An elevation comparison. Read low towns and high towns from the terrain

Published: August 11, 2026 / About 13 min read

If you rearrange the locations on the site in order of elevation, the bottom is Universal City (Western Konohana Waterfront) at -0.2 m and the top is Hokusetsu Sanda New Town (Flower Town) at 189.5 m, a difference of 189.7 m. Both are flat town areas with railway stations, yet this large a gap appears. Moreover, the order is not a coincidence of terrain. Land where flat land for industry was added at the waterside gathers on the low side, and land where hills were cut to make residential areas gathers on the high side, so the list of elevations almost overlaps the list of purposes for which the land was made.

A way of reading with two cross-sections

In the elevation section of a location page, two cross-section graphs are lined up, east-west and north-south. Each is a line that joins the terrain over a total length of about 2 km, about 1 km to each side from the center, with heights at 101 points. The blue line is east-west and the green line is north-south, and lines of the same colors are also drawn on the locator photograph placed beside them. You can tell which direction's cross-section you are looking at by comparing it with the line on the photograph side, and the locator opens large when you click it. If you trace over the graph with a finger or pointer, the position marker on the photograph side moves along with it, so you can check one point at a time where the valleys and shoulders of the line fall in the photograph.

The vertical direction is drawn enlarged more than the horizontal, and the title carries that ratio in the form "vertical exaggeration ×N". The enlargement is there so that even a step of a few tens of centimeters can be seen, and showing the ratio openly instead of hiding it is regarded as the proper practice for terrain cross-sections. The values for the center, the highest, and the lowest are placed as numbers on the line, so you can also read just the range without touching the graph. Stretches where no height value exists, such as the sea surface or a wide river surface, are not forcibly joined with a 0 m line but are left as a blank band with "No data" written beside it. The fact that the line breaks off is itself information that the place was water.

Low-lying towns lined up at the bottom

Locations whose center elevation is below 2 m are limited, in terms of how they came about, to reclaimed land or former factory sites. Universal City is -0.2 m at the center; its north-south cross-section goes down to -1.9 m at the lowest point, and its east-west cross-section reaches a rise of 6.3 m toward the east. There is a difference of more than 8 m within an area less than 1 km square because the time and the use of reclamation differed from place to place. In the 1961-69 photograph it is a waterside lined with the grounds of heavy industry, and with the opening of Universal Studios Japan in 2001 as the turning point it was replaced by a theme park and a hotel district.

Kyocera Dome Osaka (Iwasaki-cho) is 0.4 m at the center; the east-west cross-section sinks to -0.8 m toward the west, and the north-south one rises to 5.1 m. It is an industrial area between the Kizu River and the Shirinashi River, and until Osaka Dome opened in 1997 it was land where the circles of gas tanks lined up. Niigata Bandai City (former factory site) is 0.4 m at the center, and both cross-sections fall within a band of -0.6 to 1.4 m. The framework of Niigata, sand dunes that developed at the mouth of the Shinano River and the low land on their inner side, shows as two almost horizontal lines. Umekita (Grand Front Osaka) at 0.7 m and Ukishima / Tonomachi King Skyfront at 0.8 m follow, and everything up to Kobe Harborland at 2.0 m is the same group.

High towns carved into steps

New towns line up on the high side. Senri New Town (Senri-Chuo) is 66.6 m at the center, with the east-west cross-section at 57.5 to 110.5 m and the north-south at 41.8 to 106.1 m, a range of 53.0 m east-west and 64.3 m north-south. Makomanai is 94.4 m at the center and 79.1 to 130.5 m with the two cross-sections combined, Suma New Town (Myodani) is 88.5 to 160.0 m, and Flower Town is 162.0 to 214.1 m. Tama New Town (Tama Center) at 85.3 to 132.8 m and Senboku New Town (Izumigaoka) at 57.6 to 89.1 m have the same shape too.

The reason for the difference lies in the nature of the construction work. Reclamation is work that adds a horizontal surface to the water, so neighboring points line up at the same height. Grading hills is work that cuts ridges and valleys to line up flat areas in steps, so the height changes each time the block changes. Work that carves land into steps produces a range. If you average the locations on the site by how they came about, new towns have a center elevation of 48.2 m / a height difference of the cross-sections of 45.7 m, and reclaimed land 3.8 m and 23.4 m, so the difference appears not only in height but also in the amount of ups and downs.

Danchi (housing complex) on hills can be read in the same way. Akeno Danchi is 47.5 m at the center with cross-sections of 23.7 to 84.4 m, Otokoyama Danchi is 45.3 m at the center with 12.0 to 70.7 m, Rakusai New Town is 62.6 m at the center with 53.4 to 98.0 m, and Shogen Danchi is 71.0 m at the center with 44.3 to 82.9 m. In every case, just outside the flat areas where residential buildings line up, slopes and valleys left uncut lie close by. If you look at the direction in which the end of a cross-section drops sharply, you can infer on which side the boundary of the grading lies.

Exceptions that are high but flat

Height and ups and downs are separate pieces of information. Minami-Machida Grandberry Park belongs to the high-side group with 71.7 m at the center, yet at 62.0 to 83.5 m east-west / 63.2 to 81.5 m north-south its height difference stays at 21.5 m. It is the cross-section closest to horizontal on the high side, and the lines show that it was land where large steps did not have to be made.

There is also the opposite example. Takesato Danchi is on the low side with 5.2 m at the center, yet in the classification by how it came about it is a residential danchi. Its cross-sections are 3.5 to 6.7 m with a height difference of only 3.2 m, which shows that residential buildings were lined up directly on the low land of the plain. Cutting hills is not the only way danchi were made; if flat land was available, they were placed there. This is the reason the type of grading cannot be decided from the elevation figure alone.

The two-tier form of reclaimed land

The average height difference for reclaimed land is as much as 23.4 m because a mountain enters one side of the cross-section. Kamaishi Station Area (Former Steelworks) is 6.7 m at the center; the east-west cross-section is almost horizontal at 0.5 to 7.4 m, while the north-south cross-section runs up from 1.6 m to 264.9 m. The meaning of having the two lines side by side in the same view comes out most clearly at this location. The terrain of Kamaishi, in which the steelworks and the town area occupy flat land continuing long and narrow along the sea and the river and a steep slope presses close behind them, becomes a line of a different shape just by changing direction.

Mojiko Retro (reclaimed land) is also 3.4 m at the center, with 2.1 to 46.9 m east-west and 2.0 to 186.4 m north-south. Hachinohe Port Coastal Industrial Zone is 0.9 m at the center, and the high side of its cross-sections is 26.8 m. Towns at the edge of the sea have two-tier cross-sections, and the flat new land and the high ground behind it, which often supplied the earth for making that flat land, fit within a single view.

Lines that break off, and water surfaces

On artificial islands, the length over which the line breaks off itself tells the outline of the island. At Wakayama Marina City, 122 of the 202 points east-west / north-south are in stretches without values, which shows directly that the island is narrower than the cross-section of about 2 km. At Cosmo Square too, 39 points are blank. On the other hand, Port Island has only 2 blank points. Because the island is larger than the cross-section, the line continues as land to the ends. Even for the same "land made in the sea", the difference in scale changes the look of the graph.

In the cross-sections of ports, the breaks lean toward one direction. At Onahama Port only the southern end of the north-south cross-section is blank, which shows that the sea opens to the south. Kashima Coastal Industrial Zone is 8.1 m at the center with only 9 blank points, a form in which the cross-section grazes the dug-in water surface. There is also low land with no blanks at all, such as Around Amagasaki Q's Mall, where a narrow up-and-down movement of -1.9 to 2.6 m goes on and on.

The vertical exaggeration as a marker

The "vertical exaggeration ×N" in the heading of a cross-section also serves as a guide to the flatness of the land. A cross-section with a small height difference looks like a single straight line if drawn as it is, so the vertical has to be stretched greatly. The ratio is determined by the height difference of the cross-section and the width of the figure, so at locations whose height difference is only about 3 m, such as Takesato Danchi and Onahama Port, it becomes a large value, while at locations where a mountain enters the cross-section, such as Kamaishi Station Area and Mojiko Retro, the shape fits with almost no stretching. If you open it on a narrow screen, the ratio rises even for the same location, so check the value itself in the heading of the figure. The flatter the town, the more it is stretched vertically, so be careful not to misread the fine bumps that appear on a line with a large ratio as actual steep slopes.

Different histories behind the same 0.4 m

Even when elevations are equal, the origins do not match. Kyocera Dome Osaka and Niigata Bandai City are both 0.4 m at the center, but the former is the site of factories between canals, and the latter is a site where things such as a transport operator's depot used to be. If you look at the cross-sections, the difference shows even more: the height difference of the former is 6.0 m, and that of the latter 2.0 m. Elevation is no more than one number that remains on the land as a result, and you can find what was there only by stepping through the eras and looking at the aerial photographs.

Earth that was cut and earth that was filled

The two ends of the list are not unrelated. The earth and sand cut away in grading Suma New Town (Myodani) were carried to the sea by belt conveyor and used for the reclamation of Port Island and other sites. In this integrated development, called "the mountains go to the sea", the town that reaches 160.0 m at the highest point of its cross-sections and the flat island of 1.4 to 8.6 m are made of the same earth. Two locations that end up far apart when lined up by elevation are, as construction work, two sides of the same coin. Flat areas made by filling valleys remain on the cross-sections of the cut side, and surfaces raised above the water remain on the cross-sections of the filled side, and if you look at both side by side, they form the whole picture of a single project.

Another line drawn by land prices

It is not that the movement of the official land prices (Chika Koji) divides between low towns and high towns either. A residential site in Tsukuda 2-chome, Chuo Ward, close to Okawabata River City 21, rose from 650,000 yen per square meter in 2005 to 1,910,000 yen in 2026. A residential site in Makomanai Izumimachi also rose from 100,000 yen in 2014 to 170,000 yen in the 2026 publication. On the other hand, a residential site in Hazamagaoka, Sanda, close to Flower Town, fell from 162,000 yen in 1995, with a small rebound in 2008 in between, dropped to 64,100 yen in 2022, and is the same amount in the 2026 publication. Tanaka 1-chome, Minato Ward, Osaka, close to Universal City, went from 214,000 yen in 2013 to 238,000 yen in the 2026 publication, rising after staying almost flat until 2023. The direction of the lines does not depend on height. The factors that matter are the distance from the city center and how the use of the town changed.

What to check after the elevation

Elevation is one cross-section of the character of the land, and the conditions of a town are not decided by it alone. For preparedness against flood damage on low land, the Hazard Map Portal Site of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism brings together information for each municipality. After grasping the shape of the terrain with numbers and graphs, it is reliable to look there for the specific conditions of where you live or the places you visit.

If you then go back to the aerial photographs, the meaning of elevation looks different. Factories and the sea appear in the town at -0.2 m, and paddies and wooded hills near villages appear in the town at 189.5 m. If you trace the lines of the cross-sections and check what stands at which height, what you can read from the same single photograph increases. The single number of elevation has, in each case, the history of a different piece of land behind it.

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