fascinating, well, in the times of the coming oil crisis which also brings economic and food crisises, i dont know how they are going to be able to muster up to this when this extra ordinary effort is going to require extraordinary amount of oil to accomplish this - sure Japan might be able to afford it, but while the world wide crisis looms over it would also surelty affect Japan's bubble-economy's stability.....
still I like this idea, beautiul peice of engineering and i can see alot of sense to it, even the earthquakes issues, with this sort of geometry it would likely be engineered iun a way to counter the shockwaves like dispersing it in a certain way. Also i can see how the Orcology concept is sensible to evolve the way we do town-planning, as a way to eradicate the needs for wide-area transport. Like fossil fuel cars would then be prohibitive while the range (to travel) with electric cars is more feasible in the close-distance environment at the same time less polluting for all those living in close proxity. It makes a lot of sense. Hell even if petrol become so restricted they may even pass bills to keep hyralics oil available because of the loing-term planning rationale that i just commented above.
Great stuff, I wish they'd do that in Auckland, New Zealand too becuase we have a piss-poor road planning, while the rising see levels is going to be a real issue - superstructure would solve alot of problems for keeping the economic influx intact (location -wise and so on) but it will bring their own sets of problems......(cost and possible public outcry, unrest even maybe (around the world) civil wars becuase it could mean intensity of conflicts between the rich vesus the poor have increased like tenfold.
overall, its a mixed bag of reaction from me, I still like it becuase I also fear the consequences of this sort of movement too, like someone else said in here, logan's run could will become a reality, its chilling. People's mindsets is changing already NOW, and will continue to 'robotise' the human race...