Tama Plaza about 60 years ago and today

History of Tama Plaza

The station name Tama-plaza lays a Spanish word meaning square over the place name Tama. It is said to have been given by Tokyu's head at the time, and it carried the intention of building a town that uses the station as a square. Before the name was given, however, there was almost no flat land in this area that could become a square. This is because it lies at the eastern edge of the Tama Hills, where ridges about 50 m high and the yato valleys that branch off and drop from them were finely intertwined.

Yato is the general name for the short valleys that cut into hills, and spring water seeps out at their bottoms. Paddies can be opened without weirs or irrigation channels, but in return the size of a single paddy is capped by the width of the valley. Water does not reach the tops of the ridges, so they were given to fields and mixed woods, which became the source of firewood, charcoal, and fallen leaves to spread on paddies. As a rice-growing area it was small, and although it was only about 17 km from Shibuya, no large town grew. Put the other way, hills where unbroken land could be obtained were left almost untouched in the southwest of Tokyo.

The untouched yato valleys

The 1945-50 photograph shows that untouched look over almost the whole frame. Wherever you look in the frame, long, narrow valley-bottom paddies that look white branch like limbs, and the fields on the ridges and black woods fill the space between them. Clusters of roofs are scattered here and there at the mouths of the valleys and at the feet of slopes, and there is no sign of people living on the hilltops. The roads all follow the valley lines, and no wide road running long along the ridges can be found. Photographs from an era in which the framework of the landform before it became a town can be read this plainly are not many.

The method of land readjustment

The plan began to move in 1953. The Development Prospectus for the Josei-nan District that Tokyu presented drew a vision of running a railway into these hills and creating residential areas along the line. Its feature was in the way land was gathered. Instead of the developer buying up land and then preparing it, the landowners formed a land readjustment association to which they contributed their land, and that association prepared roads and parks first and then returned housing lots. The landowners gained value as housing lots in exchange for reduced area, and the developer could develop along the line without carrying enormous purchase costs. This way of proceeding, called Tama Den-en-toshi, spread widely over the hills from the City of Kawasaki to the City of Yokohama and the City of Machida, and each station of the Den-en-toshi Line became the front door of its own residential district.

If you open the 1961-69 photograph, you can see that way of proceeding midway. The place where the station will be placed is itself still fields and valleys, and the outline of the town appears nowhere. The Den-en-toshi Line opened here in 1966, a time near the end of this era. Only the upper right corner of the frame is different, though. On slopes that were paddies and woods in 1945-50, houses of the same shape line up in many rows facing the same way. The turning of the hills into residential areas did not wait for the arrival of the station and had begun earlier from another place.

The ten-odd years after the opening are the period that changed the shape of the hills the most. The yato valleys were filled in order from upstream, and the ridges had their shoulders lowered to even out their heights. The unbroken flat surface prepared in the station area also does not use the original landform as it was. The elevation is 47 to 57.5 m, a difference of a little over 10 m remaining across the four sides of the location, and the figures show that the rise and fall of the hills continues just outside the town that looks flat. The lots are made of a combination of roads that curve along the contour lines and streets that radiate from the station, and there are almost no blocks of the same shape.

Vacant land filling in patches

In the 1974-78 photograph, blocks have risen densely on the north side of the station, while toward the south of the frame, farmland and soil-colored prepared land remain widely. This light and shade shows that development did not advance in concentric circles centered on the station but in patches, following the pace of each district's association. As you advance through 1979-83, 1984-86, and 1987-90, the vacant land fills in, street trees and garden trees spread their branches, and the color of the frame deepens. By 1987-90, it is harder to find vacant land. The texture value, which measures the fineness of the image, increased about 2.8 times, from 15.3 in 1961-69 to 42.6 as of 2026.

The wide road running north and south on the right of the frame also grows as you advance through the eras. In 1974-78 it is no more than a faint band slipping between the rows of houses, but as of 2026 it has become a street edged with buildings on both sides. The residential area on the hills was not complete within walking range of the station alone; an axis of life moving by car thickened alongside it. The way it thickened shows in the change of this band's outline.

A town that has entered the period of renewal

The town side has also entered a time of renewal. In 2010 the rebuilding of the station building was finished, and a commercial facility united with the ticket gates opened. As of 2026, the area around the station has the look of a suburban residential city in which large commercial facilities and tree-lined streets are combined. On the other hand, the generation that moved in first has entered old age, and in 2012 the City of Yokohama and Tokyu Corporation joined hands with the aim of regenerating suburban residential areas. In the detached-house residential areas on the hills, going up and down slopes and the generational change of houses have become the center of discussion. In Utsukushigaoka north of the station, efforts to hold down the fine division of lots by agreements among residents have continued from an early time, and the lines of street trees and hedges have supported the townscape.

The official land price (Chika Koji) of residential land in Shin-ishikawa 3-chome, about 270 m from the station, has kept rising from 430,000 yen per square meter in 2016 to 644,000 yen in the 2026 publication. In the published series, no year of decline can be found since 2016. It can be said to be a town that keeps being chosen even after 60 years since the start of development.

The framework of the hills remains beneath the housing lots. When you enter the residential area from the station, the road soon becomes a slope, and on the low lines where yato valleys were filled, green spaces and small parks are often placed. The stairs that appear beyond dead ends are also a trace of dividing lots to fit the contour lines. If you take the eras of the photographs back toward the older ones, you can confirm which part of the former valleys and ridges those slopes and stairs correspond to.