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The story
It has emerged that Funabashi City in Chiba Prefecture’s estimated population surpassed that of government-ordinance city Shizuoka as of September 1. The reversal held as of October 1 too, with Funabashi at 654,131 versus Shizuoka’s 653,667 — marking the first time since Hamamatsu and Niigata became ordinance cities in 2007 that a non-ordinance city has overtaken an ordinance city in population. Funabashi once pursued ordinance-city status through a merger with Ichikawa and others, but now prioritizes making full use of its powers as a core city rather than merging. On 5ch, opinions split over whether population alone measures a city’s real strength, with some pointing to Shizuoka’s edge in GDP and commercial scale, and others lamenting Funabashi’s lagging road infrastructure.
Estimated population figures released by both cities show that Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, overtook government-ordinance city Shizuoka as of September 1. As of October 1, Funabashi still led, 654,131 to Shizuoka’s 653,667. This is the first time a non-ordinance city has overtaken an ordinance city in population since April 1, 2007 (Heisei 19), when Hamamatsu and Niigata — both of which already had larger populations than Shizuoka — became government-ordinance cities.
■ Funabashi once considered a four-city merger with Ichikawa and others
Estimated population is calculated from the national census as a base, adjusted monthly for births, deaths, and in/out migration. As of August 1, Funabashi stood at 653,199 and Shizuoka at 654,459, but by September 1 the figures flipped to Funabashi at 654,175 and Shizuoka at 653,962.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Kochi City and Nankoku City, how impressively urban of them (sarcasm — Kochi's cities are famously rural)
Is that absurd hypothetical even worth entertaining?
Roads are jammed. People are jammed. I only live here because it's close to my wife's parents' place — if that reason ever disappears, I'm out.
Seriously, fix the roads before you grow the population. Route Funatori and Route 16 are way too narrow and cramped, and traffic is dead-locked in every direction.
Re: #25
Re: #17
Chiba Prefecture
Proposal: consolidate 37 cities, 16 towns, and 1 village into 5 new cities — total population 6.2553 million
New Tokatsu City: 2.1068 million
New Chiba City: 1.7832 million
New Hokuso City: 1.3416 million
New Toso-Kujukuri City (Eastern Chiba/Kujukuri): 540,600
New Boso City: 483,000
Narashino's Tsudanuma Station actually has both rapid and local trains starting there, so it's more commute-friendly than Funabashi Station. Though the northwest side of Tsudanuma Station is technically in Funabashi, so plenty of Funabashi residents use it too.
As already pointed out, most of Tsudanuma Station is actually in Narashino. Tsudanuma is a starting station for the Sobu Line (local and rapid) and the Tozai Line, making it the next-best commuting hub into Tokyo after Motoyawata and Nishi-Funabashi.
• Yokohama's population projected to fall 20% to 3.01 million by 2070, city estimates
(Nikkei)
Well, Kawasaki doesn't have a subway, though.
It's less that Kawasaki is 'thriving' and more that it's the smallest-area ordinance city, basically glued onto Tokyo — so there's simply no room for a declining district.
A city — well, a single ward within it — that has five mountains over 3,000 meters can't possibly be underwhelming!!
https://tadaup.jp/BUFNZcTD.gif
Take a train toward Chiba Station and the moment you pass it, it turns rural. Plenty of single-track sections too, so trains grind to a halt the instant there's even middling heavy rain.
The prefecture with the most ordinance cities is Kanagawa — three of them: Yokohama, Kawasaki, and Sagamihara (the post actually mistypes this with the kanji for "sumo").
Sagamihara's only at 720,000, so it's borderline as ordinance cities go. It's already losing population — the question is whether the Linear Chuo Shinkansen's Hashimoto-station effect can narrow the decline.
I used to live right by Hashimoto Station, and you could basically get by without a car. Take the Yokohama Line to Machida and there's a Yodobashi Camera, department stores, all sorts of things — pretty convenient. But take a bus from Hashimoto Station's south exit out to the old Tsukui area, and true to the name 'Midori (Green) Ward,' it's nothing but trees and nobody living there — dead rural.
With Sagamihara, forget population for a second — it has zero hub functions to begin with, so the real question is what even qualifies it as an ordinance city.
Everywhere else is basically untamed land — or rather, even where it gets developed, infrastructure can't keep pace with natural disasters, so it's fated to be abandoned (turning into a so-called 'marginal new town').
And past Kimitsu it's single-track too.
Part of it is just that Chiba is big. By prefectural land-area ranking: Chiba is 28th, Saitama 39th, Kanagawa 43rd, Tokyo 45th. Tokyo and Kanagawa are tiny yet wildly overpopulated.
Greater Tokyo (Capital Region): 42.38 million → 36.28 million (14.4% decline)
Kinki region: 20.89 million → 15.03 million (28.1% decline)
Chubu region: 17.22 million → 13.59 million (21.1% decline)
Kyushu region: 13.35 million → 9.11 million (31.8% decline)
Tohoku region: 12.07 million → 7.27 million (39.8% decline)
Hokkaido: 5.63 million → 3.19 million (43.3% decline)
Shikoku region: 4.09 million → 2.50 million (38.9% decline)
Hokuriku region: 3.11 million → 2.01 million (35.4% decline)
Okinawa Prefecture: 1.36 million → 1.37 million (-0.7%, i.e. a slight increase)
Nationwide: 127.77 million → 95.15 million (25.5% decline)
http://www.garbagenews.net/archives/2079169.html
By 2050 we'll be past the lifespans of everyone from the bubble generation through the 'ice age' generation (the lost generation who hit the job market during Japan's post-bubble hiring freeze) — once Japan gets through that, the average age should actually drop and level off.
Speaking of 2050, that'll probably be peak Osaka-concentration for the Kinki region — a time when Osaka City alone balloons past 3 million people.
That's just you looking away. Sour grapes aren't a good look.
Even within Shizuoka Prefecture, not many people go to Shizuoka City for sightseeing. Nihondaira, Kuno-zan, Miho no Matsubara… that's about it?
The JR Keiyo Line, Tokyo Metro Tozai Line/Toyo Rapid Line, JR Sobu Line (rapid and local), Keisei Line, and so on make commuting into central Tokyo convenient along each line (crowding aside) — but moving sideways between lines (say, from a Keisei Line station over to Maihama) is probably pretty annoying.
The Marine Stadium and Messe are actually in Chiba City, so if you're comparing to Saitama City, Chiba City's the fair match.
(Shizuoka City)
GDP: approx. ¥3.6 trillion
Annual retail sales: approx. ¥772.7 billion
Annual wholesale sales: approx. ¥2.1249 trillion
(Funabashi City)
GDP: approx. ¥1.4 trillion
Annual retail sales: ¥560.5 billion
Annual wholesale sales: ¥594.5 billion
Funabashi, whose image took a hit thanks to Noda (former PM Yoshihiko Noda, linked to the city). Shizuoka, whose image took a hit thanks to Kawakatsu (former governor Heita Kawakatsu, known for gaffes). Call it a wash.
You can't just directly compare a Tokyo satellite city to a regional city.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Government-ordinance cities are designated using a population of roughly 500,000 or more as a guideline, but there’s no mechanism to strip that status if the population later falls — so cities like Shizuoka keep their ordinance-city status even when growth stalls. Core cities, by contrast, are designated at a population of 200,000 or more and can hold powers close to those of ordinance cities, such as running their own public health centers. Funabashi once had plans to reach ordinance-city status through a merger with Ichikawa and others, but that never materialized, and the city now prioritizes using its core-city powers over merging. The thread split over whether a bigger population really makes a city ‘superior’ — data was presented showing Shizuoka far outpacing Funabashi in GDP and commercial sales, highlighting the limits of judging a city’s strength by population alone. Commenters also questioned whether other ordinance cities like Sagamihara have any real hub function, making the looseness of the ordinance-city designation criteria itself a point of debate.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Chiba’s Funabashi Overtakes Ordinance-Designated City Shizuoka in Population — No Bid for Promotion, City Says It’ll ‘Max Out Core-City Powers’ Instead.”
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