Shinjuku Station from the Sky

Before I moved to Tokyo, I asked Bart what does Tokyo look and feel like compared to North American and European cities. It is difficult to compare the density of urban construction in Japanese cities.

This is a view from the sky of Japan's busiest train station, Shinjuku. To the left you can see the beginning of the skyscraper district. The buildings are about fifty stories tall. The swath in the middle of the photograph are the train tracks for the station. There are about sixteen across. This is comparable to Los Angeles and Orange County's I-405 or I-5 running at street level through the middle of Manhattan. (These two freeways are amoungst the nation's widest at twelve to sixteen lanes depending on the merging conditions.)

Some might compare it to Grand Central in Manhattan, except that most train tracks in Manhattan are buried below 96th Street. I am curious why Japan Railways (JR) has not sunken these tracks and sold the land above. This pattern is beginning to emerge in American cities. Boston, for example, is selling some of the land above the Massachusetts Turnpike for the construction of high rise apartment blocks.