Urban Planning and Vertical Urbanization

This study examines how urban planning is associated with vertical urbanization in Tokyo by using a unique building-level PLATEAU 3D City Model dataset from Japan. While urban economics has traditionally conceptualized density in two-dimensional terms, this study directly measures building height to capture the vertical dimension of urban development. Using OLS and quantile regression, we examine the relationship between floor area ratio (FAR) and residential and commercial building heights across use districts. The results show that FAR is positively associated with building height, but that this relationship is highly heterogeneous across the height distribution. In commercial districts, for both residential and commercial buildings, the FAR coefficient generally increases across quantiles, suggesting that FAR is more strongly associated with taller buildings than with buildings around the median of the height distribution. The study further reveals the coexistence of vertical and horizontal urbanization: inner and near-center areas accommodate density through taller buildings, whereas suburban areas remain more horizontally developed. Beyond market mechanisms, the findings suggest that long-standing residential zoning designed primarily for detached housing has constrained vertical intensification and may have contributed to a more horizontally oriented pattern of urban development.