Tsukuba-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 242,000 (241,656 in 2020). Over the five years from 226,963 in 2015, it rose by nearly fifteen thousand. While many regional cities across the country lose population, it is a city that has grown greatly.

What I want to note here is that even the number of children is increasing. Those under 15 rose by a little over three thousand two hundred, from 31,448 (2015) to 34,645 (2020). Cities where the absolute number of children is increasing are not many even looking across the whole country. In the same span the share aged 65 and over rose only slightly, from 18.1% to 18.9%, staying at a level low even nationally. The household-with-children share, at 22.0% (2020), is thick. The land price of residential areas is about 89,000 yen per m², at a held-down level. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 1.07 — exceeding 1.0, which shows a self-reliant fiscal structure that relies almost not at all on the local allocation tax and covers standard expenditure with its own tax revenue alone. The Childcare Waitlist is 0 (2025). Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of a science city placed by national policy.

Tsukuba’s skeleton is the very city placed methodically by the nation’s policy. To begin with, this whole area was a plateau spread with fields and paddies. In 1963 the nation made a cabinet understanding fixing the construction site of a science city on the land of Tsukuba, from among the four candidates of the foot of Mount Fuji, Akagi, Tsukuba and Nasu. This plateau, with a consolidated tract of land and at a fitting distance from the city center, was chosen. It is a typical case, in economic geography, of a city placed not by spontaneous growth but by policy.

In 1970 the Tsukuba Science City Construction Act was enacted. At first it was announced as a city construction by full-scale purchase of about four thousand hectares, but through local opposition movements and the like, the plan was in fact carried forward within about two thousand seven hundred hectares. Then in March 1980 the relocation of the forty-three research and educational institutions originally planned was completed, and the city reached its broad completion. Research institutions and universities were moved and placed all at once onto a plateau of fields and paddies.

Thereafter, too, this town kept layering on functions. In 1985 the International Science and Technology Exposition — the Tsukuba Expo — was held, and around the same time the Joban Expressway opened. The 1987 merger of towns and villages gave birth to Tsukuba City, and in 2005 the Tsukuba Express opened, tying the rail axis to the city center. Research institutions placed by national policy on a plateau of fields and paddies, and a railway that tied it to the city center — this town’s form stands upon the history of policy and planning more than upon the natural landform.

What characterizes Tsukuba is that, while the total population increases by fifteen thousand, even the number of children increases by three thousand two hundred. It appears in the figures of living infrastructure in the very opposite form to the consolidation seen in many regional cities. In a town where the absolute number of children increases, demand for living infrastructure, beginning with schools, also moves to the increasing side.

The Childcare Waitlist is 0. A zero waitlist in a town where children keep increasing has the very opposite meaning from “the result of the absolute number of children thinning,” common in regional cities of population decline. It is a zero reached as the result of making the supply of childcare catch up to demand, even as children and the population grow. The fiscal capacity exceeding 1.0 also has an aspect of sustaining the supply for an ever-increasing childcare demand. With the same “zero waitlist,” the reading changes wholly depending on whether children are increasing or thinning behind it. Children increase, households with children are thick, and aging stays at a level low even nationally. Tsukuba’s numbers are the very consequence of the history by which a science city placed by national policy has kept gathering young households working at its research institutions. The three are not separate facts; they branch from a single history.

In Tsukuba several faces national policy placed overlap. One is the agglomeration of research and educational institutions moved all at once onto a plateau of fields and paddies by national policy, which gives this town the character of one of the country’s foremost hubs of research and development. Another is the history of being the site of the International Science and Technology Exposition, which has sustained the town’s outward character as a city built around science and technology. And the rail axis of the Tsukuba Express, tying it to the city center, links the science city directly with Tokyo.

Tsukuba is not a town that grew naturally, but a city planned and placed by the nation’s policy. From a plateau of fields and paddies to a science city, and on to a city tied to the city center by railway — the condition of “a plateau with a consolidated tract of land and at a fitting distance from the city center” drew in research institutions by policy and placed the very skeleton of the city. The research institutions, the Expo, and the railway alike are placed, in the end, upon a single plateau chosen by national policy. Tsukuba is a city that came to be not by growing naturally, but by policy first choosing a single plateau and then carrying research functions in afterward. Against Sagamihara City, whose skeleton was likewise drawn on a plateau by planning but which has the military and bases as its origin, Tsukuba is in sharp contrast in having a function — research — as its origin.