The areas around major stations in basically any other city are far more developed. Look at Osaka-Umeda for example. I don't know if that's due to the historical buildings or the relative lack of good railway within the city itself (Kyoto is mostly a hub to get between other lines)
This is simply not true. Kyoto station is probably the most densely packed shopping / entertainment area in the city.
Source: I live in Kyoto.
The original comment was "I think that though we are a railway company, we consider ourselves a city-shaping company." Kyoto is absolutely not built around its station. Walk a few blocks away and there's nothing but regular apartments! The true centre is Shijo Kawaramachi.
The station itself is a pretty active hub. We arrived there 9:30 AM to visit teamLabs Kyoto (which is just walking distance away from the station) and it was already pretty packed in the station.
But I think your observation/comment maybe misses the mark: the rail operators may still end up owning some of the commercial real estate nearby whether it's office buildings, hotels, etc. It doesn't all have to be shopping or dining, just that the rail operating owning the real estate near the transit hubs provides an incentive to provide service to that hub to create more value from those holdings.
https://www.kyotostation.com/kyoto-station-building-faciliti...