View of Tama River and Seiseki SakuragaokaTama-Center Station and its surroundings, May 2013
Tama (多摩市, Tama-shi) is a city located in the western portion of Tokyo Prefecture, Japan. As of 11 March 2021[update], the city had an estimated population of 148,285 in 73,167 households, and a population density of 7,100 inhabitants per square kilometre (18,000/sq mi).[1] The total area of the city was 21.01 square kilometres (8.11 sq mi).
Geography
Tama is located in the foothills of the Okutama Mountains of southwestern Tokyo, known as Tama Hills, which spans Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture. The entire region is historically referred to as Tama; therefore there are many place names scattered throughout the area with references to the name "Tama" which are not within the city limits. The Tama River marks the city's northern boundary, and Kanagawa Prefecture is to the south. Its southern half forms part of the Tama New Town project, Japan's largest residential development, constructed in the 1970s.
Tama has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa) characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light to no snowfall. The average annual temperature in Tama is 14.0 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1647 mm with September as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around 25.3 °C, and lowest in January, at around 2.8 °C.[2]
Demographics
Per Japanese census data,[3] the population of Tama increased very rapidly in the late 20th century but has plateaued in the early 21st.
Tama Village was founded on April 1, 1889 from the merger of 11 pre-Meiji period hamlets with the establishment of the modern municipalities system.
Minamitama District was transferred to the administrative control of Tokyo Metropolis on April 1, 1893.
Tama was elevated to town status on April 1, 1964. Construction of Tama New Town began in 1966, and the first occupants started moving in 1971.
On November 1, 1971, Tama Town was reclassified as Tama City, dissolving Minamitama District. Tama was the last town in the former Minamitama District.
Government
Tama has a mayor-council form of government with a directly elected mayor and a unicameral city council of 26 members. Tama, together with the city of Inagi, contributes two members to the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly. In terms of national politics, the city is divided between Tokyo 21st district and Tokyo 23rd district of the lower house of the Diet of Japan.
Election
In 2018, an activist named Michihito Matsuda ran for mayor in the Tama city area of Tokyo as a human proxy for an artificial intelligence program.[4] While election posters and campaign material used the term robot, and displayed stock images of a feminine android, the "AI mayor" was in fact a machine learning algorithm trained using Tama city datasets.[5] The project was backed by high-profile executives Tetsuzo Matsumoto of Softbank and Norio Murakami of Google.[6] Michihito Matsuda came third in the election, being defeated by Hiroyuki Abe.[7] Organisers claimed that the 'AI mayor' was programmed to analyze citizen petitions put forward to the city council in a more 'fair and balanced' way than human politicians.[8]
In 2022, Michihito Matsuda made the campaign pledge to install THXU token into Tama city's further development as one of Government by algorithm.[9]
Economy
Several companies have their headquarters in the city:
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