Abstract
This paper addresses two skyscraper visions: Tokyo's Sky City and the Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid. Prompted by the dearth of land and growing urban problems in Tokyo, these skyscraper visions offer alternative built forms with revolutionary technologies in building materials, construction methods, energy generation, and transportation systems. They are designed to be self-sufficient with homes, offices, outdoor green spaces, commercial establishments, restaurants, hospitals, trains, cars, and conceivably everything that hundreds of thousands of people need during the course of their lifetimes. The promise is that creating such vertical cities would relieve Tokyo from overcrowding and replace the urban concrete "jungle" on the ground with super towers straddling expansive green spaces or the water of Tokyo Bay.