Sky City 1000 is Tokyo's plan for relieving urban congestion. Just build up, bigger, taller, faster. It's basically a medium sized city all inside one humungous new building.

The plan is to house 35,000 people in apartments within the structure, and an additional 100,000 office workers every day. (All seven WTC towers combined in New York held 50,000 people, by way of comparison, I think.)

The project is expected to include apartments, offices, theaters, schools, public spaces and huge gardens (like the ones shown in the picture) so users can enjoy nature in the building (and so they have places to escape to during fires).

Triple-decker high speed elevators that hold up to 70 people will take passengers between the 14 space plateaus from where they can then take regular elevators to nearby floors.

I think it's kind of neat to imagine having an entire city located in one single large building. At least it wouldn't be hard to commute to work! If Japan manages to complete Sky City 1000, maybe it will help stop humans from destroying forests just to create more land for housing and cities.

Read about it on the architect's own website here: http://www.takenaka.co.jp/takenaka_e/techno/63_sky/63_sky.htm