Nagoya's 16 wards ranked by natural hazard exposure — 388 traded districts checked against official data

Nagoya has hills to the east and the low-lying Nobi plain to the west. When you ask which ward is least exposed, the hazards that actually bite here are flooding and liquefaction; landslides barely register.

This article checks the districts where homes and land actually changed hands, one by one, against official data — 388 districts across 16 wards from the most recent quarter.

What this article shows

• For each of the 16 wards, what share of traded districts falls inside a flood, landslide, or liquefaction-prone area
• Meito is lowest at 4%, followed by Chikusa (9%) and Midori (12%)
• In 5 western wards — Kita, Nishi, Nakamura, Nakagawa, Minato — every traded district hits at least one
• In Nagoya, low exposure and a held population largely point the same way — the opposite of what Kobe showed
• Higashi is the only ward projected to grow by 2050

Method — checking the districts where people actually buy

1. Collect every district that recorded a transaction in the most recent quarter, ward by ward, from MLIT's Real Estate Information Library (388 districts across 16 wards).
2. Geocode each district name to get a representative point.
3. Confirm the formatted address still contains the same ward and district. Districts that resolve somewhere else are dropped rather than counted.
4. Check that point against flood inundation zones, landslide alert zones, and the liquefaction tendency map. Only ratings on the "prone" side are counted, not merely being inside the surveyed area.

A ward is never judged from a single point. What you see is the share of the places people are actually buying.

What this check cannot tell you

• The result is for each district's representative point. Within one district, one side of a street can differ from the other.
• Districts with no transactions in the quarter are not included, so the denominator is not every district in the ward.
• Hazard zones are assumptions published by government bodies. They are revised, and they do not describe a specific building's construction or ground work.
• The median unit price mixes property types. It is not an official land price and should not be read as one.

Ranked by hazard exposure

"Any" counts districts hitting at least one of the three (a district hitting two still counts once).

The eastern hill wards — Meito, Chikusa, Midori, Showa — sit at 4–17%, while in the 5 western wards every matched district hit something. Across all 16 wards, landslide alert zones show up only in Moriyama's 1 district(s); in practice Nagoya is a flood and liquefaction story.

A 100% share does not mean a ward is unliveable. These wards lie on the low Nobi plain, where published inundation and liquefaction extents are drawn broadly. Being inside a zone is an assumption about the area — structure, floor level, and ground improvement all change what it means for a given building. Nakamura, which contains the area around Nagoya Station, recorded 54 transactions in the quarter.

In Nagoya, low hazard and a held population point the same way

Running the same method over Kobe produced the inverse: the least-exposed wards faced the steepest 2050 decline. Nagoya does not behave that way.

The low-exposure wards Midori (-1.3%), Naka (-0.7%), and Chikusa (-5.0%) decline least, while the fully exposed Minato (-25.2%), Kita (-14.7%), and Nakagawa (-13.7%) fall most. Minami, at 87% exposure, is projected at -20.2% with the city's lowest net migration at -0.85%.

So in Nagoya, choosing a low-exposure ward does not conflict much with choosing one whose population holds. Naka declines least (-0.7%) but rests on only 13 matched districts, the fewest of the 16, so its percentages move easily. Midori carries more districts behind it: 3 of 26 exposed, -1.3% to 2050.

Higashi is the only ward projected to grow (+3.2%) and leads the city on net in-migration at 1.22%. Its exposure is mid-range at 29%, with 4 districts inside a flood zone.

Ward by ward

• Meito — 4% (1 of 24), the lowest of the 16. -7.7% to 2050, net migration -0.39%.
• Midori — 12% exposure and -1.3% to 2050, behind only growing Higashi and Naka, and backed by one of the larger district counts (26).
• Chikusa, Showa — 9–17%, with most hits coming from liquefaction ratings.
• Higashi — the only ward growing to 2050 (+3.2%), at 29% exposure.
• Atsuta, Mizuho, Moriyama — the middle band at 50–71%. Moriyama is the only ward with any landslide alert zone hits.
• Kita, Nishi, Nakamura, Nakagawa, Minato — every matched district exposed, with -25.2% to -7.2% projected to 2050. Minato declines most of the 16.
• Minami — 87% exposure, -20.2% to 2050, the lowest net migration at -0.85% and the highest share aged 65+ at 29.8%.

What to verify before buying

A ward-level share narrows a shortlist; it does not answer for an address. In western Nagoya, where exposure runs high, the assumed depth and the building's own conditions matter more than whether the address is inside a zone at all.

• The assumed inundation depth at the address, and the river and rainfall it assumes
• Floor count and which floor you would live on, where the electrical equipment sits, and whether ground improvement or piling was done
• Whether the liquefaction rating is on the prone side, and whether damage was recorded nearby in the past
• Nearby transaction prices, and how the district's population moved over 10 years

SafeLand checks an address against the public data on the spot. No account required.

Sources and definitions

• Traded districts, transaction counts, median unit price: MLIT Real Estate Information Library
• Flood, landslide, and liquefaction layers: same library
• Population, ageing rate, net migration, 2050 projection: e-Stat (Statistics Bureau of Japan)
• District representative points: Google Geocoding, each verified to land in the same ward and district