Abstract

The origin of the urban form of the Tokyo mMegalopolis, its urban genetics, is found in nature. Before Tokyo was a big city, it was a large village immersed in a large garden. The qualities of the urban space of Tokyo come from that urban entity that remained stable during the three centuries that Pax Tokugawa lasted (1603-1868). Tokyo was a huge urban organization where lived more than 4 million people and it extended by the fluvial plain of 32,000 km2 of Kanto plateau. The large village has been identified as the pre-urban state of Tokyo’s current megalopolis, a state of lethargy prior to the rapid process of densification that transformed the large village into a large city in a few decades, and a place as complex and extensive as the contemporary scattered city. The methodology performed consists of a scalar analysis of the great village in a downward direction, starting from a wide view of the Kanto plateau until arriving at the urban landscapes built on the periphery of Edo, its metropolitan center. The article is a compendium of eight short texts, which together with their respective eight graphic documents, build the corpus of the research. The reader faces a graphic essay formed by small chapters that will immerse him in the great village, the genesis of the largest urban agglomeration on the planet.