Urayasu-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 171,000 (171,362 in 2020). Over the twenty years from 132,984 in 2000, it gained nearly forty thousand. In the same twenty years that Kawasaki gained three hundred thousand and Chiba gained eighty thousand, Urayasu too has steadily extended its population.

Looking inside, Urayasu is a town where youthfulness stands out. Those under 15 rose from 19,307 (2000) to 21,564 (2020). The share aged 65 and over rose from 7.6% (2000) to 17.5% (2020), but the starting point of 7.6% was an extremely young level even nationwide. The land price of residential areas is about 381,000 yen per m² (2026), high compared with neighboring cities. And what draws the eye most is the Fiscal Capacity Index, at 1.42 in fiscal 2023 — this value, greatly exceeding 1.0, is a level that covers standard expenditure with its own tax revenue alone and still has a surplus, among the foremost in the nation. The Childcare Waitlist was zero in the latest figure. Why it took this form cannot be read without going back over the history of a fishing village remade by reclamation.

The town of Urayasu was remade by losing the sea and by reclaiming the sea. From the Edo era, this land (Horie, Nekozane, and Tokaijima), surrounded on three sides by sea and rivers, was a fishermen’s town where fishing flourished. It was a town that made its living by cultivating shellfish and nori, but as the industrialization of the surroundings advanced, the environment of the fishing grounds worsened, and through disputes over fishing-ground pollution in the 1950s and the like, fishing declined. A town that had stood by relying on the sea began to lose the sea itself. What economic geography calls “the loss of the resource base” was this town’s turning point.

The lost sea was eventually reclaimed into a new municipal area. From 1965 to 1980, through two phases of reclamation works, Urayasu’s municipal area expanded roughly fourfold. Offshore of the old settlements that had been the fishermen’s town (Motomachi), the vast new districts of Nakamachi and Shinmachi, born of reclamation, came into being. In 1981 it enacted city status, and the fishing village changed its form into a modern residential city.

Symbolizing that reclaimed land is Tokyo Disneyland, which opened in 1983. A vast crowd-drawing facility and the housing of the new districts called new residents and an economy onto the reclaimed land. Motomachi, with its origin as a fishermen’s town, and the new districts born of reclamation — lands of different histories coexist within one city. That difference also appeared in the form that, at the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, wide-ranging liquefaction occurred in the reclaimed Nakamachi and Shinmachi, while the damage was small in the old Motomachi. The two faces — the prosperity that reclamation brought, and the ground that reclamation took on — overlap upon the same municipal area.

What characterizes Urayasu-shi is that, while the population rose by nearly forty thousand, the number of children too is increasing. It appears in the figures of living infrastructure in a form the opposite of the consolidation common to regional cities where population has greatly fallen. The elementary schools within the city rose from 13 around 2000 to 17 in recent years. New residents sought housing in the municipal area widened by reclamation, children increased, and the school network moved to the expanding side.

The Childcare Waitlist is zero in the latest figure, but this zero is the opposite in meaning to the “zero that is the result of the absolute number of children thinning,” common to regional cities in population decline. In a town where young households flow in and children keep increasing, it is a zero as the result of keeping supply caught up to demand. There is also the aspect that one of the foremost fiscal capacities in the nation supports the supply to the ever-rising childcare demand. Even with the same “zero waitlist,” the reading changes entirely depending on whether children are increasing or thinning behind it. The new districts born of reclamation have gathered young households and pushed up the number of children and schools — Urayasu’s figures of living infrastructure can be read as the straightforward consequence of a fishing village turning into a residential city.

Urayasu, as a town remade by reclaiming the sea, holds functions of its own. One is the crowd-drawing facility centered on Tokyo Disneyland, opened on the reclaimed land, which has become one major hub gathering people from across the nation and one of the pillars supporting this town’s economy. Another is the residential land spreading over the same reclaimed land, which has welcomed young households as a residential city on the Tokyo Bay shore.

What symbolizes this town in figures is the Fiscal Capacity Index of 1.42. This value, greatly exceeding 1.0, means that, without relying on the local allocation tax, its own tax revenue alone covers standard expenditure and still has a surplus, and it appears as one consequence of being a residential city with high land prices and income levels and a town holding a large-scale crowd-drawing facility. From a fishermen’s town to a residential city and a crowd-drawing hub born of reclaiming the sea — the history of “a town made by reclaiming the sea” is translated into the present figure of a high fiscal capacity. Yet that same reclaimed land also showed the challenge of the ground, in the form of liquefaction in 2011. The land that produced prosperity and the land that bears the unease of the ground are, in Urayasu, a single sheet of reclaimed land.