Setagaya-ku

In the most recent Population Census the population is about 944,000 (943,664). Over the ten years from 814,901 it added nearly one hundred and thirty thousand. Holding the largest population of the 23 wards, it is a residential ward still on an upward trend. Even compared with single cities, a population on the scale of Saitama or Kawasaki fits within one ward.

What is worth seeing here is that the number of children rose greatly too. Those under 15 rose from 84,141 to 108,940, some twenty-five thousand more. Wards whose absolute number of children rises this much are not many across the 23. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 15.7% to 20.1%, but for a ward of this scale it sits on the gentle side of aging. The residential land price is in the 780,000-yen range (785,000 yen). The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.68; that it falls below 1.0 while holding a large population and residential area is due to the fiscal structure peculiar to a great city. The childcare waitlist fell from 58 children to 47. Children rise greatly, yet the waitlist remains in the forties — these two, seemingly mismatched, share a root. The western suburban flatland, near the center and linked by rail, kept summoning housing demand and took in the largest scale of the 23 wards. That scale produces, at once, rising children and capacity that cannot catch up.

Setagaya’s skeleton is a history in which farmland was painted over into housing in a short span. This ground was originally a near-suburban farming belt spreading to the west of the center. The geographic condition that large-scale flatland remained as building land decided this town’s fate.

The first trigger was the great earthquake. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 greatly destroyed buildings in the central area, and many moved to the less-damaged suburbs. In the same period the railways — the second foundation — came through one after another. Lines such as the Tamaden, Keio, Tokyu and Odakyu pierced Setagaya from late Taisho into early Showa, and new towns were born along them. The flow of people pushed out of the center by the great earthquake and the commuting axes the railways drew overlapped, and the stretch of spreading fields rapidly urbanized. Residential areas planned in blocks, such as Seijo, were also born, and Setagaya strengthened its character as a residential area.

In 1932 the four towns and villages of Setagaya, Komazawa, Matsuzawa and Tamagawa merged to form Setagaya Ward. An area of gathered farming villages was bound into a single residential ward. After the war this ward came to hold the largest population of the 23. A great earthquake and the railway acting together on farmland, fields becoming housing — this ward’s form stands less on natural landform than on the people who overflowed the center and the lines the railways drew.

What characterizes Setagaya-ku is that, while the total population rose by nearly one hundred and thirty thousand, the number of children rose by twenty-five thousand. That appears in the figures for living infrastructure in a form opposite to the consolidations common in regional cities that lost large populations. Elementary schools in the ward fell from 72 to 70, some two fewer over ten years. That schools edged down even as the absolute number of children rose greatly suggests that the urban circumstances of land and consolidation move on a logic apart from the number of children.

The childcare waitlist fell from 58 children to 47. A falling waitlist in a ward where children keep rising is opposite in meaning to the “zero from a thinned absolute number of children” common in regional cities of population decline. It reads as a fall reached by keeping supply abreast of demand while children and population both grow. Yet whereas Kawasaki and Chofu pressed the waitlist near zero, Setagaya keeps the forties. With children rising by twenty-five thousand at a scale beyond nine hundred thousand, fully catching demand is no easy thing — that too can be read here. Children increase, schools edge down, the waitlist stays high while falling. These movements at a scale beyond nine hundred thousand cannot have the meaning of their swing grasped by pulling out a single figure.

Setagaya-ku holds several characters of its own. One is the residential area that spread along several rail lines from late Taisho into early Showa, including blocks planned out like Seijo, forming a residential brand to the west of the center. Another is the very population scale, the largest of the 23 wards, where more than nine hundred thousand people — a match for a single city — fit within one ward. Greenery along the Tama River and ground keeping the trace of farming villages still dot the ward.

Setagaya changed its face from a near-suburban farming village to housing all at once, pushed by a great earthquake and the railway. The planned residential areas, the streetscapes along the lines and the largest population of the 23 wards alike stack on the same condition: a near-suburban farming belt, easy to urbanize, spreading to the west of the center. Because it was flatland near the center and linked by rail, people and housing were summoned one after another. Tracks were laid across a stretch that had been fields, and along those tracks nine hundred thousand people settled — Setagaya is the residential area the railways drew.