A Plan for Tokyo 1960
Kenzo Tange proposed extending Tokyo across its bay on a vast civic spine rather than letting the city spread around the shore.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Never Born
- Peak stage
- officially announced
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
Kenzo Tange Laboratory's unbuilt linear-city proposal for Tokyo Bay.
The plan placed transport, civic structures and expandable residential branches over the water. It rejected the closed centre of the existing metropolis in favour of an open-ended urban framework.
Existence timeline
Tange's laboratory studies Tokyo's rapid growth and infrastructure.
The team defines a linear civic axis across Tokyo Bay.
The plan circulates through architecture journals and exhibitions.
Its vast structural and political demands keep it outside an executable programme.
The plan remains influential through preserved drawings, models and publications.
Why it ended
The proposal was published and debated as a national-scale urban vision but was never approved as a construction programme.
Last confirmed trace
Models, drawings, photographs and publications remain in architectural collections and Tange scholarship.
What it left behind
The plan became one of Metabolism's defining images and influenced generations of megastructure and infrastructure-led urban design.
How we classified it
The proposed archive unit never reached ordinary public access in the form being documented.
The strongest verified milestone maps to officially_announced under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.