Tokyo is a low-lying city with a long stretch of coastline, due to the shape of Tokyo Bay. This means that, thanks to climate change and its accompanying typhoons, earthquakes and floods, parts of  the city could be in trouble in coming years.

So architects and engineers have been coming up with ways solutions to these future crisis. The solutions which immediately spring to mind include flood barriers, or even trying to raise the ground level at the city’s edges.

But one group has come forward with a slightly more complex plan: build an entirely new city on reclaimed islands in the bay to defend against floods. 

If that weren’t complex enough, the proposal, dubbed Next Tokyo, would include a mile high skyscraper to house half a million residents, which, in order to supply the upper floors with water, would harvest moisture from the clouds. Oh, and it would also contain cable-free elevators which go sideways as well as up and down. Simple. 

The city’s transport needs would be served by a hyperloop: a transport system which fires pods around a closed loop, developed Elon Musk, which, at time of writing, still just a concept.

The proposal, Next Tokyo 2045, comes jointly from Kohn Pederson Fox Associates, an architecture firm, and Leslie E Robertson Associates, a structural engineering firm. Here’s a rendering of the city:

The city would stretch across Tokyo bay in a series of hexagonal configurations in order to act as an ocean barrier: 

It would also be part of a larger land reclamation effort, to be carried out over time throughout the bay (the different colours indicate different phases of reclamation):

The idea was submitted as a research paper to the Council on Tall Buildings & Urban Habitat in 2015, and isn’t likely to become an immediate reality: unsurprising, given that it contains phrases like “cloud harvesting as a water source”. But given that many major cities are on the water, and the water levels are going to continue to rise, we need as many suggestions as we can get. 

All images: Kohn Pederson Fox Associates.