Suita-shi

In the latest Population Census the population is about 386,000 (385,567 in 2020). In the five years from 374,468 in 2015, it rose by eleven thousand. It is one of the few cities that keep growing their population even within Osaka Prefecture.

What I want to see here is that the number of children too is increasing. Those under 15 rose by some seven hundred, from 51,299 in 2015 to 51,990 in 2020. Cities where the absolute number of children rises are not many, even surveying the whole of Osaka Prefecture. Over the same period the share aged 65 and over rose from 22.5% to 23.0%, but compared with neighboring cities it sits on the gentle side of aging. The household-with-children share is 20.8% (2020), thicker than Gifu or Hirakata. The land price of the residential area is around 241,000 yen per m², a high level even within Hokusetsu. The Fiscal Capacity Index is 0.95 (2023), nearing 1.0 — a level able to cover most of standard expenditure with its own tax revenue. The Childcare Waitlist is 4 (2025), level with the 4 of the previous year (2024). That it is a small number while children keep increasing differs in meaning from the "zero" of Gifu or Hirakata. Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the beer, the marshalling yard, and the hills.

Suita’s skeleton is a two-tiered history, in which postwar hill development was loaded heavily upon a modern industrial base. The first tier is water and railways. In 1889 the Osaka Beer Company (now Asahi Breweries) set up its brewery in Suita, relying on the water transport of the Kanzaki River, on good water, and on nearness to Osaka, the great market of consumption. Further, in 1923 the Suita Marshalling Yard was opened; the vast facility, spanning three stations, boasted an Oriental-class scale. Thus Suita opened as an industrial town near Osaka, called "the town of beer and the marshalling yard." In 1940 one town and three villages merged to enforce city status.

The second tier is the Senri hills. On this plateau, originally hill country spreading with bamboo groves and miscellaneous woodland, the first New Town in Japan (Senri New Town) was laid out as a project of Osaka Prefecture, over about ten years from the latter half of the 1950s. Move-in began in 1962, and a grid of residential lots spread over the hills. And in 1970, on the same Senri hills as the venue, the Japan World Exposition was held. Two separate bodies — Osaka Prefecture for the New Town, the state for the Expo — remade the adjoining hills at nearly the same time. In the terms of economic geography, it is the form in which the geographic condition of a sizeable unused plateau near the city called in at once two large-scale projects, housing and an exposition. The Expo site was developed into the Expo Commemoration Park, and the site of the marshalling yard, having finished its role, is being reborn as a health-and-medical city. A modern industrial town shifted its center of gravity after the war to a town to live in by remaking the hills — that two-tiered history supports the present population increase.

What characterizes Suita is that, while the total population rose by eleven thousand, the number of children too is increasing. This is the exact opposite phase from cities like Gifu or Hirakata, where children thin out first. Senri New Town, laid out after the war, has been renewed through the turnover of generations, and nearness to the city center has kept calling in new young households — closer to a form in which generations circulate through replacement than to a danchi type that matures and shrinks all at once. That the share of the elderly stays in the low twenty-percent range and the household-with-children share, at 20.8%, is thick, can be read as the expression of this circulation.

On top of that, the Childcare Waitlist has moved level with the previous year at 4 (2025). The small number here differs in meaning from the "zero" of Gifu or Hirakata. The waitlist did not vanish because children decreased; rather, as the result of continuing to keep supply roughly abreast of demand while children keep increasing, it holds at a very small number. With the same childcare figure, the way to read it changes entirely depending on whether children are increasing or thinning behind it. Children increase, child-rearing households are thick, and the waitlist stays small and stable — Suita’s living-infrastructure numbers can be read as the very outcome of a history of remaking the hills to keep gathering young households. Take out only the figure of the waitlist, and one misreads the phase behind it.

Suita holds several functions of its own. One is the first New Town in Japan, laid out on the Senri hills — as the prototype of the postwar suburban residential area, still a town to live in while renewing its generations. Another is the Expo Commemoration Park, developed on the Expo site, where the venue of the 1970 exposition remains as a vast green space, holding adjoining it large-scale functions of drawing crowds and commerce.

Further, in Suita the Asahi Breweries Suita factory, conveying the modern origin, operates even now, and the site of the Suita Marshalling Yard, having finished its role, has been remade as the Kita-Osaka Health and Medical City. From the industrial town of beer and the marshalling yard, to the New Town of the hills, and then to the venue of the Expo — the condition that "there is an unused plateau near the city center" has reloaded a different function in each age. The industrial base, the New Town, and the venue of the exposition are all, when one traces back, set upon the same geography of the water of the Kanzaki River and the Senri hills. The beer factory still operates, the site of the marshalling yard has been remade into a health-and-medical city, and on the hilltop the memory of the Expo remains. One plateau has taken up, in turn, large-scale projects age by age.