Places where a new station and a town were born at the same time, seen in aerial photographs

Published: August 11, 2026 / About 15 min read

When the order of town first, then station, is reversed

As a rule, a railway station is placed where people have gathered. From the 1960s on, however, many stations were born in Japan that reversed this order. Tracks were laid on land where no one lived yet, a station was placed, and a town was grown from there. Old aerial photographs record this reversed order without mercy. A photograph from before the opening shows not a shopping street in front of the station but fields or woods, a hill that has just been cut, or the railway's own land.

Stepping through the aerial photographs by era is well suited to checking this order. They are one photograph from before the tracks were laid, one in which only the streets have been laid out, and one in which buildings have filled the lots. At locations where the three stages remain split across separate eras, the rise of a town is broken down into a few still frames. You can tell from the order of what appears in the photographs alone whether the station called the town or the town called the station.

Whether the photographs can bracket the year of opening

If you try to make this distinction strictly, the first thing you run into is the sequence of the photographs' eras. The eras of the aerial photographs are spaced several years to more than ten years apart, so they do not always conveniently bracket the year a station opened. At a location where eras just before and just after the opening are both available, the few years from the laying of streets to the first residents moving in can be seen at a glance. At a location where only eras before the opening remain, the only photograph against which to check the finished town is today's photograph. Depending on whether the year of opening can be bracketed, the way of reading changes even among locations of the same "station first" kind.

Izumigaoka and Makomanai, which opened in the early 1970s, are on the fortunate side. The 1961-69 photograph falls before the opening and the 1974-78 photograph a few years after it, so you can see in succession mountainsides that have just been cut and rows of residential buildings that have gone up. In contrast, at Nagareyama-Otakanomori and Takanawa Gateway, all the past eras that remain are from before the opening. If you look for the finished form of the town at these two locations, you need to step all the way through to the last photograph.

The stage when lots are laid out between farmland and woods

Megumino in the City of Eniwa, Hokkaido, is a location where that gap is especially large. The 1961-69 photograph shows farmland divided into strips, windbreaks running diagonally along their borders, and farmhouses placed here and there among the fields. The tracks cut diagonally through the frame, but beside them there is no grouping that could be called a station area. In 1982 Megumino Station opened as a new station on the Chitose Line, and in the 1984-86 photograph houses have filled in from around the station toward the east, and further out still, earth-colored grid lots have been prepared. A photograph in which the blocks overtake the fields is a frame that appears only on land where the station came first. The lines of the lots are all straight and aligned, and the widths of the streets are graded in steps, which shows that these are streets laid out according to a plan.

The predecessor of Chiba New Town Chuo was the fields and woods of the Shimosa Plateau. The project got under way at the end of the 1960s, and Chiba New Town Chuo Station opened in 1984. More than ten years passed from the start of the project to the opening of the station, and in the photographs the lots of the fields are slowly replaced by graded land. The top of the plateau was land where water was hard to obtain, and the 1961-69 photograph also shows that fields and woods spread there rather than paddies.

Yukarigaoka in the City of Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, is an example where the company that carried out the development even provided a railway that circles through the town. A station on the Keisei Main Line and a line running around the blocks both opened in 1982. The elevation near the center is 25.2 m, at the edge of a plateau that slopes down toward Lake Imba. In the 1974-78 photograph fields and woods on the slopes take the leading role, but in 1984-86 a ring-shaped route and the blocks arranged inside it appear.

Tracks that climbed hills, and stations placed at their ends

Flower Town in the City of Sanda, Hyogo Prefecture, has an elevation of 189.5 m near the center and forms one part of Hokusetsu Sanda New Town. Housing development on the hills went ahead first, and it was in 1991 that the Kobe Electric Railway Koen-Toshi Line was extended and a station was placed. The late 1980s and the 1990s were a period when the population of the City of Sanda grew greatly, and the opening of the station falls partway through it. There are two past eras, 1961-69 and 1974-78, and both show the hills before the station.

Tracks that climb hills are a type shared by the large-scale new towns of the Kansai region and the National Capital Region. Seishin-Chuo in the City of Kobe is on a plateau at an elevation of 88.9 m, where the subway climbed from the town area up to the hills and reached its terminus in the late 1980s. In Tama New Town, Minami-Osawa is at 115 m and Tama Center at 88.6 m, and in both the blocks sit on top of terrain of tangled ridges and valleys that was graded. Two lines reached Tama Center in 1974 and 1975, and a station was built at Minami-Osawa in 1988, so there are also areas where residents began moving into the town before the station.

Izumigaoka in Osaka Prefecture was the first gateway of Senboku New Town; residents began moving in in 1967, and the line of the Semboku Rapid Railway arrived four years later, in 1971. The elevation is 71.5 m. Makomanai in the City of Sapporo is on an alluvial fan at 94.4 m, where the subway was laid for the 1972 Winter Olympics, and the competition venues and a danchi (housing complex) were prepared at the same time. The 1974-78 photograph preserves the outline of the town just after that.

Places where the town came first and the station was added later

At Izumi-Chuo (Sendai) in the City of Sendai, the order is reversed. The 1961-69 photograph shows the settlement of Nanakita and its paddies and fields, but this was already the center of the former City of Izumi. The growth of the town area went ahead first, and it was in 1992 that the Sendai Subway Namboku Line was extended to Izumi-Chuo Station. The station was, in effect, called in from the side of the town. The elevation is 26.5 m near the center and 36.5 m at the northern measuring point, terrain sloping gently down toward the Nanakita River.

At Higashi-Shizuoka in the City of Shizuoka, the relationship between town and railway is twisted one step further. The rail yard that lay between Shizuoka Station and Kusanagi Station finished its role and became vacant, and a station was built on the former site in 1998. The town area already filled the surroundings, so it can be said that the town called the station. However, the station was made possible by land that the railway itself had given up, not by the town area. The elevation near the center is 10.4 m.

Saitama-Shintoshin in the City of Saitama is of the same type. The wide grounds of the Omiya Rail Yard of the former Japanese National Railways were switched over to a district where government offices and commerce gather, and it was in 2000 that a station was placed. The blank between the old town areas of Omiya and Urawa fills in as you step through the eras of the photographs. The elevation is 11.5 m, on a low plateau between the Arakawa River and the Shiba River.

Places where railway land turned into town

In the case of Takanawa Gateway, the railway, not a town, was there first. A vast rolling stock depot spread between Shinagawa Station and Tamachi Station, and this composition hardly changes from the photograph from around 1936-42 to the 1984-86 photograph. It was in March 2020 that a station was placed on land freed by shrinking the depot, the first new station on the Yamanote Line in about half a century. The elevation is 3.4 m near the center and 8.4 m at the western measuring point, so the position of the step where the foot of the plateau drops to the reclaimed land on the sea side appears directly in the figures. For preparedness in the low-lying area, check the information published on the Hazard Map Portal Site of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

Sasashima Live in the City of Nagoya is land where the Sasashima freight station turned into blocks. The composition of a wide, flat expanse for freight lying just south of Nagoya Station can be followed in the photographs from 1945-50 to 1979-83. The Aonami Line opened in 2004, and the station was placed where the freight tracks had disappeared. The elevation is 5.7 m. Kinjo-futo, at the terminus of the same line, is on the opposite side, where the tracks were extended to land born of reclamation, and its elevation is 4.2 m.

Stations placed on reclaimed land

On land made by filling in the sea, the station has no choice but to come before the town. Kaihimmakuhari in the City of Chiba is on reclaimed land at an elevation of 3.7 m, and a station on the Keiyo Line was built there in 1986. In the 1979-83 photograph the graded surface of the reclamation spreads out, and in 1987-90 the buildings of the business district come into view. At neighboring Maihama, at an elevation of 2.6 m, the amusement park opened first and the station opened in 1988. If you set the coastline in the photograph from around 1936-42 beside today's outline of the land, the extent of the reclamation can be seen directly as an area.

Universal City in the City of Osaka has an elevation of -0.2 m near the center and lies in the western waterfront district of Konohana. If you step through the eras from the photograph from around 1928, a process continues in which sea, factories, and timber storage ponds replace one another while the land expands, and a station was placed in 2001. Rinku Town is at an elevation of 3.8 m, and the line linking to the airport opened in 1994. Nanko Port Town in the City of Osaka is at 4.1 m; a new transit line came through in 1981, and residential buildings and warehouses lined up on the same island. Preparedness for flood damage in areas below sea level and on reclaimed land is published by each local government, so it is reassuring to look through the materials for each location.

Read the official land prices from the year of opening

At locations where the station came first, the records of the official land prices (Chika Koji) often begin after the opening, so the effect of the opening itself does not show in the figures. The figures show only the long time after it. The official land price figures below are those within the range that can be consulted as of September 2026 (up to the 2026 publication).

The residential site in Hakuyo-cho at Megumino is recorded at a position about 264 m from the station. The 1994 value is the start of the record; up to the 2026 publication the lowest value is 21,800 yen from 2016 to 2018, and 2026 is 50,000 yen, the highest value in the record. At Kogari 5-chome in Chiba New Town Chuo, in the record up to the 2026 publication, 145,000 yen in 1999 is the highest; it fell to 66,100 yen in 2021, and 2026 is 91,700 yen. At Hazamagaoka in Flower Town, in the record up to the 2026 publication, 162,000 yen from 1995 to 1998 is the highest value, and 64,100 yen has continued from 2022 to 2026.

Even among locations of the same "station first" kind, Nagareyama-Otakanomori and Tsukuba Science City move in the opposite direction. The Tsukuba Express opened in 2005, and the station name Nagareyama-otakanomori took in otaka, the name of the northern goshawk that lived in the forest before the development. Otakanomori-minami 1-chome, about 330 m from the station, moved from 241,000 yen in 2020 to 428,000 yen in 2026, and the record for Tsukuba Science City moved from 185,000 yen in 2017 to 302,000 yen in 2026. In both, the record begins more than ten years after the opening, so only the phase after the line had grown the town remains in the figures. The prices in this article are actual examples at each point in time and do not reflect market prices after the article was written.

When the recorded window begins after the opening

At locations where the records of the official land prices begin long after the opening, the movement before and after the station was built cannot be followed in figures. In this case you can rely on the photographs and the terrain. At locations with a short recorded window, the natural order is to check the elevation and the eras of the photographs first, and then read the figures as a supplement. The official land prices in this section are also figures within the range that can be consulted as of September 2026 (up to the 2026 publication).

The record for Tama Center begins at 251,000 yen in 2002; with 210,000 yen in 2012 and 2013 as the lowest value up to the 2026 publication, 2026 is 266,000 yen. It took more than twenty years to come back to a level above the starting point. At Yukarigaoka the record begins at 94,500 yen in 2008, 83,000 yen continues from 2013 to 2021, and 2026 is 96,800 yen, the highest value in the record up to the 2026 publication. At Izumi-Chuo, in the record up to the 2026 publication, 140,000 yen in 2011 and 2012 was the lowest, and 352,000 yen in 2026 was the highest value. Center-Kita in the City of Yokohama is in the central district of Kohoku New Town, and its record begins 27 years after the opening in 1993.

There is also the reverse order. At Takanawa Gateway, whereas the station opened in 2020, the record for Takanawa 2-chome, about 337 m from the station, begins with 1,060,000 yen in 2016. Because there is a record from four years before the opening, it is a rare location where the figures can be followed across the time before and after the station was placed. 2026 was 1,950,000 yen.

Find the starting point of a town by going back and forth between photographs

These locations are places where the change is easy to read if you move back and forth between photographs across the year of opening. As a procedure, first keep the year the station opened in mind, and move the era buttons back and forth across it. If you find a photograph in which only the tracks and the station appear first, that is the starting point of the town. If you find a photograph in which the streets have been laid out and there are no buildings, that is the year just before residents begin moving in.

At locations where hills were cut, if you also look at the elevation cross-section, you can see where the tracks climbed up from. At Yokodai in the City of Yokohama, a station was built in the early 1970s, and danchi line up on a hill at an elevation of 38.5 m. Aobadai in the same city is at 37.8 m, and its station opened in the mid-1960s. On reclaimed land, by contrast, the cross-section stays almost flat and breaks off at the edge, so you can see as a line how far the land was made. Checking in the photographs whether the station or the town came first is more direct than reading a map, and the answer appears within a single photograph.

The prices in this article are actual examples at each point in time and do not reflect market prices after the article was written.