that was rebuilt after the 1923 earthquake.



Within a single lifetime the metropolis of Tokyo has been completely remade not just once but several times. Yoshie Sakamoto, a retired journalist and documentary film producer, now 82 years old, still vividly recollects “I can clearly see the family strolling in Tokyo’s elegant Ginza shopping district on a sunny Sunday afternoon, shortly before my father was commanded to the front line in WW2 . In March 1945, I witnessed then how the Tokyo of my childhood memories went up in flames during the bombing nights.”



A year later, the Tokyo Metropolitan city planning department released a promotional film – Tokyo 20 Years From Now – to convince reluctant citizens that there was an urgent need for comprehensive reform and redevelopment. In the end, the severe financial constraints in which the country found itself in the early post-war period didn’t allow the purchase of land that was necessary to build parks and public spaces, and weak planning power coupled with the growing development pressure that set in with the economic miracle of the late 1950s frustrated many of the plans.



To many it might appear regrettable that the majority of reconstruction projects in Tokyo were not realised, but the urbanists Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava consider the failure of the comprehensive recovery plans as a blessing that was responsible for the quick recovery of the city.