Yukarigaoka about 60 years ago and today

History of Yukarigaoka

On a plateau in the City of Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, there is a town named Yukarigaoka. It is a landform where many thin valleys cut into a flat plateau, and if you switch the aerial photographs in order from the oldest era, you can follow directly the order in which lot lines were drawn between those valleys and forests, roofs filled them, and tall buildings rose beside the station. It is a place where views of a town partway through being built remain, one photograph per era.

A plateau with yatsu reaching in like fingers

The measured elevations are 25.2 m at the center of the location, 27.4 m in the west and south, and 23.1 m in the north. Only the eastern measuring point is a step lower at 19.4 m, and the figures pick up the landform where the plateau falls into a valley toward the east. This low place is a long, narrow valley called a yatsu, and because water gathers there it has long been used for paddies. The division of use, fields and coppice woods on the flat surface of the plateau and paddies in the valleys, is the framework of land use before development. On land where hills were cut and valleys filled to make housing land, the way rainwater gathers changes from the original landform. It is worth opening the hazard map published by the City of Sakura lot number by lot number to check which lots fall in which kind of area.

Its position, about an hour by rail from the city center, lies behind the choice of this area for a town. The Keisei Main Line crosses the southern edge of the plateau diagonally, and the tracks themselves had run there from early on. The premise for planning an entire town was that fields along the line with no station remained over a sizable area.

The era of village woods and yatsu paddies

In the 1961-69 photograph, dark woods interlock like fingers, and bright paddies and fields extend in long, narrow strips between them. Many hamlets stretch in a single line along roads, and clusters can be seen at the top of the center and at the lower right. At the left edge of the frame the density of buildings rises suddenly, and the edge of a town area comes into the picture. A thin straight line runs diagonally from the bottom of the center to the upper right. This is the railway, and on both sides of it there is still nothing spread out that suggests a station. Along the road extending from the lower left to the center, buildings continue in a single line. On the right side of the frame, square lots together take up a bright area, and their outline differs clearly from the shape of the valley paddies, which extend thinly along the breaks in the woods.

By 1974-78 the photograph has changed to color, and at the left and bottom of the frame rows of small houses lined up in order appear. Because roofs of the same size line up facing the same way, you can tell it is housing land divided into lots and sold. Meanwhile, from the center to the right it is still fields and woods, and on the plateau a bright road drawing an arc has begun to extend, cutting through the woods. The rows of houses do not spread continuously but are split into two places, gathering toward the bottom of the frame and, apart from that, to its east. The land caught between them is still fields and woods, left open as room to be filled later. The change pushes in from the lower left in order, and the center of the photograph is still farmland.

A hill with only lot lines drawn

In the 1979-83 photograph, ocher bare ground opens wide at the top of the frame. Thin lines are drawn on the ground in a grid, and although the shapes of the lots are already decided, hardly any buildings can be seen. The lots come before the houses, a view that only land under preparation shows. From the southern edge of the bare ground, a band the color of earth extends toward the center, showing that the work is moving south. At the upper left there is bare ground with an irregular outline, which looks like a place where earth was taken. In this photograph the brightness differs between the upper half and the lower half, and a seam runs across it.

When you switch to 1984-86, the same lots are packed with small roofs. The size and color of the roofs are uniform, and a wide road runs north and south through the blocks. Just by going back and forth between the two photographs, you can see that the division into lots became a town within a few years. Bright bare ground still remains at the center, left open as the place to be worked on next. On the southern edge of the blocks, beside the tracks, buildings with red roofs and a long, narrow structure along the tracks can be seen. This photograph shows that a place for people to get on and off had begun to be prepared. At the upper left of the frame, a straight band of land preparation extends sideways, and because its shape differs from the housing lots, it looks like land for a road.

Tall buildings that rose in front of the station

Yukarigaoka Station on the Keisei Main Line opened in 1982, and in the same year a new transit line running around the town also began service. The development was carried out by the real estate company Yamaman, and instead of a land readjustment by the government, it took the form of a single company selling over a long time. In the 1987-90 photograph, several large buildings casting shadows appear around the station, rising above the groups of low roofs around them. The trees in the blocks have already grown and the green is dense, and the whitish look of just after land preparation has disappeared. Toward the bottom of the center of the frame, a new band of bare ground extends south, showing that the front line of land preparation keeps moving.

In the photograph as of 2026, the left half and the center of the frame are filled with roofs and roads, and around the station large box-shaped buildings and tall buildings that look black gather. On the right side of the frame, by contrast, field lots, forests, and long, narrow paddies along the valley lines remain. The east side is still fields, and the boundary with the blocks shows as clearly as a line. The shapes of the yatsu remain as green bands between parts of the town too, and roads that are not straight and edges of blocks that curve irregularly tell where the original landform was. Around the station a shape that looks like a long, narrow platform can be read, and the railway passes out from the lower left of the frame to the upper right. At the right edge of the frame the color tone switches vertically, showing that a separate photograph has been pieced on.

There is one measuring point where the official land prices (Chika Koji) can be followed, in a residential area of Kamiza. It is about 470 m from the location, and the record begins in 2008. The price per square meter was 94,500 yen, it fell to 83,000 yen in 2013, and it is 96,800 yen in the 2026 publication. The start and the end have returned to almost the same level, and the dip in the middle stands out more as the range of the swing.

If you switch through the eras in order, you can see that this town was not built all at once but spread in steps, from north to south and from lots to roofs. The green of the valleys and the fields on the east side are also the boundary that shows where that spread has stopped.