A good chunk of Tokyo is also reclaimed from the bay, a process that continues to this day but has slowed down significantly (peak was in th…

A good chunk of Tokyo is also reclaimed from the bay, a process that continues to this day but has slowed down significantly (peak was in the 1960s-1970s alongside other major infrastructure buildups). It's not due to regulation: land reclamation has diminishing returns and conflicts with existing coastline usage. Easier to do when you're also building the rest of the city at the same time. Half the land area of Boston, a quarter of NYC, and 15% of San Francisco were raised from the sea before 1970. Since then, land values have grown by 30x but land reclamation has ground to a halt. This failure follows the spread environmental law around the world rather than any g…

Source: Francois Chollet (X) | 2026-06-26