Cities can't grow if they're only trading with places less developed than they are--that means that lots of their domestic goods...
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...won't have any application abroad. Cities need peers to trade with as well: cities of comparable size + development level
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The nearest contenders to Tokyo in terms of size are Jakarta, Delhi, and Manila, but they're all poorer; Tokyo's tech makes less sense there
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NYC and London are both quite rich enough to afford Tokyo's level of development, but aren't nearly the same size
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Tokyo's 39 million is nearly double NYC's 21 million, and nearly four times London's 10 million
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Technology is--since the dawn of agriculture or earlier--about raising the limits of urban population; abt making larger cities possible
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The largest cities at any given time face the most complicated logistical/practical problems, but also have the best means to solve them...
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...and by solving them, they raise the population threshold, at which point the city can grow until it hits new problems; rinse & repeat
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To be clear, the problems I'm referring to here are strictly tech related--not touching on cultural or social problems
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Seems like there is also a geographic limitation here since Japan doesn't have another space like the Kanto plain for a 2nd mega city.
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Tokyo doesn't take up most of the land in the Kanto plain tho, and much of its development is in the foothills towards Fuji, not the plain
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Which is to say, geography is *much* less of a factor than people tend to assume wrt city population limits (consider places like Hong Kong)
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