Uneven Geographies of Vulnerability: Tokyo in the Twenty-First Century

Tokyo is at the heart of the largest city-region in the world, with about 35 million people, or 28 per cent of the Japanese population in 2010, living in the Greater Tokyo Area. This comprises the cities, towns and wards of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government area, with a population of about 13 million, and the three adjoining prefectures of Saitama, Kanagawa and Chiba. The Greater Tokyo Area also forms the core of the Tokaidô Megalopolis, which extends west for about 600 kilometres through Nagoya to Osaka and Kobe in an almost continuous belt of urban development and is home to 68 million people.