Reconstructing Kobe: The Geography of Crisis and Opportunity 0774817569, 9780774817561

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Reconstructing Kobe

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David W. Edgington

Reconstructing Kobe The Geography of Crisis and Opportunity

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© UBC Press 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher, or, in Canada, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), www.accesscopyright.ca. 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10   5 4 3 2 1 Printed in Canada on FSC-certified ancient-forest-free paper (100% post-consumer recycled) that is processed chlorine- and acid-free. Printed in Canada on acid-free paper Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Edgington, David W. (David William) Reconstructing Kobe : the geography of crisis and opportunity / David W. Edgington. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7748-1756-1 1. City planning – Japan – Kobe-shi. 2. Kobe Earthquake, Japan, 1995. 3. Kobe-shi ( Japan) – Social conditions. 4. Kobe-shi ( Japan) – Economic conditions. I. Title. DS897.K61257 2010     307.1’21609521874     C2010-900148-6

UBC Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for our publishing program of the Government of Canada (through the Canada Book Fund), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and with the help of the K.D. Srivastava Fund. Financial support for the publication of this book has been provided by the Centre for Japanese Research, UBC and the Japan Foundation. Cover illustrations: Top left: Collapse of the Hanshin Expressway. Top middle: Destruction in the vicinity of JR Ro¯kko-michi Station. Top right: Broken apartment building. All courtesy of the City of Kobe. Bottom: Twilight view of Kobe, taken near Shin-Kobe Station from Rokko¯ Mountains, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan. Source: Courtesy of Laitr Keows. http://creativecommons.org. UBC Press The University of British Columbia 2029 West Mall Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2 www.ubcpress.ca

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Contents

List of Illustrations / vii Preface / xii Acknowledgments / xviii Abbreviations / xix Glossary of Japanese Terms / xx

1 Introduction / 1



2 Earthquakes and Urban Reconstruction / 17 2.1 The Problem of Post-Disaster Reconstruction / 17 2.2 Japanese Planning and Administrative Practice / 26



3 Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake / 35 3.1 Kobe up to the Time of the Earthquake / 37 3.2 The Geography of Crisis / 49



4 The Planning and Reconstruction Response / 77 4.1 Actions Taken by the National Government / 77 4.2 Actions Taken by Local Government / 91



5 Protest, Participation, and the Phoenix Plan / 105 5.1 The Citizens’ Protest / 107 5.2 The City’s Response and the Commencement of “Machizukuri” Planning / 110 5.3 The Phoenix Reconstruction Plan / 114 5.4 Review by the National Government / 120

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vi Contents



6 Neighbourhood Case Studies / 127 6.1 Shin-Nagata in Western Kobe / 129 6.1.1 History of Shin-Nagata / 129 6.1.2 The North Shin-Nagata Land Readjustment Scheme / 135 6.1.3 The South Shin-Nagata Urban Redevelopment Project / 148 6.2 Moriminami in Eastern Kobe / 160



7 Symbolic Projects and the Local Economy / 179 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5



Funding for the Symbolic Projects / 180 Kobe’s Economy and the Plight of Small Firms / 186 The Chemical Shoes Industry / 191 Attracting New Industries and Firms / 194 The Kobe Airport and the City’s Debt / 199

8 Conclusion / 209 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5

Was the Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan Successful? / 211 What Were the Major Influences on Kobe’s Reconstruction? / 219 The Geographies of Crisis and Opportunity / 221 Lessons for Japanese Cities / 226 Are There Lessons for Other Cities? / 229

Appendices A Chronology of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Period in Kobe (1995-2005) / 233 B National Government Relief and Recovery Measures, 1995 / 244 C Major Reconstruction Actions Taken by Local Government in 1995 / 248 Notes / 251 References / 269 Index / 287

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Illustrations



Figures

0.1 Map indicating the Hanshin region within Japan and the wards/districts of Kobe city / xii 0.2 Kobe’s Nankin-machi Chinatown district, 2005 / xiv 0.3 Chinese ideogram for crisis / xvi 1.1 The Kobe environs, showing the epicentre of the Hanshin earthquake / 2 1.2 Devastation in Kobe and its environs / 2 1.3 Fires in Kobe / 3 1.4 Extent of the conflagrations in Kobe’s Nagata and Suma wards / 4 1.5 The devastation to wooden houses, apartments, expressways, and shopping arcades / 6 1.6 Patterns of deaths and damage in the Hanshin region / 9 1.7 Breakdown of deaths by gender and age / 9 1.8 The loss of housing in Kobe by ward / 10 1.9 The loss of housing in Kobe by period of building / 10 2.1 Post-disaster reconstruction according to Kates and Pijawka (1977) / 18 2.2 A framework for understanding the dynamics of post-disaster reconstruction planning / 22 3.1 Kobe and the Rokko¯ Mountains / 36 3.2 Kobe in the 1870s / 36 3.3 The City of Kobe, showing the industrial/harbour areas, residential/ commercial areas, and the Rokko¯ mountain area / 38 3.4 Areas designated for improvement in the City of Kobe prior to the earthquake / 41 3.5 Plans of Port Island, Rokko¯ Island, and Harborland / 43 3.6 Narrow streets and row houses in the Higashi Shiriike-chō, 5-chōme district of Kobe’s Nagata ward / 45

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viii Illustrations

3.7 A damaged narrow street in Kobe / 46 3.8 Emergency refuge in a school / 53 ¯go prefecture / 54 3.9 Number of evacuees, January to August 1995, Hyo 3.10 Location of shelters and number of refugees, January 1995 / 55 3.11 Temporary housing project in Sumiyoshi Park / 58 3.12 Plan of temporary housing units / 59 3.13 Temporary housing, Chu¯o¯ ward / 59 3.14 The transition from temporary housing to permanent public housing / 65 3.15 New housing starts by type, 1993-2005 / 67 3.16 New housing starts by City of Kobe wards, 1993-2005 / 68 3.17 Location of public housing projects in Kobe, 1998 / 69 3.18 Newly constructed public housing in large-scale high-rise suburban projects, Tarumi ward, 2005 / 69 4.1 Local governments in the Hanshin region designated under the Disaster Relief Law, 1948 / 82 4.2 Analysis of earthquake reconstruction budgets, 1994-95 / 84 4.3 Division of responsibilities for post-Hanshin earthquake reconstruction between central and local governments / 90 4.4 Location of six districts chosen to be controlled under Clause 84 of the Buildings Standards Law, 1970 / 93 4.5 City of Kobe official “machizukuri newsletter” / 94 4.6 Location of major city-sponsored redevelopment projects / 96 4.7 Schema showing the three types of designated reconstruction zones in Kobe / 99 4.8 Black zones, grey zones, and white zones / 100 4.9 Patterns of damage and recovery, 1995-2000 / 101 5.1 Protest at the City of Kobe Office, March 1995 / 109 5.2 Location of machizukuri groups in Kobe, 2000 / 111 5.3 “Kinmokusei” local machizukuri newsletter, 1997 / 113 5.4 Overall goals of the Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture’s ten-year reconstruction plans / 115 5.5 Earthquake memorial (damaged pier) at Meriken Park, Kobe, 2005 / 122 5.6 Earthquake memorial museum, HAT project, 2005 / 122 6.1a Historic map of the Shin-Nagata area, Meiji period: 1899 / 130 6.1b Historic map of the Shin-Nagata area, late Taisho¯ period: 1924 / 131 6.1c Historic map of the Shin-Nagata area, postwar (Sho¯wa) period: 1967 / 132 6.2 Houses opening onto a narrow street in Nagata ward, 2005 / 134 6.3 North Shin-Nagata / 136-37 6.4 Land readjustment principles / 141 6.5 “Kyo¯yu ¯ken” or “community housing” principles / 142

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Illustrations ix

6.6 Community housing principles applied in Kita Noda-cho¯, Nagata ward / 143 6.7 Vacant block in North Shin-Nagata, 2000 / 146 6.8 North Shin-Nagata after land readjustment, 2005 / 147 6.9 South Shin-Nagata, showing property boundaries and mixture of land uses before the earthquake / 149 6.10 Plaza just south of JR Shin-Nagata Station, 2005 / 150 6.11 The city’s redevelopment scheme for South Shin-Nagata / 152 6.12 Procedures required to be taken regarding the exchange of property rights / 153 6.13 Shin-Nagata high-rise condominiums, 2005 / 154 6.14 Asuta town, Shin-Nagata, 2005 / 156 6.15 Seniors’ dwelling in Shin-Nagata redevelopment scheme, 2005 / 158 6.16 Moriminami district, Higashi-Nada ward, (a) before and (b) after the earthquake / 160 6.17 JR Ko¯nanyamate station and the northern plaza, 2005 / 162 6.18 The city’s original land readjustment plan for Moriminami, March 17, 1995 / 163 6.19 Moriminami compromise plans, 1997-99 / 170 6.20 A “pocket park” in Moriminami, 2005 / 172 6.21 Street upgradings in Moriminami, 2005 / 174 7.1 “Luminarie” illuminations project, Kobe, December, 2004 / 183 7.2 Land use plan of HAT Kobe / 184 7.3 Housing units in HAT Kobe, 2005 / 185 7.4 The temporary market “Paraar,” Kunizuka district / 188 7.5 Trends in the recovery of chemical shoes, Awaji roof tiles, sake factories, and pearl industry exports / 190 7.6 The “Shoes Nagata” design showroom, 2005 / 195 7.7 Kobe Medical Industry Development Project on Port Island, Second Stage, 2005 / 197 7.8 Debt situation of Japanese cities / 200 7.9 Kobe’s airport, opened in 2006 / 202 7.10 Regional air carrier Sky Mark Airlines at Kobe airport, 2007 / 204 7.11 Aspects of recovery in Hyo ¯ go prefecture, 1994-2005 / 205 8.1 Location of residence of Kobe’s citizens before the earthquake / 210 8.2 Success rate of Kobe’s Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan / 212 8.3 Port of Kobe, exports and imports, 1990-2006 / 215 8.4 Restoration of individual lives, 2005 survey results / 216 8.5 Narrow street in Shin-Nagata, 2005 / 220 8.6 Dimensions of reconstruction planning in Kobe / 222

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x Illustrations



Tables

1.1 Overall damage sustained in the Hanshin earthquake / 5 1.2 Distribution of earthquake victims and damage to structures by ward / 8 1.3 Cost estimate in billion yen for repair of the damage by the Hanshin earthquake / 11 2.1 Differences between toshikeikaku and machizukuri approaches / 31 3.1 A profile of Kobe city’s wards prior to the Hanshin earthquake / 47 3.2 Distribution of temporary housing in Kobe following the Hanshin earthquake / 61 3.3 Survey of evacuees living in temporary housing, Hyo ¯ go prefecture, 1996 / 63 3.4 The three-year plan for restoring housing in Hyo¯go prefecture / 66 3.5 Geographic distribution of public housing provision and replacement rate / 71 3.6 Population change in Kobe’s wards, 1990-2005 / 74 4.1 Legislation introduced in 1995 related to Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake / 80-81 4.2 Costs related to the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in the first and second supplementary budgets for 1994 and 1995 / 83 4.3 Examples of national government-approved services extended to the Hanshin earthquake victims / 85 4.4 The eight major districts targeted for special treatment / 97 5.1 Machizukuri groups in Kobe, 1998 / 111 5.2 Financial measures to implement the Hyo¯go Reconstruction Plan / 116 5.3 List of seventeen symbolic projects, City of Kobe Reconstruction Plan / 118 6.1 Summary of the North Shin-Nagata land readjustment project / 135 6.2 Chronology of reconstruction of North Shin-Nagata / 144 6.3 Summary of the South Shin-Nagata urban redevelopment project / 148 6.4 Chronology of the South Shin-Nagata urban redevelopment project / 159 6.5 Summary of the Moriminami land readjustment project / 164 6.6 Chronology of reconstruction at Moriminami / 166-67 7.1 Damage to Kobe’s economy in 1995 / 187 7.2 Unemployment rate in Kobe and other major Japanese cities / 206 8.1 Socio-economic indicators of Kobe’s wards, 1994-2006 / 224 8.2 Important factors for discussion with disaster-vulnerable communities / 228

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Preface

Strange and mysterious things, though, aren’t they – earthquakes? We take it for granted that the earth beneath our feet is solid and stationary. We even talk about people being “down to earth” or having their feet firmly planted on the ground. But suddenly one day we see that isn’t true. The earth, the boulders, that are supposed to be solid, all of a sudden turn as mushy as liquid.

— Haruki Murakami, After the Quake

On the one hand, a devastated landscape presents planners with that rare and coveted commodity: a blank map, ripe for development. On the other hand, it is not so blank after all. It comes with pre-existing property boundaries, competing interests, and the memories of survivors.

— Olshansky, “Planning for Disasters”

I have long wanted to tell the story of Kobe’s reconstruction following the Great Hanshin Earthquake, an episode that led to the loss of more than 6,000 lives and that destroyed more than 200,000 homes. (The city of Kobe and the Hanshin region of Japan are shown in Figure 0.1.) My initial essays on the city’s reconstruction were published soon after the earthquake as Edgington (1998) and Edgington, Hutton, and Leaf (1999). When the disaster struck early in the morning of January 17, 1995, I was living with my family in Kyoto, a city just outside the Hanshin disaster zone at the northeastern extremity of the damaged area. The apartment we resided in “shook and rattled.” Soon after, it was announced on the radio that Kyoto had experienced a level 6 quake (later upgraded to magnitude 7) and that the epicentre was Awaji Island, close to Kobe. Telephone lines to the disaster-stricken area had been cut, and it was only later that news reports began to provide details

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xii Preface

Figure 0.1  Map indicating the Hanshin region of Japan and the wards/districts of Kobe city.  Source: Material contained in Fujimori (1980)

of the destruction. On that day the earth around Kobe without doubt turned “as mushy as liquid.” A full decade later I found myself again residing with my family in Kyoto, on a sabbatical from the University of British Columbia. January 2005 marked the tenth-year commemoration of the Hanshin earthquake, and during that month a major UN conference took place in Kobe to discuss this and other

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Preface xiii

disasters. As it happened, these commemoration events were overshadowed by a tsunami of appalling consequences in Southeast Asia, which had struck on Boxing Day 2004, just a few weeks earlier. Then in late August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast, with great loss of life and damage to property. In 2008 disasters were again very much in the news: a devastating cyclone, Nargis, struck Myanmar, and a powerful earthquake shook Shichuan in southwest China. Images of all these catastrophes reaffirmed my belief that the reconstruction of Japan’s Hanshin region needed to be examined thoroughly and systematically. For that endeavour, the tenth anniversary of the Hanshin earthquake provided an appropriate perspective. I wanted to find out what reconstruction had been able to achieve. Today in Kobe, modern office buildings and residential condominiums dot the commercial and suburban neighbourhoods that were destroyed by the temblor. By January 2005 it was impossible for first-time visitors to imagine the pile of rubble that much of the city had become on the morning of the quake. Ten years after the disaster, population levels in the Hanshin region had recovered to pre-quake levels and tourists from across Japan were flocking to Kobe to view its attractions, such as the Nankin-machi Chinatown district (see Figure 0.2). But underneath the glittering exterior and official pronouncements that all was well and back to normal, the city and the region faced a difficult future. Kobe could be proud of its physical reconstruction, but a host of problems continued. For instance, many survivors still required social welfare services at a time when the city was all but bankrupt. Numerous investigations of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (alternatively, the Kobe earthquake) have reported on building damage, seismic intensity, and the immediate recovery efforts. My own research examines aspects of long-term rebuilding – in particular, the redevelopment of stricken neighbourhoods and the restoration of the local economy. Disasters such as the Kobe earthquake typically receive considerable media attention at the time they occur, but what happens to the area and the people involved in the months and years that follow? How do they rebuild their communities and regain their livelihoods, if they ever do? Long-term changes and impacts often go unrecorded owing to the extended research required. This study is based on field investigations conducted in Kobe between 1995 and 2005 and on interviews I undertook with Kobe’s planners, economists, consultants, academics, and national government officials. It focuses on issues related to land use changes, urban governance, and economic recovery that the 1995 earthquake brought to the fore. I explore the twin themes of “crisis” and “opportunity” in order to bring to light the Kobe city planners’ objectives after the quake and the steps taken to prepare and then implement a ten-year reconstruction plan. I employ a framework derived from the literature on disasters in order to understand

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xiv Preface

Figure 0.2  Kobe’s Nankin-machi Chinatown district, 2005. Source: Photograph by D.W. Edgington

the influence of previous circumstances in Kobe, the geography of the earthquake’s impact, aspects of government actions, and community responses. Not all aspects of recovery in Kobe could be studied, so there is little in this research relating to health and medical issues or to the role of the thousands of volunteers who came to that city after the disaster to help both with immediate aid and with long-term recovery. Note also that this study is limited to the effects of reconstruction on neighbourhoods and the city as a whole, not individuals. The pain and suffering experienced by the disaster victims is not reflected in this book. No real attempt is made in these pages to record the misery that was heaped on the senior citizens of Kobe, many of whom were among the most vulnerable and who continue to be harmed by the catastrophe. Nonetheless, my study of Kobe’s recovery from the earthquake up to early 2005 focuses on the major events during that period, especially the ones that touch on the role of governments and their relationship with local residents. It reveals the essential difficulty of reconstruction planning following disasters, as suggested by the general literature on this subject. Such problems arise largely because the long-term recovery of cities has little to do with the provision of immediate post-disaster rescue and

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Preface xv

relief. In particular, speed is important when recovering victims; proper planning when rebuilding the city is even more crucial. For instance, putting up temporary housing for victims of a disaster may be relatively fast and easy, whereas rebuilding a vibrant community is not. As Olshansky (2002) notes in the quote recorded earlier, rebuilding after disasters presents planners with both great opportunities and difficult challenges. So it was in Kobe. In this study I argue that the earthquake and the ensuing fires that devastated parts of Kobe provided opportunities to rebuild districts that city planners had been unable to touch before, and to secure funds from the national government for novel infrastructure projects. The Kobe city and Hyo ¯ go prefecture governments issued long-term plans to rejuvenate the Hanshin region – plans that were referred to collectively as the “Phoenix Plan,” an ambitious series of projects designed to vault Kobe ahead of its competitors. These schemes provided an opportunity for high-profile urban development. Yet they were challenged – at least initially – by the citizenry, who were still traumatized by the earthquake and still grieving their losses and who felt vulnerable and disempowered in the ensuing period. Thus Kobe’s planners had to win back the community’s trust through an extensive local consultation process – known in Japan as machizukuri. My research indicates that the city’s capacity to rebuild its stricken neighbourhoods was, from the beginning, strongly in doubt, in part because of certain aspects of Japan’s particular approach to urban redevelopment. The analysis shows also that reconstruction outcomes and rates of recovery were highly differentiated within Kobe. Hence there is a need to understand the various “geographies” of this disaster and its aftermath. In the years following the quake, key “symbolic infrastructure” projects (such as memorial museums and a new airport) formed a key part of the city’s rebuilding, and most of these projects were fully completed and operational by the end of the ten-year reconstruction period. Yet it is unclear just how well connected they were to the long-term improvement of the local economy, either in design or execution. Overall, this study identifies many of the problems that Kobe faced during its reconstruction while pointing to cultural features specific to the Japanese model. It is often said that all disasters by definition are local. Even so, I believe that other Japanese cities – and, more generally, disaster-prone areas in other countries around the world – can learn many lessons from the Kobe earthquake and the reconstruction planning that ensued. Those lessons are covered in this book’s final chapter. Above all else, a study of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake suggests many parallels between Kobe on the one hand and Vancouver and the BC Lower Mainland on the other. For instance, Vancouver and Kobe are both port cities of around 1.5 million people, and both lie on (or close to) a major seismic fault. Both have large

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xvi Preface

areas subject to liquefaction (land subsidence after earthquakes), and both have a mix of old and new construction. For that reason I hope Kobe’s experience will help inform disaster preparation in my own community. Above all, the lessons from Kobe suggest that recovery from a major disaster is a very long-term process and that reconstruction of the city after an earthquake needs to be considered and planned for even before an earthquake strikes. This aspect should be carefully thought about. It is not enough to plan an immediate response to a catastrophe. Four technical notes. First, the Japanese currency (the yen) gyrated strongly during 1995, appreciating initially from ¥99.77 to the US$ in January 1995 to ¥83.69 in March, and then falling back to ¥105.75 by the end of the year. Accordingly, comparative US$ values of costs of damage and reconstruction at the time of the earthquake can only be approximate. Second, Japanese names appear in the Japanese order – family name first – except when works published in Western languages are being cited, at which time they appear in the English order. Third, Japanese words appear with macrons in this book in keeping with customary Romanization practice except in such cases as Japanese names attached to English publications, or words that commonly appear in English writing without macrons – Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe, and so on. Fourth, the data in this study were the most current at the time of writing – late 2006.

Out of crisis comes opportunity.



— Ancient proverb

Figure 0.3  The top part of the Chinese ideogram shown here for “Crisis” is the symbol for “Danger,” and the bottom symbol represents “Opportunity.”  Source: Hadamitzky and Spahn (1981)

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Preface xvii

The Chinese ideogram for “crisis” is composed of two separate characters: one means danger and the other means opportunity. The proper translation is that a crisis is a dangerous opportunity. When confronted with a crisis you need to recognize both the danger and the opportunity. Often the danger is more readily seen and the opportunity can be well hidden. Be sure to look for the opportunity as well as the danger. — Interview with local planners in Kobe city,    summer 1995

I firmly believe that if we can get over the current difficulties through close cooperation between our fellow citizens, businesses, and the city government, and successfully promote the “Urban Resort Development Project,” Kobe will be born again like a Phoenix, and as a city that people can be proud of, and a city truly loved by all people around the world. — ­Sasayama Kazutoshi, mayor of Kobe, Introduction    to the Kobe Reconstruction Plan, June 30, 1995

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Acknowledgments

During this research I received the assistance of a large number of people based in Kobe and other Japanese cities. These included many academic colleagues in Japan, as well as government officials and local planners who willingly helped me conduct site visits and who shared their information and insights. In particular I have to thank Professor Sazanami Hidehiko (formerly of Ritsumeikan University), Hayashi Kiyotaka, Watanabe Shunichi, Yano Keiji, and Tony Fernandez. I am also grateful to my colleagues Tom Hutton, Michael Leaf, and Stephanie Chang at the University of British Columbia for their thoughts as well as comments on previous drafts of this monograph and various presentations of this research in seminars and conferences. In addition, I acknowledge the valuable work of graduate student research assistants Enokido Kei, Kitazawa Tomoko, Matsumoto Kozue, and Yasui Etsuko. Funding for this study was made available through the Japan Foundation and the Hampton Grants Program of the University of British Columbia, as well as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) grant (#410-2005-0050). A grant from the Centre for Japanese Research, UBC, helped fund the index for this book. Eric Leinberger prepared the many figures used. I am very grateful to the Faculty of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, for accommodating me during my sabbatical in 2004-5. Three anonymous referees provided very useful comments on the initial manuscript, which helped in the revisions. All remaining errors and misinterpretations are my own. Finally, I would like to thank Melissa Pitts, Megan Brand, and the team at UBC Press for all their help in bringing this work to publication.

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Abbreviations

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FEMA

Federal Emergency Management Agency (USA)

HAT

Kobe “Happy Active Town” (Kobe Eastern Town Development)

HERI

Hyo ¯ go Economic Research Institute

HERO

Hanshin-Awaji Economic Revitalization Organization

IT

information technology

KIMEC

Kobe international multimedia and entertainment city

METI

Ministry of the Economy, Trade, and Industry

MITI

Ministry of International Trade and Industry

NGO

non-government organization

NIRO

New Industry Research Organization

NPOs

not-for-profit organizations

OCHA

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

RIKEN

Rikagaku Kenkyu¯sho (generally translated as Institute of Physical and Chemical Research)

SDF

Self-Defense Forces

SDPJ

Socialist Democratic Party of Japan

SME

small- and medium-sized enterprises

WHO

World Health Organization

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Glossary of Japanese Terms

bunka ju¯taku

Japanese wooden tenement housing

chakuji

absent landlords

chahuya

absent tenants

chiho¯ jidai

age of the local

cho¯me

section of a neighbourhood

dai yonji Ko¯be-shi keikaku   zentei shu¯

Kobe’s Fourth Master Plan

doken kokka

state as builder

ekimae

area immediately around a local railway station

fukko¯

reconstruction

fukko¯ keikaku

reconstruction plan

fukko¯ kikin

reconstruction fund

fukkyu¯

recovery

fukoku kyo¯hei

wealthy nation, strong army

fureai

community

gaman

endure

genbu-ritsu

amount (or ratio) of an individual plot reduced in a land readjustment project to provide public infrastructure

Hanshin-Awaji Dai-shinsai

the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster

Heisei-Shichinen Hyo¯go-ken-   Nanbu jishin

the 1995 Southern Hyo¯go Prefecture Earthquake

hisai gaichi fukko¯ tokubetsu   shochi ho¯

Devastated Urban Areas Reconstruction Special Measures Law

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Glossary of Japanese Terms xxi

hisaisha saiken shien ho¯

Socio-Economic Rehabilitation Aid for Victims Law

hisai shigaichi fukko¯ tokubetsu Special Measures for Recovery of Disaster   shochi-ho¯ Areas Law hojokin

private relief funds

ju¯ten fukko¯ chiiki

Intensive Restoration Zones

ju¯ten fukko¯ kuiki

Priority Reconstruction Zones

hiroba

open plaza

iki iki

let’s live

kabushiki gaisha Ko¯be

“Kobe Inc.”

kaigan-sen

Kobe’s coast line subway

kajiba dorobo¯

thief at a fire

kanchi

land substitution (in a land readjustment project)

kemikaru shu¯zu

chemical shoes

kenchiku ga seigen sareru kuiki

areas where construction is restricted

kenchiku kijun ho¯

Building Standards Law, 1970

Ko¯be-shi shinsai fukko¯ kinkyu¯ Kobe Earthquake Disaster Reconstruction   seibi jo¯rei Emergency Ordinance

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kodokushi

solitary death, or death in isolation

kokoro no

(lit.) of the heart

Ko¯nanyamate eki

Ko¯nanyamate station

kukakuseiri

land readjustment

kyo¯yu¯ken/kyo¯cho¯ tatekae

community house

machizukuri

city building

machizukuri kyo¯gikai

local planning association

machizukuri kyo¯gikai to no   renkei ni yoru ju¯taku oyobi   ju¯kankyo¯ no seibi

housing environment improvement in cooperation with the “machizukuri” council

mimaikin

condolence money

mochuchin

older-style multifamily rental house with shared facilities

nagaya

traditional single-family row house (wooden)

risai sho¯mei

victim identity certificate of damage after a large-scale natural disaster

saikaihatsu

urban redevelopment project

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xxii Glossary of Japanese Terms

sake

Japanese rice wine

seirei shitei toshi

designated cities

shindo

Japanese scale for measuring earthquakes

shinkansen

rapid (“bullet”) train

shinsai fukko¯ ju¯taku seibi   kinkyu¯ san kanen keikaku   shinsai fukko¯ kinkyu¯ seibi jo¯rei

three-year emergency housing plan

shinsai fukko¯ kuiki

Earthquake Disaster Reconstruction Promotion Area

shinsai fukko¯ sokushin kuiki

Earthquake Disaster Promotion Region

sho¯tengai

traditional arcade shopping centre

shikata ga nai

it can’t be helped

shitamachi

older inner-city areas

so¯go¯ keikaku

comprehensive local government plan

tatami

straw mats

toshi yori

seniors

toshikeikaku

town planning

toshikeikaku ho¯

City Planning Law

tsubo to keimyaku

spots and linkages (in oriental medicine)

yakuza

criminal gangs

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Kobe city redevelopment ordinance

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Reconstructing Kobe

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1 Introduction

The objective of promoting the recovery and reconstruction of a disaster-stricken area is to aid victims to return to normal life, restore facilities with the intention of preventing disasters in the future and implementing fundamental development plans that focus on safety in the community. In view of the decline in social activities in a community following a disaster, recovery and reconstruction measures are conducted as swiftly and as smoothly as possible.

— Government of Japan, Disaster Management in Japan

On January 17, 1995, at 5:46 a.m., a powerful earthquake lasting for almost one minute and with the strength of 7.2 on the Richter scale1 shook the Hanshin region of western Japan. Centred close to Kobe, a bustling port city some 430 km (250 miles) southwest of Tokyo, this was the first major quake of any magnitude to strike a Japanese urban area during the post-Second World War period. Its epicentre was 14 km below the surface of Awaji Island, in Hyo¯go prefecture about 25 km from central Kobe (see Figure 1.1). The Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake (hereafter the Hanshin earthquake)2 caused immense damage to one of Japan’s busiest trade ports, bringing down “earthquake-proof” elevated expressways and high-rise buildings, collapsing subway tunnels, buckling train tracks and bridges, destroying houses and commercial structures, and causing fires in many places (see Figure 1.2). Within minutes, parts of the city were overwhelmed with flames and debris (Figures 1.3 and 1.4). Hospitals damaged by the earthquake and understaffed for such a disaster were overwhelmed. Police and firefighters were themselves affected by the quake, with many unable to report to their stations. Those who did were inundated with desperate calls for help. Firestorms rushed through the narrow streets of Kobe’s older neighbourhoods, engulfing wooden houses as fires were fed by propane gas, household furnishings, and

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Figure 1.1  The Kobe environs, showing the epicentre of the Hanshin earthquake and areas in Hyo¯go prefecture and Awaji Island that registered 7 on the Japan Meteorological Agency seismic intensity scale.  Source: Taniguchi (1995a)

Figure 1.2  Devastation in Kobe and its environs.  Source: UNCRD (1995) and fieldwork

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Figure 1.3  Fires in Kobe.  Source: Photograph courtesy of the City of Kobe

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Figure 1.4  Extent of the conflagrations in Kobe’s Nagata and Suma wards.  Source: Nagano (1995)

chemicals stored in small factory buildings. Residents took flight only to find their way obstructed by the conflagration, collapsed buildings, and rubble. The noise of the fires muffled the yells of many elderly victims trapped in fallen houses, for whom there was no escape. Fire crews were beside themselves as broken water pipes reduced the pressure in their hoses. Roads were blocked with the frantic movement of vehicles, which often prevented rescue attempts by police. Those who survived the quake and the flames often discovered that many of the official refuges had been destroyed, leaving them to roam the streets looking for lost family members or for relief. Makeshift shelters were set up in car parks and on any available open space. Tokyo and the rest of the world became absorbed by the scenes of destruction as helicopters and small planes relayed initial pictures of the fires and building damage. For the rest of the first day, dark smoke covered much of the stricken area; as night fell, bands of flames shot into the sky. The death toll rose hourly until, by midnight, casualties were reported at 1,590 dead and 1,017 missing. By the end of the first few days, the quake had killed over 6,000 people (over 4,500 in Kobe city alone) and injured around 40,000. Most of the people killed had been crushed within collapsed timber houses. Another 390,000 people had lost their homes. The three hundred or so fires that

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followed the quake had destroyed around 100 hectares and severely damaged a further 400 hectares (see Table 1.1). The photos in Figure 1.5 indicate in part the extent of the destruction. Survivors of the quake suffered great difficulties in the following days and weeks because city “lifelines” and utilities were broken over a wide area. The

Table 1.1 Overall damage sustained in the Hanshin earthquake (Kobe and surrounding areas) Type of damage

Number damaged

Victims   Total fatalities   Fatalities in Kobe   Missing   Injured:    Serious    Minor    Examined

6,279 4,512 2 41,527 1,819 25,029 14,679

Evacuees   Peak number of shelters operating in Kobe (January 26, 1995)   Persons using shelters in Kobe (peak, January 24, 1995)

599 236,899

Residential housing units damaged   Total destruction   Partial destruction   Total

100,282 294,158 394,440

Other buildings damaged and fires   Public buildings   Other buildings   Fires (incidents)

549 3,126 294

Traffic Networks   Roads and highways (damaged sites) • The Hanshin Expressway 3 (Kobe route and Route 5, Wangan route) collapsed onto the road below • Railways were damaged in many places • Access to Port Island and Rokko ¯ Island was interrupted • Almost all port container berths and wharves were inoperable Utilities   Electric power   Phones   Water   Industrial water   Solid waste

9,413

citywide failure 25% failure close to citywide failure close to citywide failure all facilities inoperable

Source: Data provided by the Fire Defense Agency (reported in Taniguchi, 1995b) and data derived from City of Kobe (2005a)

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Figure 1.5  The devastation to wooden houses, apart­ments, expressways, and shopping arcades, caused by the earthquake and fires.  Source: Photographs courtesy of the City of Kobe

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national government stated that 1.3 million people in the Hanshin region were without water, 845,000 households were without gas, 2.6 million households were without electricity, 193,000 households were without a telephone, and major public transport systems, roads, highways, and hospitals and clinics were out of use (City of Kobe 2005a). The physical damage to wooden houses and buildings as a result of the earthquake was the worst in Japanese history except for the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake of 1923. The total number of damaged houses and other structures reached about 400,000: of these, 100,209 were completely destroyed, 107,074 partially collapsed, 183,436 were partially damaged, and 5,864 burned down in the Hanshin district (Taniguchi 1995b). Those districts hardest hit were Kobe’s Higashi-Nada ward, where over 60,000 were made homeless, and Nagata ward, with over 35,000 homeless (see Table 1.2). About 15 percent of the city’s building stock was lost to the quake. An even higher percentage was lost in the central districts, including 82,000 houses, mainly older wooden ones (“Kobe House” 1995; “About” 1995). Figure 1.6 indicates the overall pattern of deaths and damage in the Hanshin region. It shows that damage to buildings and loss of life occurred across a wide area beyond Kobe, including the northern portion of Awaji Island, other coastal cities of Hyo¯go prefecture, and the western part of Osaka prefecture bordering Osaka Bay. Nonetheless, the city of Kobe clearly bore the burden of major damage. One of the most distinctive dimensions of the Kobe catastrophe was the large number of seniors who perished (see Figure 1.7). Over 50 percent of those who died were older than 60, and nearly 60 percent of them were female. Official reports attributed the large number of deaths among the elderly to the greater number of younger people living in the city’s outer suburbs, which were less affected by the quake; to the fact that many elderly people lived alone in the quake-stricken districts, especially women; and to the large number of houses in these areas that had been built before or immediately after the Second World War and that were of poor quality. Figures 1.8 and 1.9 extend these findings by indicating the loss of housing by city ward and by age of building. The overall pattern shows that Nagata ward in the older inner suburbs of Kobe suffered the greatest loss of housing and that roughly 50 percent of houses built before 1965 were lost to the quake. Beyond casualties and destroyed buildings, the Hanshin earthquake had a significant economic impact. At the time of the quake, the economy of Kobe was already struggling (Uchida 1995); hence the Hanshin earthquake precipitated an economic catastrophe. The devastation caused by the earthquake seriously disrupted personal livelihoods and crippled key industries in the region. This was especially so in Kobe, where building damage was the worst. Here, the destruction of public and private property was estimated at nearly half the normal yearly economic output of this expansive industrial

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919

555

9,533 8,109

940 15 46

Collapsed houses   Fully   Half

Burned houses   Fully   Partially   Half

4,759 13 61

15,521 8,282

407 9 20

7,696 5,608

69 21,067 21,728

401

Suma

327 15 19

13,667 5,538

120 60,700 65,859

1,471

465 13 94

2,757 5,675

74 35,000 40,394

933

Nada

East side Higashi-Nada

Inner city wards

65 9 22

6,344 6,641

90 35,172 39,090

244

Chu ¯o ¯

1 2 5

1,176 8,890

41 6,926 4,747

25

Tarumi

0 0 1

436 3,262

16 1,777 1,787

11

Nishi

Suburban wards

1 0 2

271 3,140

29 2,348 2,360

12

Kita

6,965 80 270

67,421 55,145

599 222,127 236,899

4,571

Kobe total

Source: City of Kobe (2005a)

Notes: For city ward boundaries, see Figure 1.1. Earthquake victims as of December 26, 1995; fully and partially collapsed figures as of November 20, 1995; fully, half, and partly burned figures as of January 2, 1996. Fully collapsed = Houses whose damage to supporting structures (walls, pillars, beams, roofs, stairs) amounts to more than 50 percent of the current value of the house. Half collapsed = Houses whose damage to supporting structures (walls, pillars, beams, roofs, stairs) amounts to between 20 and 50 percent of the current value of the house. Because the figures are all taken from the respective peak times of each ward, the ward figures may not add up to the city total. For the geographic boundaries of each ward, see Figure 1.1.

96 26,300 26,300

Evacuees (Peak)   Shelters   Overnight   Daytime

79 35,347 55,641

Nagata

Hyo ¯go



Dead

West side





Distribution of earthquake victims and damage to structures by ward, City of Kobe

Table 1.2

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Figure 1.6  Patterns of deaths and damage in the Hanshin region.  Source: Data provided by the City of Kobe

Figure 1.7  Breakdown of deaths by gender and age. Source: Data provided by the City of Kobe

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Figure 1.8  The loss of housing in Kobe by ward. Source: City of Kobe (2005b)

Figure 1.9  The loss of housing in Kobe by period of building.  Source: City of Kobe (2005b)

region (Walsh 1996). Few businesses or private households held earthquake insurance. Indeed, most losses were uninsured: only 3 percent of property in the Kobe area was covered by earthquake indemnity, compared to 16 percent in Tokyo. This meant that those damages that could be fully recovered by insurance payments amounted to only one-tenth of the total. Individuals (for the most part) bore the cost of reconstructing homes and small businesses. In the end, the final cost of the damage was estimated at around ¥9.9 trillion (US$99.3 billion at the early-1995 exchange rate), at that time equal to nearly 1 percent of the asset value of total private and public infrastructure in Japan (see Table 1.3). This was clearly a staggering amount, equivalent to the Hyo¯go prefectural budget for roughly six years (Shiozaki, Nishikawa, and Deguchi 2005). Indeed, the damage caused by the quake was beyond the capability of any local government to bear. As a consequence, restoration of the destroyed buildings and facilities presented a formidable challenge.3 This book examines aspects of the reconstruction of Kobe in the ten years following the Hanshin earthquake and provides a chronicle of government

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Table 1.3 Cost estimate in billon yen for repair of the damage by the Hanshin earthquake in Hyo ¯go prefecture Type of damage Buildings (housing, buildings)

Cost estimate (¥ billion) 5,800.0

Railways

343.9

Expressways

550.0

Public works (including streets and parks) Harbor facilities Reclaimed land

278.4 1,000.0 6.4

Educational facilities

341.7

Agriculture, fisheries, and forestry facilities   (including markets and fishing ports)

118.1

Medical health and welfare facilities

173.3

Waste and sanitation facilities Water supply

4.4 54.1

Gas and electricity

420.0

Communications and broadcasting

120.2

Machinery and equipment

630.0

Public facilities (e.g., government offices) Total

75.1 ¥9,915.6 billion (¥9.9 trillion)

Source: Ogawa and Nagano (1995)

responses to the challenges of rebuilding a major Japanese city. This was the largest reconstruction effort through urban planning projects in the nation’s history. To understand the complexity of such a large development, I examined land use changes, governance issues, and economic recovery. This study focuses on the geography of the crisis and the opportunities that were created for local-government planners to rebuild older neighbourhoods and to revitalize the city. Key questions raised in the research are: To what degree did the reconstruction period provide an occasion to mitigate a hazardous situation and make general improvements in urban form? And was the reconstruction achieved uniformly, or were there uneven outcomes? I argue that Kobe’s city planners took bold openings presented by the disaster to significantly upgrade stricken localities and to apply for national government resources for infrastructure. However, planning processes and outcomes were complex, often controversial, and geographically uneven. The analysis suggests that these results were due mainly to four factors: preearthquake conditions in Kobe; the geographic dimensions of the disaster;

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Introduction

Japan’s top-down, inflexible planning machinery; and adverse reactions from the local community. The Japanese government, based in Tokyo, took a strong role in the early reconstruction of the city, especially in providing the national-level funding that was necessary for the prompt rebuilding of damaged infrastructure. However, the Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture governments were the local agencies directly responsible for managing the region’s recovery on a dayto-day basis. Besides coping with the immediate crisis, the city and prefecture announced substantial urban-renewal programs soon after the quake, publishing comprehensive reconstruction plans in the summer of 1995. These plans incorporated long-term goals and basic principles for restoration and rebuilding as well as a very long list of reconstruction projects submitted to the national government for funding. Considering the magnitude of the damage sustained, the city and prefecture governments judged that the region would take a long time to recover fully and that reconstruction plans and projects could only be completed over a ten-year period. The tenth anniversary of this major disaster in early 2005 was therefore an appropriate time to evaluate the reconstruction of Kobe. It served as an expedient point to examine the plans and policies of various government agencies and to draw some conclusions about the successes and the pitfalls experienced. It is worth emphasizing at the outset that post-disaster reconstruction of any city is a long-term exercise. Consequently, any assessment of this process requires ongoing evaluation. Many studies have focused on the seismic and engineering aspects of the Hanshin earthquake and on the initial recovery period; few have analyzed the longer-term reconstruction of Kobe.4 Indeed, within the vast literature on disasters and disaster management, there is only occasional consideration of issues involved in the long-term redevelopment of urban areas affected by a major earthquake. And there are even fewer studies of recovery from disasters in cultures outside an Anglo-American context (see Chang 2001). My own objective has been to record the overall reconstruction planning process followed in Kobe, with a focus on particular case studies. These relate to the rebuilding of particular neighbourhoods and to the city’s economic revival. The empirical material assembled during my field investigations in Kobe is placed in a framework that draws from both the general literature on post-disaster reconstruction planning and more specialized material on Japanese urban development and urban policy. To examine the major changes in Kobe during the ten-year period following the quake, I collected information through personal interviews with city and prefecture bureaucrats, community leaders, and local planners. I also made site visits, analyzed official documents, and reviewed Japanese newspapers. One of the key research approaches in this study involved identifying the factors that informed the ideas and openings that were taken in Kobe’s reconstruction plans, then ascertaining those aspects which caused

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difficulties and placed constraints on their implementation. To address these issues I examined Kobe’s planning and development before the quake, the various choices presented to city planners by the crisis, and also the geographical outcomes of the disaster. In this study I pay particular attention to the relationships that developed after the event between local planners and the Japanese national government, as well as relations between city administrators and local citizens. My first visit to the stricken area was just two weeks after the earthquake in January 1995. Thereafter I visited Kobe many times; this enabled me to observe how the rebuilding of the city was proceeding and provided insights into the problems and opportunities facing city planners. The material in later chapters reflects both their achievements and their disappointments. No one would claim that the course of reconstruction after the quake has been entirely smooth or that it has succeeded entirely. At the end of ten years, physical reconstruction was virtually complete except for certain neighbourhoods in the poorer western districts of Kobe. But even today, economic and social recovery are ongoing. In general, I contend that Kobe city was caught between taking advantage of new development opportunities suddenly offered by the disaster, and the constraints imposed by a fairly rigid Japanese urban planning model. These factors shaped how quickly the city could rebuild, whether the planners could improve the city’s safety, what other improvements could be carried out, and what (if anything) could be done for the most disadvantaged communities in Kobe. Traditionally, Japanese urban planning has emphasized a rather standardized method for rebuilding. This is because of the regulations imposed by national legislation. Also, large-scale recovery projects have been tied to the national government’s budgetary requirements. These factors dominated the reconstruction process in Kobe. The Japanese planning system has the advantage of certainty, as in most cases it guarantees funding for infrastructure repair and replacement. Major disadvantages are its lack of flexibility and its lack of autonomy for local governments. Local urban planners eager to improve Kobe after the quake found themselves in collision with a rigid approach to post-disaster redevelopment at the national level that contributed to the frustrations experienced by residents and small business owners, who felt especially vulnerable and disempowered. To win the trust of citizens, Kobe’s administrators had to establish community consultation through machizukuri (local planning) committees; in the process they changed the traditional planning process used in Japan. The study indicates that despite some early setbacks, most of the large-scale projects initiated through the ten-year reconstruction plans had been implemented and completed by early 2005. Yet, despite this achievement, the city’s administration continued to face criticism. This was due to the costs involved for many new schemes

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Introduction

(especially the outlays involved for a new city airport), the underfunding of welfare services for earthquake survivors and small businesses, and the issue of long-term municipal debt. My interpretation of Kobe’s reconstruction planning suggests that it has hinged on two concepts: “geography of crisis,” and “geography of opportunity.” The “geography of crisis” allegory illustrates how spatial relationships are often responsible for particular social and economic stresses following a major disaster. In Kobe, a distinct “geography of crisis” produced sharply uneven outcomes in terms of both damage location and victim location. These distinct spatial and social outcomes generated a number of tensions during the reconstruction, initially in terms of where to locate temporary shelters for the homeless, then later in terms of public housing provision and private-sector investment. The stresses resulting from these patterns added to the anger of local residents against planning and reconstruction activities taken by the city’s administration. The inherent geographical un­evenness of the crisis also led to the breakup of many communities in Kobe. The second metaphor, “geography of opportunity,” refers to the tendency for city planners to take advantage of disasters when they are rebuilding. In Kobe, opportunities were taken to redevelop the older, inner parts of the city. Opportunities were also taken during the recovery to build new economic infrastructure so as to gain a comparative advantage over other cities in Japan. In this regard the reaction of public officials in Kobe can be seen as similar to that of officials elsewhere, who almost always speak of rebuilding to “make the city better than ever” (Haas, Kates, and Bowden 1977, xv). To illustrate just how the geographies of crisis and opportunity transpired in Kobe, I consider the post-disaster reconstruction in some detail through two types of case studies. The first involves local neighbourhood renewal in the Shin-Nagata and Moriminami districts of the city. The second focuses on economic recovery and area-wide “mega-projects” supported by the city administration and the former mayor of Kobe, Sasayama Kazutoshi (elected from 1989 to 2001). The differences in scale of these case studies reveal the effectiveness (or otherwise) of Japanese planning systems in the face of a major disaster and the challenges of rebuilding one of the nation’s most important ports and a prominent urban area. Structure of the Book The analysis commences in Chapter 2 with a review of the literature relating to the reconstruction of cities after earthquakes and major disasters. This reveals a distinctly Japanese approach to city planning and development. On the one hand, the more general Western literature suggests that reconstruction after a major disaster is a complex and multifaceted issue – one that requires close collaboration at all levels of government and that calls

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for the private sector’s involvement as well as that of civil society (i.e., local citizens and businesses). By contrast, the review of Japanese urban planning identifies a distinctly idiosyncratic approach – one that is driven by national legislation and bureaucratic intervention. My research indicates that the Japanese model played an important part in shaping Kobe’s post-earthquake outcomes and long-term rehabilitation. Chapter 3 examines Kobe in the years before the earthquake struck and its distinctive characteristics. It also scrutinizes aspects of the earthquake’s impact, the damage sustained, and the city’s recovery and reconstruction phases. The chapter indicates how a distinctive “geography of crisis” emerged following the 1995 temblor. In Chapter 4, I consider the strategies for rebuilding Kobe taken by the national and local governments during the initial post-quake period. This chapter points to the opportunities seized by local planners in the immediate aftermath of the quake, as well as to some unforeseen outcomes. Chapter 5 deals with the citizens’ protests against plans for redeveloping stricken neighbourhoods and how these were addressed by local governments. It also considers the major components of the “Phoenix Plan” for long-term reconstruction. Chapters 6 and 7 examine how the rebuilding of the city evolved in the subsequent ten years, the emergence of conflicts and problems, and how these were (partly) resolved. Case studies are given at the local neighbourhood level in the Shin-Nagata and Moriminami districts of Kobe (Chapter 6) and at the city level in megaprojects that were built in part as symbols of the post-disaster reconstruction (Chapter 7). Chapter 8 concludes the monograph by commenting on the lessons that can be drawn from the Kobe experience for other Japanese cities, and also for many other disasterprone regions of the world. In particular, it explains why other Japanese cities should start planning for post-earthquake disaster reconstruction ahead of time. A chronology of the major events that took place during the ten-year reconstruction period is given in Appendix A. A list of post-disaster government actions at the national and local levels is set out in Appendices B and C.

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2 Earthquakes and Urban Reconstruction

Disaster recovery is ordered, knowable and predictable. Immediately after a disaster, public officials almost always speak of rebuilding “to make this city better than ever.” But if this is to happen, how does it develop? — J.E. Haas, R.W. Kates, and M.J. Bowden, eds.,    Reconstruction Following Disaster

2.1 The Problem of Post-Disaster Reconstruction Contributions by geographers, planners, and other social scientists have drawn attention to the important social and economic implications of disasters such as earthquakes.1 One common approach has been to divide individual and community responses to disasters and their consequences into different phases (Carr 1932, Barton 1969). Many scholars identify four crucial dimensions – disaster mitigation, disaster preparedness, disaster response, and post-disaster recovery (Petak 1985; Raphael 1986; Waugh and Hy 1990; Lindell and Perry 1992; Smith 1996; Hewitt 1997; Federal Emergency Management Agency 2000; Tierney, Lindell, and Perry 2001). In terms of these four categories, the post-disaster recovery stage – especially the reconstruction of cities damaged by earthquakes – has received less attention than other stages, such as immediate relief efforts and responses to the disaster event itself (see reviews of the literature by Drabek 1986; Geipel 1991; Comerio 1998; Godschalk et al. 1999; Chang 2001; and Olshansky 2005). Nonetheless, a number of general themes in the reconstruction phase can be noted. Models and Approaches to Post-Disaster Reconstruction Over thirty years ago, Haas and colleagues (1977, xv) described recovery as “ordered, knowable and predictable.” This was in the context of a major study of several post-disaster reconstruction cases, ranging from San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake to Rapid City, South Dakota, after its 1972 flood.

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As part of the same project, Kates and Pijawka (1977) conceptualized the post-disaster recovery stage as having four distinct but overlapping periods: an emergency period, a restoration period, a replacement reconstruction period, and finally a developmental reconstruction period (see Figure 2.1). According to this representation, the “emergency period” lasted for several days, and during this time actions such as search and rescue took precedence. Next, the “restoration period,” which might last many weeks, was characterized by repairs to utilities – such as water, electricity, and gas mains – and by the “patching up” of damaged commercial, industrial, and residential structures. Following this, the “replacement reconstruction” period, lasting several months, was one in which the long-term replacement of factories and homes occurred and when the economy and population of the stricken area attempted to recover to pre-disaster levels. The final “developmental restoration” period saw improvement over and above the pre-disaster situation; this often included projects to memorialize or commemorate the disaster. Completion of reconstruction works might take years, but for Kates and Pijawka (ibid., 13) the recovery period ended when the urban population had returned to its former level and when losses in jobs, housing, and services had been rectified. Figure 2.1 indicates that the complete process can take up to ten years (around five hundred weeks), that each of the first

Figure 2.1  Post-disaster reconstruction according to Kates and Pijawka (1977).  Source: Kates and Pijawka (1977)

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three periods lasts about ten times longer than the previous one, and that the development reconstruction period is half again as long as the period of replacement reconstruction. Such a scheme suggests that there is a clear pattern to the reconstruction process, which is assumed to proceed in a linear and relatively orderly fashion to the apparently inevitable conclusion: community recovery. Other researchers, however, have determined that the process is likely to be much more complex. For instance, both Hogg (1980) and Neal (1997) found that the four phases, if they can be distinguished at all, occur almost concurrently. Whatever the chronological details of reconstruction, during this time planners will often try to use the opportunity provided by the disaster to replan and improve the physical structure of the stricken area. This process, which accords with the fourth stage of Kates and Pijawka’s model (“developmental reconstruction”), reflects the need to upgrade the region’s resistance to future disasters. For example, in the case of cities and earthquakes, local authorities will often identify and then purchase hazard-prone lands and remove them from residential or commercial zoning, as well as introduce new building regulations (Smith 1996). Indeed, the literature on hazards research offers a number of case studies suggesting that disasters provide opportunities for unforeseen and beneficial development as well as economic improvement (see Friesma et al. 1979; Dudasik 1982; Cuny 1983; Ellson, Milliman, and Roberts 1984; Rubin 1985, 1991). Geipel (1982, 16) observes that rare events such as major earthquakes provide a significant opportunity to propose ways to soften the impact of future disasters. He notes that disasters often allow “planning to proceed from a new starting point, more freely than under former impediments,” but he adds that planners do not have an unlimited time in which to develop grand schemes for the wholescale redesign of the city or region at hand. Moreover, he warns that “planners are obsessed usually with grandiose rebuilding plans, but the citizens’ thinking already includes such a plan unconsciously: the plan of the city as it was before destruction” (ibid., 180; see also Olshansky 2002). By way of illustration, after the destruction of Darwin, Australia, by Cyclone Tracy in 1974, many urban planners advocated relocating this harbour city to a safer inland location. However, owing to adverse political reaction and a quicker than expected return by many evacuees, such an option was never implemented (McKay 2004). Without a doubt, the results of post-disaster recovery and reconstruction are likely to have a profound impact on any city and region, and opportunities for upgrading a stricken city and its infrastructure may indeed arise. Indeed, the opportunities grasped in Kobe after the 1995 earthquake constitute a central element of this book. That said, Darwin’s experience and countless others remind us that new opportunities for redevelopment are rarely exploited in full. Why? Because technical solutions to improving

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urban infrastructure and local neighbourhoods flounder as a result of unforeseen socio-economic complexities. These unforeseen problems have not been well covered in previous linear models of reconstruction such as those proposed by Haas, Kates, and Bowden. Supporting this viewpoint, Mileti (1999, 220-30) reasons that post-disaster reconstruction should be seen not as a solely physical restoration, but essentially as a social process that “encompasses decision-making about restoration and reconstruction activities.” He goes on to argue that there has also been a tendency to equate the longterm social and economic recovery of cities and their various communities with reconstruction, which involves primarily the restoration and replacement of the shattered built environment. Hayashi (2003) extends this approach, noting that community recovery following a disaster has three interdependent components – physical, economic, and social. In other words, the impact on a city of a major earthquake is far greater than the observable costs of repairing damaged roads and other infrastructure. He notes that social and economic issues such as housing, employment, health, and general community well-being are all significantly affected by an earthquake. Thus the amount of financial aid strongly influences the recovery process, as does the way in which that aid is allocated among the survivors. Similarly, Quarantelli (1989) focuses on the distribution of resources after a disaster. He argues that the earlier work of Haas and others failed to adequately grasp the complexities and conflicts inherent in the recovery process. Reconstruction and recovery are not necessarily “ordered, knowable, and predictable.” Often, both involve political, cultural, and social disagreements over recovery plans and priorities. He contends that uncoordinated planning at the local level can severely inhibit the pace of reconstruction, especially after earthquakes, which have wide-scale regional impacts. Indeed, it seems that the earlier research has underemphasized the extent to which recovery may be experienced differently by various sectors and communities in society. Very often these differences have a strong geographical component (see Bolin 1994). Since the early work on models of reconstruction, a wide range of approaches has been taken to the study of post-disaster periods. For example, regarding the “9/11” terrorist attack in New York, reports have focused on how cities can recover – if at all – after a major calamity (Ockman 2002; Rozario 2005; Vale and Campenella 2005). For the most part, responses to major disasters have confirmed the perennial resilience of cities in the face of drastic events. For instance, there is little sign that earthquakes have ever led to the wholesale abandonment of damaged towns and cities. Communities seem well able to survive physical devastation, and survivors tend to rebuild in the same location after the wreckage has been cleared (Alexander 1993; Mileti 1999). However, reconstruction does involve change, and impacted communities are never quite the same as they were before. The city

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appears different, and the underlying spatial structure and economy have likely altered (Massard-Guilbaud 2002). All told, though many critics disagree with some parts of it, the “stages” model set out by Haas and colleagues is useful as a starting point for understanding the dynamics of community recovery. The four stages of postdisaster reconstruction illustrated by Figure 2.1 will be referred to again in later chapters of this book.2 Factors Influencing Reconstruction Governments should be fully prepared to speed up community recovery and rebuilding should large-scale damage and destruction take place. But which factors are to be considered important in shaping post-disaster reconstruction? Research findings on natural disasters have highlighted a number of dimensions that may influence the speed and quality of a city’s rebuilding. Some of these – including the magnitude of the event and the scope of damage – are clearly specific to the disaster itself. Others – including the physical geography and layout of settlements, political and planning milieux, the economic resources for financial recovery, and the varying vulnerability within the communities affected – are related to prior conditions in the area. Other factors influencing reconstruction depend on the quality of leadership and government decision making. In sum, the literature suggests that postdisaster recovery is a complex process and that it cannot be clear in advance how each dimension will affect the reconstruction process or its outcomes. To unravel these complexities in the Kobe case study, I applied a four-part framework (see Figure 2.2). I contend that the quality and success of postdisaster planning and reconstruction depend on several organizational and social factors as well as physical ones. These factors are (a) the pre-existing situation in the disaster area, including its economic and population structure, (b) aspects of the disaster itself, including its geographical impact and outcomes, (c) efforts made by governments and other agencies to facilitate rehabilitation, and (d) local community attitudes toward planning and proposed improvements. This schema draws from the literature, especially the seminal work of Kates and Pijawka (1977, 1), who identified the following as important: (a) the extent of the damage, (b) the availability of resources for recovery, (c) prevailing pre-disaster trends, and (d) leadership, planning, and organization for reconstruction. All of these aspects were important in Kobe, but as I will argue later, the influence of geography and the role played by local communities were central to understanding the reconstruction effort and result. How, then, can the issues listed in Figure 2.2 inform a study of Kobe’s post-disaster reconstruction? First, post-disaster economic and social challenges are inseparable from the physical and socio-economic conditions that existed just prior to the disaster, including the prevailing urban planning

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Figure 2.2  A framework for understanding the dynamics of post-disaster reconstruction planning.

system (factor 1 in Figure 2.2). While the physical patterns of settlements – such as the area of built-up land below a flood line, and housing built atop an earthquake fault line – may seem obvious factors shaping reconstruction efforts, a number of studies have also drawn attention to the importance of the region’s population and economic profile, as well as to underlying economic and social trends. Thus Alexander (1993) notes that disasters may hasten changes in a city or region that are already occurring as a result of wider forces at play, such as economic decline and demographic change. Conversely, for “cities on the rise” such as Chicago before the Great Fire of 1871 and San Francisco before the earthquake and fires of 1906, the postdisaster rebuilding may actually spur growth and economic expansion (Miller 2002). Other studies have drawn attention to disaster-prone regions that have vulnerable populations, including the aged, the disabled, the poor, and the otherwise marginalized (e.g., by ethnicity). Invariably, these at-risk communities are affected more than the general population during post-disaster recovery, usually in adverse ways (Blaikie et al. 1994; Hewitt 1997; Tierney, Lindell, and Perry 2001). In his study of the 1976 earthquake at Fruili, Italy, Geipel (1982, 166) remarked that disasters are not necessarily “the great equalizers,” for certain groups are more likely than others to be disadvantaged by a widespread tragedy such as an earthquake: “Socio-economic groups will be determined after disaster as they were before, with the rich

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still rich and the poor still poor” (ibid., quoting Kates 1977; see also Kamel and Loukaitou-Sideris 2004). More recently, the recovery of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 has been challenged by that city’s racial disparity (Birch and Watcher 2006). Recovery after the Hanshin earthquake in Kobe was especially difficult because local governments had to cope with the region’s large number of elderly citizens, many of whom had been left homeless by the disaster. Second, among the more specific factors contributing to reconstruction, the intensity and geographic patterns of damage both shape and complicate post-disaster reconstruction (factor 2 in Figure 2.2). A priori conditions, combined with the particular characteristics of the disaster itself, often lead to a stark unevenness in the geography of damage to communities, and consequently to a “patchy” recovery. How, then, are priorities to be set for resource allocation during the reconstruction period (Prater and Wu 2002; Schwab et al. 1998; Tierney, Lindell, and Perry 2001)? Rossi, Wright, and Weber-Burdin (1982) remind us that treacherous political questions are often involved in post-disaster reconstruction – for instance, where exactly should governments place resources for rebuilding? Conflict during reconstruction is even more likely to arise where serious damage has been sustained and the risk of further vulnerability to future disasters is uneven (Bolin and Stanford 1998). In Kobe, the earthquake’s strongest impact was along a relatively thin “damage strip”; the result was especially severe destruction to certain inner suburbs in the west of the city, the ones with narrow streets and wooden houses. (The city government would allocate special budgets for their reconstruction.) Third, government bodies and not-for-profit organizations (NPOs) play a critical role in the post-disaster period and influence the recovery rate as well as the success of reconstruction efforts (factor 3 in Figure 2.2). Governments usually take the initiative in repairing and rebuilding broken infrastructure and important public buildings. Strongly influencing how smoothly reconstruction proceeds are factors such as: the availability of financial and other resources, the quality of government administration (and of insurance programs), and technical matters such as rebuilding plans, land use rezoning, and building regulations (Haas, Kates, and Bowden 1977; Rubin, Saperstein, and Barbee 1985). Most individuals and small businesses are unable to rebuild and recover without substantial funding. Where insurance payments are insufficient compared to the damage sustained, the financing of private-sector renewal often involves increased local public expenditures for items such as debris removal as well as state assistance for rebuilding homes and livelihoods. NPOs have also been important in helping individuals and communities recover after disaster (Anderson and Woodwrow 1989; Samal et al., 2005; Ozerdem and Jacoby 2006). Yet another common theme in postdisaster recovery is the need for governments to provide symbolic milestones

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to boost morale as rebuilding gets under way. Sometimes key symbolic moments take place to address this need, such as the holding of world expositions, as in Chicago in 1893 and San Francisco in 1915 (Vale 2006). There are also important questions relating to the powers of local authorities, usually city governments (Drabek and Hoetmer 1991; Pelling 2003). For Kates and Pijawka (1977, 20) a critical factor was the degree to which governments and other agencies were able to reduce uncertainty in damaged communities. Local decision makers must make strategic choices during the response and early-recovery phases that will shape both immediate and long-range reconstruction. For instance, how can rebuilding be controlled? Should the city’s infrastructure be improved by new building and land development codes? In Kobe, these questions proved to be an important test of Japanese planning methods in the post-quake situation. The quality of the relationship between national and local governments is relevant as well. Significant shifts in interactions between organizations inevitably occur as governments move from an “emergency and recovery mode” to long-term reconstruction activities, especially since the reconstruction phase often calls for new rules and demands a new set of networks to oversee coordination (Gillespie et al. 1993; Gillespie and Colignon 1993). Inherent structural issues involving interorganizational and intergovernmental coordination in times of crisis and the aftermath of disaster add to the complexity of recovery. Of course, the precise circumstances of these relationships will vary from country to country (Alexander 1993). In the United States, for instance, resources for disaster relief typically have come through FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency). Yet Stratton (1989, 159) highlighted the important role of other levels of government in the United States, arguing that “states and local governments actually are not mere ‘workhorses’ or administrative arms of the federal government but creative and powerful in the implementation of disaster policy” (see also May 1985; May and Williams 1986). By contrast, intergovernmental relations in Japan have by tradition been more centralized – a feature that strongly affected reconstruction outcomes in Kobe. A fourth and final dimension of the framework for understanding postdisaster reconstruction in Kobe involves the response of the local community and its relationship with governments (factor 4 in Figure 2.2). For instance, in the aftermath of a disaster some local politicians and business groups may wish to extract a competitive advantage over their rivals in other cities and regions through “fast deals” with senior political leaders and central or federal funding agencies (Gepiel 1982, 1991). In this vein, Godschalk and colleagues (1999) noted that much of the official development and redevelopment in Miami in the wake of Hurricane Andrew (1992) had little to do with hazard mitigation per se; it seemed instead to have been conducted with an eye to the economic development of that stricken region. Other

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American studies have examined the impact of disasters on economic planning. Cochrane (1997) has suggested that the economies of Miami following Hurricane Andrew, and of Los Angeles following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, were helped by their respective disasters. Whether or not reconstruction stimulated economic growth and restructuring in Kobe is a central question addressed in the present study. Other important elements include the nature of citizen involvement, the impact on rebuilding plans on property rights, and the role of individual volunteers and local leaders (Olshansky 2005). Social scientists have often pointed out that if rebuilding is to succeed, the public’s role must be recognized (Berke, Kartez, and Wenger 1993; Mileti 1999). Too often, government agencies have tended to deal with business sectors rather than citizens and as a result have failed to support local voluntary groups or to recognize their importance as part of community rebuilding. Rossi, Wright, and WeberBurdin (1982) have noted that the various post-disaster options for reconstructing cities and other damaged areas are often in conflict with legitimate community values, such as the desire of residents to return to their original homes and business locations are soon as possible (see also Oliver-Smith 1991). As with most other post-disaster decisions, the scale and speed with which urban development can recommence reflects the influence of two conflicting needs: to return to normal, and to prevent a fresh disaster (Foster 1980). Indeed, the relationship between those in power and the community is a delicate issue, and this was certainly the case in Kobe. Local governments’ responses are often built on standardized programs and may not adequately reflect the needs of particular communities and interests. Moreover, the recovery period tends to be marked by conflict and disillusionment. How local leaders and officials handle these is an important factor in restoration and reconstruction. Pre-disaster political and interestgroup rivalries can re-emerge, and old issues can be reactivated (Tierney 1989). Geipel (1982) states that there are likely to be local citizens who are dissatisfied with the rehabilitation process, and that such dissatifaction is likely to stem from issues such as lack of participation and engagement with the bureaucracy and its reconstruction policies. In particular, the relocation of disaster victims to temporary accommodation when their homes have collapsed or burned, or washed away, can be a very complicated process. For example, when people must be relocated they will typically request settings, structures, and interactions that are consistent with their social traditions (Shaw and Goda 2004). Olshansky (2005) notes that one of the most important issues to emerge since the early study by Haas and colleagues (1977) has been the importance of citizen participation and also of two-way communication during reconstruction. In the wake of a disaster, participation may hamper decision making, but it also offers advantages, such as improved capacity to adapt reconstruction programs to local conditions. The matter

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of citizen participation in Kobe’s rebuilding will be dealt with later through in-depth case studies. In sum, reconstruction after any disaster is a complicated and multidimensional process, and there is no easy resolution to any of the dilemmas touched on above. Awotona (1997, xix-xx) notes that “rebuilding the built environment is the end product of a long chain of interactions, including sociocultural, economic, technological, environmental and administrative aspects.” Much of the literature highlights the need to pre-plan urban reconstruction long before disaster strikes. I shall return to this issue at the end of this book. Still, though strong consensus exists on general principles, many aspects of effective planning for post-disaster recovery continue to be poorly understood. Moreover, the complexity of reconstruction is amplified by the urgency and confusion of the situation, by the need to mobilize huge amounts of resources (human and material), and by the many intricate political dimensions relating to aid, physical rebuilding, and economic relief. On top of all this, every reconstruction process is in many ways unique to location, time, and context, which in turn suggests that very specific cultural dimensions must be considered when post-disaster reconstruction plans and outcomes are being assessed. For Kobe, the reconstruction period must be examined in the context of Japanese planning and disaster-recovery practices. Accordingly, this chapter continues with an overview of Japanese attitudes to earthquake disasters and of Japanese approaches to urban reconstruction following a catastrophe. It will be seen how both reflect the particular characteristics of Japan’s environment, society, and administrative culture, as well as its distinctive models of urban planning and development. 2.2 Japanese Planning and Administrative Practice Japan faces certain underlying conditions that are crucial to understanding its vulnerability to urban disasters as well as its idiosyncratic approach to reconstructing cities after catastrophe strikes. First, its location on the “Pacific Rim of Fire” makes it especially susceptible to earthquakes (Case 2004). This is further compounded by high densities of population and economic activity in urban areas. In Japanese cities there is little open space or redundancy in land uses (Mather, Karan, and Iijima 1998). The downtown areas of Japanese cities are characterized by a mixture of uses, with housing packed together with commercial and industrial activities in “densely inhabited districts.”3 Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that the island nation has a long history of disaster recovery and reconstruction planning. Japan has on many occasions had to rebuild its cities quickly after fires, earthquakes, and wars (Hein 2005). Furthermore, Japan has traditionally relied on an individual-based or market-led recovery model, one that is inherently conservative when it comes to public assistance for urban reconstruction after disasters. In this

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vein, the term “reconstruction” has a fairly specific meaning in Japanese. In the Japanese system, the government has by tradition only been responsible for “recovery” (fukkyu ¯ ), which refers to “bringing back the devastated area to its pre-disaster state” – for example, by rebuilding roads and important public infrastructure. By contrast, the term “reconstruction” (fukko¯) suggests long-term recovery – “making the devastated areas better than what they were in the pre-disaster days” (Maki 2006, 1). Usually there has been little or no government support in Japan for this latter concept. Simple restoration of damaged infrastructure has by and large been the government’s main objective, not community renewal. Yet because they can muster large-scale budgets for public works, Japanese planners are very good at engineering urban redevelopment, and this has been helpful in preparing for anticipated disasters. For instance, the spatial reorganization of the low-lying densely settled Ko¯to¯ ward in Tokyo, alongside the Sumida River, and the provision of anti-flood barriers there, is often offered as an example of successful urban redevelopment as a tool of disaster mitigation (Sumida City 1991; Tokyo Metropolitan Government 1995; Kumagai and Nojima 1999). However, until the Kobe catastrophe there had been a notable lack of interest in either personal recovery or the long-term revival of stricken urban areas after a disaster.4 Furukawa (2000) addresses this later issue, noting that disaster prevention legislation prior to the Hanshin earthquake had focused on four main areas: the clarification of responsibilities for disaster reduction measures, the promotion of comprehensive and systematic approaches to disaster mitigation, the provision of financial resources, and the prescription of procedures for declaring disaster emergencies. Overall, the focus had been almost entirely on mitigation and prevention. In terms of earthquake preparedness, the emphasis had been on designing and constructing highly resilient buildings. In other words, Japan had not developed comprehensive ways to deal with earthquakes once they had occurred. According to Murakami (1996, 11), “earthquake preparedness has failed to move beyond the realms of engineering.” Furthermore, there was little or no insurance coverage available for earthquake damage to houses or commercial buildings. In addition, only modest compensation was ever provided by governments directly to victims of disasters. (For studies of post-disasters and attitudes toward housing insurance in Japan, see Okuno 1995; Comerio 1997, 1998; and Palm and Carroll 1998). The partial replanning of Tokyo, the nation’s capital, in the years following the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake of 1923 was a major exception to the government’s minimalist approach to reconstruction after disasters (see Koshizawa 1996). Immediately after that earthquake the national government’s planning group, led by Goto¯ Shimpei, believed that the disaster had provided Japan with a clean slate on which to develop a grandiose “modern”

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capital, one that would express the nation’s imperial power and the implementation of a proactive public policy. Shimpei’s post-disaster plan for Tokyo encompassed the entire city, including the relatively undamaged areas. It called for parks, river improvements, wider streets, and new canals and transportation systems. Forty-seven thoroughfares would be widened from 22 to 44 metres, and 100 other streets would be widened from 11 to 22 metres. It was anticipated that this work would be completed by 1928, a mere five years after the quake. Goto ¯ Shimpei envisioned Tokyo as a showcase of urban modernity. His plans would have cost roughly ¥4 billion (US$1.3 million in 1923 figures) – a sum over three times larger than the national budget that year (Seidensticker 1990). Needless to say, such an expensive scheme for reconstructing the capital city became a hotly debated issue. Schencking (2006, 833) has described the politics associated with the rebuilding of Tokyo as “an arena of perceived opportunity, political opportunism and considerable political contestation,” albeit fought entirely in the national Diet ( Japan’s parliament) rather than with the citizens of the capital. In the end, the plan proved too ambitious. Shimpei’s great arterial highway some 200 metres wide running north to south through the city was narrowed in width and its length reduced. Other plans for street widening and the necessary land acquisition did not meet with political approval. It was felt that Tokyo was asking for too much in relation to the rest of the country. The existing street pattern remained, with some new parks and widened streets implemented from the original plan. In a sense, a grand opportunity to improve the city was lost – though ironically, Shimpei’s new capital, had it been built, would have been razed by firebombs within two decades (see Guillain 1981). In the 1920s the city was rebuilt after the quake, and to some extent it was also redesigned. Almost 250,000 residences were moved through land readjustment (a procedure described below). The proportion of streets to total area was much higher after the earthquake than before. Three large new parks were funded by the national government and located near or along the Sumida River. A special ministry was established to oversee the rebuilding of Tokyo and adjoining Yokohama (Seidensticker 1990; Arnold 1993). Since the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake of 1923, Japan has established September 1 as the Day of Catastrophe, with many simulated earthquake activities, as well as mock fire-prevention drills and rescue operations (Hadfield 1991, 44). However, these exercises may be viewed as symbolic – as “collective exorcisms” – rather than as genuine efforts to train communities in disaster preparation. A third feature of Japan’s approach to disaster recovery touches on its political economy in the modern period, in particular as it relates to development. The focus on “growth at all costs” has placed a disproportionate priority on economic programs – especially the provision of physical infrastructure

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– as a way of catching up with Western countries. This has often been at the expense of quality of life and social planning (Edgington 2003). Governments have regarded major public works projects as economic and spatial tools but also sources of national pride. A term often used in this context is doken kokka (“the state as builder”) (McCormack 2001). To be sure, it is hardly a novel observation that Japan lags behind many Western industrialized nations in providing spacious and comfortable accommodation for its urban residents, though its public engineering and transportation achievements have inspired awe – for example, the shinkansen or “bullet train.” In addition, the Japanese model of development has also shaped distinctive arrangements for intergovernmental cooperation and coordination. The national government’s ministries exercise strong central control over local governments. In recent years, the Japanese government has committed itself to a number of reforms, including greater decentralization of decision making to more local levels of administration (Tanimura and Edgington 2001, Edgington 2004; Hein and Pelletier 2006).5 The Hanshin earthquake struck at a time when the concept of citizen involvement in urban planning was becoming more accepted in Japan, though no models for participation yet existed, nor had procedures to be followed after disasters been developed. Successive City Planning Acts had been calling for more public-led debate and input into decision making, but without sufficient detail as to the form this would take. While cities struggled to implement the concept of citizen involvement, residents increasingly resisted the traditional one-way communication with decision makers (Hein and Pelletier 2006). Since the Hanshin earthquake, disaster prepararation and recovery has been discussed more explicitly in city-planning studies. Besides crafting disaster-prevention plans, local governments have been drafting long-term comprehensive development plans covering a broad range of issues. These have at least paid lip service to improved social services as well as to economic development and physical infrastructure. These plans are updated on a tenyear cycle, and as I will lay out in the next chapter, Kobe city was in the final stages of preparing a new comprehensive plan for the city when the earthquake struck (Beaumann 1998). A fourth point to make is that in the main, Japanese citizens have not expected a great deal from their governments. Japanese culture has fostered traditional forms of self-reliance, and little has been demanded of government even in times of great disaster (Ozerdem and Jacoby 2006). Phrases such as gaman (“endure”) and shikata ga nai (“it can’t be helped”) were often heard in Kobe following the 1995 earthquake. Clearly from this, not much was expected from the public sector in the way of disaster mitigation (Farrell 1995). Contrast this with the heavy demands often made by citizens in Western countries in the wake of similar catastrophes (Dynes and Tierney

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1994; North 2000). Conversely, national and local bureaucrats in Japan have not been required to pay much attention to the opinions of local citizens ( Jun and Wright 1996). Many commentators see this as due to the lack of a well-developed civil society vis-à-vis the power of the state (Schwartz and Pharr 2003; Pekkanen, 2006). Typically, planning systems in Japan have only gone through the motions of soliciting citizens’ participation. Barrett and Theriwel (1991) note that Japan has extremely lax legislation relating to public involvement in local environmental-impact assessments for major highways and airport construction. Such projects are essentially carried out in a technocratic way. A fifth feature of community recovery in Japan after disaster relates to Japan’s social homogeneity. The country’s urban underclass is small compared to what is found in many North American and European cities. This is despite the issues associated with social minorities such as burakumin (people dealing traditionally with leather and tannery industries) and with Korean and other non-Japanese residents and workers (see Weiner 1997). One interesting postwar shift in Japanese society has been that more and more seniors are living in older housing stock. As I record in Chapter 3, Kobe before the earthquake had distinct neighbourhoods of blue-collar workers and senior citizens. They were taking advantage of lower rents in pre-1960s wooden housing, much of it built in districts that had been laid out before modern building and planning codes had been introduced. As a result, they were more vulnerable than other residents of Kobe to quakes and fires (Beaumann 1998; Wisner et al. 2004). Yet another problem is the growing number of homeless people in Japanese cities. Wisner (1998) argues that the homeless in large cities such as Tokyo and Osaka are increasingly at risk in any major urban catastrophe. A final feature worth noting about Japanese urban planning is its rather idiosyncratic approach to publicly funded city development compared to those of the West (see, for example, Shapira, Masser, and Edgington 1994; Sorensen 2002). Scholars of Japanese planning practice have distinguished between two ideal types of responses to urban problems (see Table 2.1). One planning style is called toshikeikaku – literally “town planning.” This style is based on approaches adopted by Japan’s government more than one hundred years ago during the Meiji period (1868-1912) as part of the nation’s drive to catch up with Western countries. Toshikeikaku is decidedly “top down” and involves a highly legalistic and centralized line of attack by national and local government bureaucrats, who celebrate large-scale infrastructure projects such as “greenfield” industrial projects and waterfront land reclamation. Toshikeikaku developed out of a need to match the political, military, and economic strength of Western countries under the motto fukoku kyo¯hei (“wealthy nation, strong army”) (Samuels 1994). The other approach to planning, a much more recent and therefore a rather tentative one, has been

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Table 2.1 Differences between toshikeikaku and machizukuri approaches to urban development and improvement schemes in Japan Toshikeikaku

Machizukuri

•

Top-down planning

•

Bottom-up planning

•

Big infrastructure projects

•

Community-driven projects

•

Economic development oriented • Incremental improvements to existing urban areas

•

Controlled by national legislation • Informal regulations and design guidelines • Some use of kukakuseiri (land readjustment)



•

Examples of planning include • Examples of planning include coastal landfill projects, industrial controls on factories in residential kombina¯to (integrated heavy uses, local building design controls, industrial complexes), airports, local road widening, local urban park teleport development, and other provision, disaster-prevention “big projects” measures, and other local amenity projects Sources: Evans (2002); Hein (2001); Sorensen (2002); Watanabe (2007)

machizukuri – literally “city building.” This is a “bottom-up” style, local and small-scale in nature, designed to improve local amenities and to be sensitive to local needs and civic participation. The more localized style inherent in machizukuri relies on the mobilization of community resources and often resorts to volunteerism to conduct small-scale urban beautification and district improvement projects (see Hein 2001; Evans 2002; and Funck 2007). To date, machizukuri approaches are in the minority; toshikeikaku is still the dominant approach in urban policy. Sorensen and Funck (2007) present case studies of local citizen-based machizukuri planning groups, including a number that were active in Kobe city following the earthquake. Specific measures to improve existing urban districts in Japan are closely related to government-sponsored land readjustment projects (kukakuseiri) and negotiated urban-redevelopment projects (saikaihatsu). These techniques, which cannot be equated to public participation, rely on extensive negotiation with local landowners often in secret. An aversion to land expropriation, which is popular in the West, is due partly to a number of heavily publicized incidents that involved discord between government and the community over postwar development. These events included antipollution protests by local groups against heavy industry expansion in the 1960s as well as the conflict surrounding the building of Tokyo’s international

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airport at Narita, Chiba prefecture, in the 1960s and early 1970s (Apter and Sanwa 1984). In the case of Narita the government decided on an airport site without sufficient consultation with local farmers, sparking a tenacious protest movement that resulted in pitched battles between leftist demonstrators and police. In the years following its opening during 1974, Narita airport remained congested because some farmers continued to refuse to vacate land needed for a second runway (ibid.). Memories of Narita have lingered, and because of the hurdles in place against land acquisition, as well as inflated land prices during the 1980s, land readjustment and urban redevelopment programs in Japan have evolved to provide serviced land on the fringes of built-up areas as well as (more generally) to fund infrastructure improvements. These techniques typically entail replotting the original land parcels, together with selective expropriation through plot reduction. The objectives of designated improvement projects include wider and straighter roads to allow for rapid access in case of disaster; the provision of open spaces in the form of small neighbourhood parks; the provision of evacuation spaces; and the setting aside of land for local schools and other public buildings. Always the most controversial problem in land readjustment is that it results in private plots that are smaller than before (Doebele, Matsubara, and Nishiyama 1986). This complex approach to development is based on the fact that compulsory purchases of land by public authorities are much more difficult to arrange in Japan than in the West (Kotaka and Callies 2002). Because of the Narita debacle, and for more traditional cultural reasons, it is often assumed that traditional landowners will retain the right to stay in neighbourhoods affected by infrastructure upgrading. Consequently, when urban redevelopment projects are carried out today in Japan, there is a strong preference for negotiation and for consensus decision making as opposed to heavy-handed government compulsion (ibid.). As might be imagined, Japan’s cautious approach to land readjustment, which often entails protracted negotiations over community building, stands in stark contrast to the bold acquisition of private property for urban improvement by local government leaders that has long been a feature of cities such as Paris, London, and New York (see Fainstein 1994). In its favour, readjustment of existing plots allows long-time residents to remain in a local area. Also, this method often provides a relatively inexpensive means for public authorities to upgrade infrastructure and procure much needed open space. However, a large amount of time and patience is usually required for a community consensus to emerge over the precise details of any project. Despite the lead taken by local governments, for a land readjustment project to succeed there must be widespread support among the landowners involved. Indeed, a prominent role in land readjustment projects is played by the existing landowners themselves, who all have to agree to the overall

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objectives and specifics of any improvement project. (Further details of the Japanese approach to urban redevelopment are found in Archer 2000; Fukami 2000; and Sorensen 2000.)6 To close this section, I would underscore that formal Japanese legislation related to disasters has traditionally focused solely on providing immediate relief and shelter for victims (Shaw and Goda 2004). There has been no special agency or recognized procedure at the national or local level for planning the medium- to long-term revival of cities and regions in the event of a major disaster. As a consequence, the events that unfolded in Kobe after the Hanshin earthquake of January 1995 – Japan’s first urban earthquake disaster in the postwar period – required exceptional and ad hoc decisions to be made about how to rebuild stricken neighbourhoods and how to restore an entire region’s industry and commerce. The lack of any relevant national legislation for post-disaster reconstruction meant that there were no clear guidelines to assist Kobe’s rebuilding and socio-economic recovery. Indeed, a litany of important questions arose almost immediately. Where would the money for large-scale reconstruction come from? How would the national government intervene? How should local governments proceed with post-disaster planning? Should Kobe be rebuilt as it was before the disaster, or should it be different? Should reconstruction be carried out as rapidly as possible, or should there be a moratorium on building so that the city would have time to plan more comprehensively? What would be the priorities for redevelopment? Would the traditional tools of Japanese city planning such as land readjustment suffice, or would other models need to be introduced? If victims of quake-hit houses were living in structures that did not conform to the zoning laws before the disaster, should they be allowed to rebuild similar structures on the same sites? How soon would the voices of local residents and small businesses be heard, if ever? These important questions are in fact common to any post-disaster recovery anywhere. It is no surprise that they reflect many of the issues covered in the literature reviewed earlier in this chapter. In the wake of the Hanshin earthquake, these were vital questions for which central and local government planners had to find answers. After the 1995 catastophe, Kobe found itself entering largely uncharted territory. So for that matter did the whole country. Summing Up In this chapter I have examined many of the key issues affecting recovery from disasters and put forward a general framework that will be used in the remainder of this book to understand Kobe’s post-disaster reconstruction. This framework has four main elements: prior circumstances, the characteristics of the earthquake disaster, government actions, and community responses (see Figure 2.2). These dimensions will be used throughout the study

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to generalize from an in-depth consideration of Kobe city’s planning strategy and from detailed case studies of neighbourhood reconstruction and economic development. The chapter has also drawn attention to some distinctive Japanese urban planning practices and assumptions that influenced reconstruction outcomes in Kobe. Japan is distinctive from many countries in that it provides for each municipality (prefectures and cities) to prepare a disaster mitigation and response plan. However, there has been little government support for community reconstruction after a disaster. These and other Japanese cultural influences will be apparent in the material that follows. I now turn to look at the city of Kobe itself. In the following chapter, I review the conditions that affected outcomes during the reconstruction period as well as aspects of the crisis itself, focusing on some important geographical dimensions. The discussion commences with a description of the city’s development up to the 1995 disaster in order to place postearthquake reconstruction activities in their local and cultural context.

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3 Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

The news that Kobe was directly hit by an earthquake had major repercussions throughout Japan, particularly because of the enormity of the damage and, at the same time, due to the fact that even Kobe could be struck by an earthquake. During the 1,500 years that earthquake occurrence has been recorded in Japan, not once has Kobe been directly hit by an earthquake and it has always had the image of being a city safe from earthquakes.   — Kaji Hideki, UNCRD Director

Kobe is a fascinating and appealing city with a number of diverse attractions. These include one of the largest ports in the world and a spectacular natural setting. Kobe is backdropped by the Rokko¯ Mountains (see Figure 3.1). It has picturesque streets and a relatively mild climate. Located in the central part of the Japanese archipelago, the city is about three-and-a-half hours from Tokyo by shinkansen (Japan’s rapid “bullet train”). Before the 1995 earthquake it was home to roughly 1.5 million people in a municipal area of about 550 square kilometres (City of Kobe 1992). The city’s port is central to the local economy; this has been the case since the Japanese government first opened Kobe to the rest of the world in 1868 (see Figure 3.2). The local municipality subsequently improved and developed the harbour so that it would serve both as a commercial hub and as the stage for important cultural exchanges between west and east. This has lent Kobe a certain cosmopolitan aura popular with visitors, and conferred on it an atmosphere far different from that of Kyoto and Osaka, two much older nearby cities. The city has strived to welcome foreigners and has fostered international interchange. As a result, Kobe is the site of consulates from nations such as the Netherlands, Indonesia, the Philippines, and South Korea as well as the offices of many foreign companies. It hosts international schools – for example, the Canadian

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Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

Figure 3.1  Kobe and the Rokko¯ Mountains.  Source: Photograph courtesy of the City of Kobe

Figure 3.2  Kobe in the 1870s.  Source: Courtesy of the City of Kobe Museum

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Academy and the Norwegian School – and visitors to Japan have found it a very pleasant and agreeable place to live. The Port of Kobe is still operated by the city, and its continuous development in the twentieth century allowed many seaport-related industries to grow into major sectors of the urban economy, such as steel, shipbuilding, rubber production, and machinery. As well, the city attracted a wide array of trading companies and banks. More recently, Kobe has also built up a number of commuter “bedroom” communities for those working in Osaka, the major commercial city of both the Hanshin region and the much larger Kansai region of western Japan – the latter area comprises in excess of 15 million people (Noh and Kimura 1990).1 In the twenty years or so prior to the earthquake, the city’s economy had matured beyond its roots as an industrial port city, and the pace of growth occurred more slowly. Furthermore, in line with other urban areas of Japan, Kobe in the 1990s had become a municipality with a high proportion of seniors. For instance, 11.5 percent of the city’s population was over sixty-five by 1990; five years later, at the time of the quake, it had risen to 13.5 per cent, reflecting the rapid aging of Japanese society (Asian Urban Information Center of Kobe 2003). This chapter examines the city’s history and its distinctive approach to urban development. It then shows how the Hanshin earthquake produced a number of geographic outcomes that proved to be important in the reconstruction phase. 3.1 Kobe up to the Time of the Earthquake The Geography of Kobe The geography of Kobe is crucial to understanding the impact of the 1995 earthquake. For all intents and purposes, Kobe has three distinct areas (see Figure 3.3). First, there is a port and industrial zone along the coast, which includes two sizable artificial islands (Port Island and Rokko¯ Island). In the western part of this zone, factories and small wooden houses are densely built along the shoreline. Second, in the northern part of Kobe on either side of the Rokko¯ Mountains is a higher-class residential area that accounts for about 20 percent of the population and about 70 percent of the city’s land area. Third, in between these two zones lies an area of ribbon development comprising mixed residential, small-scale factory, and commercial activities. This area is about 30 kilometres long and from 2 to 4 kilometres wide (see Figure 3.3). At the time of the earthquake many people lived and worked in the western part of the city’s middle strip in blue-collar factory districts containing local neighbourhood shopping centres, often built in traditional arcade style (sho¯tengai). Here, in Kobe’s western Nagata ward (refer back to Figure 1.1) small-scale factories making “chemical shoes” (i.e.,

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Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

Figure 3.3  The City of Kobe, showing the industrial/harbour areas, residential/ commercial areas, and the Rokko¯ mountain area.  Source: Compiled from zoning maps provided by the City of Kobe

synthetic rubber shoes) developed into a well-known local industry. After the early post-Second World War period this industry employed large numbers of Korean-born and their descendents (Kim 1995). Across town, the eastern part of Kobe lies closer to the white-collar suburbs of adjoining Ashiya city (see Figure 1.1), which was developed mainly as a series of residential areas with very few workplaces. From residences on the eastern side of Kobe, people commute to office jobs in neighbouring Osaka. This district also contains a scattering of universities and colleges, lending it an ambience quite different from that of Kobe’s western mixed-use suburbs (City of Kobe 1992).2 Kobe’s Local Government System Under the Japanese system of local government, Kobe has nine individual city wards (shown in Figure 1.1). It is the centre of Hyo¯go prefecture, one of forty-seven prefectures in Japan (prefectures are a level of government above that of cities, towns, and villages). In 1956 Kobe was given special status as a “designated city” (seirei shitei toshi). This afforded it the same

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political recognition and administrative responsibilities as the surrounding Hyo¯go prefecture government. Hence the mayor of Kobe has direct access to the government in Tokyo, and unlike the leaders of smaller municipalities in Japan, the mayor is not required to communicate through the Hyo¯go prefecture governor’s office. Because Kobe is a designated city, its administrative bureaus can negotiate directly with their respective national government ministries regarding policies, programs, and funding arrangements. By way of illustration, the city’s urban redevelopment bureau has a direct link to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation (until 2001 called the Ministry of Construction) in terms of funding and also with regard to regulatory controls. Nonetheless, since the city is embedded in the social and economic fabric of the prefecture as a whole, it is required to align its development policies with those of Hyo¯go prefecture. Hyo¯go’s governor does not run Kobe (at the time of the earthquake this position was held by Kaihara Toshitami, elected between the years 1986 and 2001), but neither can he afford to ignore it, for the city is the largest in the prefecture and the seat of the prefectural government itself (see CLAIR 2004). Early Planning Before the 1995 earthquake, the Kobe region had already experienced a number of smaller yet significant disasters, such as typhoons, which strike Japan in the late summer and autumn. In particular, the Hanshin region suffered from serious flooding in 1938 when the cities of Kobe, Ashiya, and Nishinomiya – all within the narrow strip of land between the Rokko¯ Mountains and Osaka Bay – suffered landslides after torrential rains. About 70 percent of Kobe’s buildings were damaged at that time (Koshizawa 1995). City officials drew up a comprehensive reconstruction plan (fukko¯ keikaku) and together with the Hyo¯go prefecture authorities petitioned the national government vigorously for help executing it. However, the nation was then on a wartime footing and had few resources to spare for rebuilding Kobe and its suburbs. Indeed, the only work the national government was willing to underwrite at the time concerned limited improvements to the river systems leading down from the Rokko¯ Mountains to Osaka Bay. Plans to create two east-west trunk roads (16 metres wide) – one running along the bay, the other close to the mountains – and another plan to build a city bypass farther north through the hilly region, together with proposals to construct a new central park, were all put off for lack of adequate funds (ibid.). By the time the Second World War ended in 1945, large parts of Kobe, Ashiya, and Nishinomiya had been destroyed by American air raids. Consequently these cities once again turned their attention to reconstruction planning. In March 1946, Kobe unveiled its first in a series of long-term master plans for postwar recovery and improvement. That first plan included the rationalization of irregular property boundaries in districts covering 2,100

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Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

hectares (about 70 percent of the urbanized area at that time) as well as plans for new streets and parks and a greening program. City planners would apply traditional toshikeikaku (land readjustment) approaches to these projects. Eventually the national and local governments built three east-west trunk roads linking Osaka and Kobe; they also either expanded or created a number of city parks. Greenbelts measuring 70 metres in width were to have been constructed along the rivers running north to south from the hills to the bay at intervals of roughly 2 kilometres, thereby improving the city’s ambience while at the same time containing floods or fires in times of disaster. A 100-metre-wide grand boulevard was proposed for the urban district between the Shin-Ikuta and Toga Rivers to serve a similar purpose. However, these projects were called off in the 1950s, again owing to lack of government funding (Koshizawa 1995). As a result, the inner-city areas that had escaped bombing in the 1940s fell victim to the economic austerity programs and restrictions on public spending first imposed at the behest of the American occupation authorities, which were stationed in Japan up to 1951 (Hein 2003; Ishida 2003). During the 1960s land readjustment in Kobe reorganized much of the Sannomiya central business area as well as suburban streets in the eastern wards (Chu ¯o ¯ , Nada, and Higashi-Nada wards). The city’s plans at this time also identified that the cramped inner wards of western Kobe – the ones with older wooden housing – were vulnerable to fire disaster. Because the local communities in parts of Nagata and Hyo¯go wards were unable to cooperate with one another or with the municipal planners, the city gave up its plans for land readjustment in these areas (Nishikawa and Murahashi 1999). Figure 3.4 indicates the areas designated for upgrading in Kobe since 1945. Priority was given to war-damaged districts and to those districts where the city surmised that the streets needed to be remodelled in order to address problems of high population concentration and rapid economic growth. These areas cover most of Kobe. The area around Shin-Nagata station in Nagata ward (together with the district north of Rokko¯ station in the eastern part of the city) was conspicuous for its absence from any formal improvement plan. In terms of postwar disaster mitigation, to all intents and purposes the major concern was the possibility of flooding and landslides triggered by typhoons. By comparison, the city placed little priority on the necessary upgrading of old, narrow street patterns in the inner western area – that is, in Nagata and Hyo¯go wards. Both wards were characterized then – and for the most part still are – by their concentration of one- and two-storey bluecollar housing and also by their narrow streets. Many of the latter are just 4 metres wide and are dwarfed by telegraph poles and TV aerials, which impede fire trucks and other emergency vehicles. This would prove to be catastrophic in the wake of the Hanshin quake and fires of January 1995.

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Figure 3.4  Areas designated for improvement in the City of Kobe prior to the earthquake.  Source: Adapted from a plan supplied by the City of Kobe

Kobe also turned its attention to the more general problem of geographic constraints – that is, to its shortage of land for industrial expansion – as well as to its inadequate port facilities at a time of rapid expansion of world trade (Kobe Ports and Harbors Office 2005). During the mature-growth period of the 1970s and 1980s, Kobe gained a reputation as a rather creative city in terms of its local planning and development. This particular standing had two quite distinct dimensions. “Kobe Inc.” First, the city emerged as an energetic public developer, as reflected in the oft-used term “Kobe Inc.” (kabushiki gaisha Kobe). This of course was a cliché that mirrored the “Japan Inc.” label, one used to characterize a national approach to development whereunder public- and private-sector forces came together to promote economic growth (Ishinomori 1988). Kobe, too, combined the strengths of the public and private sectors. Urban development progressed during the high-growth period of Japan’s postwar economy; however, by the late 1970s Kobe realized that its “smokestack” industries

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Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

based around the port (steel and shipbuilding) had ended their growth cycle and that the city’s economic future needed to be rethought. During the fifteen or so years before the earthquake the city took steps to shift its image from that of an industrial port toward that of an “urban resort”; this included launching campaigns to attract tourists from other parts of Japan to the city’s historic buildings and other attractions. It also entailed restructuring the economy toward new consumer- and service-oriented industries (e.g., fashionoriented companies and the urban convention business). This strategy was viewed as distinctive in a part of Japan that had long relied on heavy manufacturing and small-scale industry (Fujimori 1980). At the same time, Kobe’s administration under long-serving mayor Miyazaki Tatsuo (1969-89) carried out many large-scale projects, including new industrial parks in the Rokko¯ Mountains as well as bayside land reclamation projects to extend the port’s facilities and to provide space for new privatesector development. The first stage in all of this to be completed, in 1981, was Port Island (see Figure 3.5), an artificial island of around 480 hectares developed for a comprehensive range of harbour and urban infrastructure, including multirise housing, commercial zones, and public facilities. This project was popularized through an international exposition that same year called “Portopia,” an event that made a ¥6 million profit for the city (US$150,000 at the time). Then in 1992-93, Kobe city finished Rokko¯ Island (580 hectares), another artificial island, and Harborland, a redeveloped waterfront area (see Figure 3.5). In developing these sites, the municipal government took on the huge task of moving earth from the Rokko¯ Mountains to build islands in Osaka Bay. A second stage of Port Island (390 hectares) was under way by 1995, and plans were being made to develop an airport for Kobe just south of this project on yet another artificial island (Figure 3.5). At the same time, new industrial and residential sites were being created both inland and along the waterfront (City of Kobe 1992). These large-scale projects earned Kobe’s city government a reputation as Japan’s foremost public developer (Miyamoto 1996a). Kobe Inc.’s approach was successful financially as long as there continued to be a demand for land in the city’s projects among the private sector – a situation that certainly applied up to the end of the 1980s, owing to postwar economic expansion and to land speculation (Wood 1992). After the early 1990s, however, an overheated (“bubble”) economy at the local and national level cooled suddenly, which struck Rokko¯ and Port Island hard. This was all the more problematic in that the city had raised its own capital to carry out these projects by issuing overseas bonds, mainly in German currency. This had been advantageous in the 1980s, for arbitrage reasons, but when the yen stabilized in the 1990s, these loan repayments became costly. Moreover, in the years leading up to the earthquake, the economic recession in Japan – together with declining land values – was making it more and more

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Figure 3.5  Plans of Port Island, Rokko¯ Island, and Harborland.  Source: Compiled from maps and data provided by the City of Kobe

difficult to encourage private-sector investment in development projects funded by the public sector. Consequently, much of the reclaimed land in the second stage of Port Island was still unsold at the time of the quake. Similar problems arose with housing units built by the city in suburban new towns north of the Rokko¯ Mountains (i.e., many remained vacant). Hirayama (2000) reports that when local government bond redemption rates exceed 20 percent of their annual income, most municipalities in Japan consider their finances headed toward a critical situation. In Kobe’s case the bond redemption rate had reached 22.5 percent a year before the earthquake. This would influence Kobe’s response to the 1995 disaster; the city would be desperate to secure funds and would require national government subsidies for reconstruction (see Chapter 4).

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Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

Early Attempts at Machizukuri A second dimension to Kobe’s image as a creative planner was its emphasis on citizen participation. This was often called “the Kobe system” or “the Kobe formula” because this sort of partnership with residents was viewed as exceptional in otherwise technocratic Japan (Kodama 1996). Beginning in the early 1970s the city experimented with ways to hear citizens’ views. These included a “letter to the Mayor” and a “citizens’ proposals” system (City of Kobe 1992). At the district level, the city supported neighbourhoods that took the initiative with local-based planning – the machizukuri approach. Thus the western inner suburb of Mano (in Nagata ward) became celebrated for its own style of community-based planning and for its struggle against 1970s overcongestion, industrial pollution, and urban decay (see Evans 2002).3 Following on this largely successful experiment in Mano, in 1981 the city passed a more general bylaw establishing a procedure whereby local residents could take the lead in addressing issues connected with their local environment, such as the desired mixture of housing and industry in the same urban block, the need to correct environmental deterioration, and the prevention of overcrowding (Kawamura, Hirohara, and Yamashita 1996). By the early 1990s the Mano community had gone further down the road to local planning than anywhere else in Japan, with regulations on the construction of housing and factories, the width of roads, the creation of parks, and in general the quality of the environment. Other crowded and rundown innercity neighbourhoods became involved in planning their own regeneration, relying on the municipal government for advice and guidance. As a result, Kobe became the first city in Japan to promote machizukuri kyo¯gikai (local planning associations) to encourage residents’ involvement in the planning process (Sorensen 2002). The major point here is that machizukuri planning in Kobe had already been in place before the earthquake, based on what were largely cooperative relationships between the city administration and residents’ associations. As I will discuss in Chapter 5, the prior experience of working with local residents’ groups eventually proved decisive in the city’s approach to Kobe’s reconstruction following the Hanshin earthquake. Comprehensive Planning and the “Inner City Problem” Yet another aspect of Kobe’s pre-earthquake planning – though in this case not as distinctive compared to other Japanese cities – was its commitment to comprehensive planning. This started in the 1970s and was required for all local governments under national legislation. Kobe’s most recent “master plan” (dai yonji Ko¯be-shi keikaku zentei shu ¯ ) – its fourth in the postwar period – was completed in draft form in early January 1995, just days before the earthquake. It listed city projects and development plans to be carried out between that year and 2010 (Kawamura, Hirohara, and Yamashita 1996;

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interview with Honjo¯ Yu ¯ ichi, Manager, City Planning Division, City of Kobe, May 2003). However, despite the comprehensive methodology used in developing this and previous master plans, the approach proved inadequate to deal with a number of challenges that had emerged in the years leading up to the disaster. A particular problem for the city was the continuing deterioration of pockets of inner-city housing that had escaped the Allied bombings of the 1940s. A lack of inner-city projects to replace older housing in sufficient numbers has been a weakness in all of Japan’s major cities. In Kobe’s particular case, many parts of its western inner area (especially Nagata ward and Hyo¯go ward; see Figure 1.1) were still crowded with old wooden buildings dating from the 1950s and earlier. As already noted, these lay alongside narrow substandard lanes only a few metres wide that were unable to accommodate fire trucks and other emergency vehicles (see Figures 3.6 and 3.7). The inner-city environment was inferior to that of the newer suburban districts laid out and built by the city itself in the post-1970s in Tarumi, Nishi, and Kita wards (see Figure 1.1). Because the housing developments in the suburbs were better planned and more spacious, they had attracted many younger families from the existing urban core; over time this led to

Figure 3.6  Narrow streets and row houses in the Higashi Shiriike-cho¯, 5-cho¯me district of Kobe’s Nagata ward.  Source: Based on a map in Kinmokusei International Project (1999)

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Figure 3.7  A damaged narrow street in Kobe.  Source: Photograph courtesy of the City of Kobe

a declining and older inner-city population (Hirayama 2000). By the 1990s this movement to the northern suburbs of Kobe had resulted in a steady “greying” of the city’s inner areas owing to the large proportion of seniors left behind in these districts, as well as to an overall decline in community vitality and economic prosperity. Problems noted by the planners – but rarely acted on effectively – included reduced employment opportunities for innercity residents as commercial investment relocated along with the population to the housing developments in the outer areas. This left much of the city’s social infrastructure – such as inner-city shops and schools – underutilized (interview with Tomogane Ko¯ichi, International Division, International Department, City of Kobe, July 1996). Table 3.1 indicates the characteristics of Kobe’s nine wards at the time of the 1990 census – the most recent at the time of the quake. It shows that the inner-city Nagata and Hyo¯go wards ranked either first or second in terms of population decline in the ten years prior to the census and that these two wards were either first or second in terms of the percentage of population over sixty-five, rental housing, and the presence of a blue-collar workforce as well as of foreign workers (mainly Korean nationals residing in Japan for several generations). Kobe responded to this pattern of inner-city decline in a number of ways. Where the city administration was able to secure land, it tried to respond

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2.5

% non-Japanese in population

6.9

38.0

16.4

34.3

16.4

-16.5

Nagata

1.8

46.5

18.8

28.2

18.8

-6.0

Hyo ¯go

West side

7.3

44.9

13.5

20.6

13.5

0.8

¯ Chu ¯o

2.4

46.9

10.1

22.2

14.2

-8.9

1.3

35.3

6.8

22.3

10.8

3.9

Higashi-Nada

East side Nada

Inner city wards

Source: Derived from data contained in Statistics Bureau, Management and Coordination Agency (1982, 1992)

Note: For ward boundarioes, see Figure 3.3. 1 Nishi ward was part of Tarumi ward in 1980.

19.6

% rental housing stock (excludes   apartment buildings)

5.0

24.7

% blue-collar occupations in labour   force

% population living in rental   housing units

9.7

% aged over 65 years in population

Suma 17.2

1

% change in population, 1980-90







1.0

19.0

5.4

24.2

9.5

44.7

Tarumi

0.9

10.1

3.8

23.5

9.3

20.5

Kita

0.6

15.3

3.5

26.9

7.9

n.a.

2.4

29.6

6.9

25.1

11.5

8.0

Nishi Kobe total

Suburban wards

A profile of Kobe city’s wards prior to the Hanshin earthquake: population, labour, and housing characteristics (percentage of ward total), 1990

Table 3.1

48

Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

with incremental measures to promote urban renewal in rundown inner-city districts as well as to restore community vitality. The city’s Harborland project of new shops and restaurants, developed after the closing of redundant waterfront steel mills and other heavy industries, was a successful example of this (see Figure 3.5). Whenever possible, the city supplied inner-city housing of its own, operating a system of loans and subsidies to encourage young families to move back into the inner areas. The overall approach was to make these areas more attractive places to live and work. Unfortunately, some problems seemed almost impossible to address, including these: inferior wooden housing, irregular property allotments, narrow roads, and the proximity of older industrial premises to homes (Honjo¯ interview). In hindsight, Kobe’s planners made a terrible mistake – they simply did not anticipate a large earthquake in this region, and as a result the series of postwar comprehensive plans contained little in the way of widespread disaster mitigation or programs for recovery and reconstruction. As already intimated, up until 1995 the biggest disaster threat had been perceived to be typhoons and their associated tidal waves, the flooding of local rivers, and landslides from the Rokko¯ Mountains. In the post-Second World War years, most disaster mitigation efforts in the Hanshin region had involved promoting river and forestry conservation projects – in particular, strengthening regulations and supervision over private and public development projects along riverbanks and on hillsides. Kaji (1995, 1), in the extract that opens this chapter, noted that during the 1,500 or so years that earthquakes had been recorded in Japan, not once had Kobe been struck directly: “It had always the image of being a city safe from earthquakes.” While some seismologists had warned that an earthquake registering 6 or 7 on the Japanese scale of 7 could originate close to Kobe, municipal disaster preparedness was directed predominantly at typhoons. What is more, the city poured tremendous energy into relatively easy-to-develop suburbs in the northern wards and reclaimed islands along the coast, but it could not (or would not) do much at all about the old and congested industrial and residential districts of its inner city. As will soon be shown, those districts – in the city’s core – were where the quake took its heaviest toll. The above narrative has provided an outline of the pre-existing situation in Kobe prior to the quake (factor 1 in Figure 2.2). Almost fifty years after the firebombs of the Second World War, Kobe found itself again in ruins. This time the disaster was natural and – unlike the destruction wrought by war – entirely capricious. But as was the case a half-century before, the city found itself with a golden opportunity to begin anew. What should be done to rebuild Kobe? How should it be rebuilt? Who would rebuild it, and at what cost? To place reconstruction planning in further perspective, an account will now be made of the extent of the disaster and its impact (factor 2 in Figure 2.2). To be more precise, the next section of the chapter examines

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to what degree events following the earthquake coloured the pace and focus of longer-term reconstruction. 3.2 The Geography of Crisis The Hanshin earthquake affected a wide area – 700 square kilometres (about 275 square miles) – and affected 4 million people (including thousands of foreign residents). In Kobe, the quake caused around ¥10 trillion (US$100 billion) in damage and drove about 100,000 people from the city.4 But as will be described shortly, the specific impacts of the crisis varied widely within the damaged area, not only due to the physical layout of the city, but also owing to certain social characteristics in the Kobe region. Furthermore, exactly how the disaster unfolded in the days following the quake shaped many of the opportunities and challenges for post-quake reconstruction. My analysis reveals that geography and spatial relationships were implicated in the Kobe crisis in three crucial ways: first, through the character of the quake’s initial impact and its interaction with the physical environment; second, through the spatial nature of human vulnerability to the calamity; and third, through particular aspects of the reconstruction process itself. This section clarifies these assertions, beginning with a discussion of the disaster’s impact. It then examines the national and local governments’ initial recovery and assistance efforts – the “emergency phase” in Kates and Pijawka’s schema (see Figure 2.1). The material reveals how the severity of the earthquake and fires of January 17, 1995, did much to shape whom the victims of the disaster would be. This account also reveals the uneven responses taken by the public and private sectors in terms of emergency shelters, new housing, and new urban investment. Finally, an examination will be made of population loss and revival in Kobe following the disaster. The Geography of the Disaster: Earthquake and Fires To begin with, the earthquake was like a “perfect storm” inflicted on Kobe in that the zone of strongest shaking aligned perfectly with the centre of the city (see Figure 1.1). Thus the natural geography of Kobe and its environs contributed to the chaos in the immediate post-quake period. Indeed, most of the building destruction, injuries, loss of life, and social dislocation caused by homelessness after the disaster occurred along a 25-by-3-kilometre “damage strip” stretching southwest to northeast.5 This narrow ribbon coincided with the most highly urbanized area of the city, home to 80 percent of the city’s population at densities of around 6,800 persons per square kilometre. While surrounding areas were also affected (including the neighbouring cities of Ashiya and Nishinomiya, as well as Osaka and Kyoto), the areas most affected by destruction and lost lives ran from Suma ward in the west of the city to Higashi-Nada ward in the east (see Figure 1.1). These districts accounted for around 7,000 hectares (13 percent) of the entire municipal

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Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

area; in 1995, they were also home to roughly half the city’s total population (City of Kobe 1995d). Kobe’s distinctive topography meant that the transportation arteries linking eastern and western Japan had to pass through a narrow corridor of the inner city. Since the earthquake caused especially severe damage in an area running parallel to the coast, many rail and expressway transport structures were destroyed, fragmenting the local transport networks and isolating local communities. By way of example, the collapse of the east-west Hanshin Expressway robbed the relief forces of their main transportation artery and threw emergency operations into disarray. In the event of a catastrophe this highway was to be used as the primary emergency response route for transporting assistance and goods to stricken areas. Furthermore, the two artificial islands, Port Island and Rokko¯ Island, were completely cut off from the mainland when their new transit systems and connecting bridges were destroyed. The breakdown in transportation severely disrupted communications and the delivery of relief supplies. The resulting delays in providing immediate assistance only added to the local people’s indignation in the days following the quake. Without the necessities of life, the survivors felt painfully insecure. Commuters, shoppers, and students were completely deprived of their transportation by the quake (Asano 1995).6 Coincident with the earthquake, about 100 fires broke out within minutes, mainly because of leaking gas. Many of these were in the densely built twostorey wooden housing areas of Nagata, Higashi-Nada, and Suma wards in the west of the city.7 These were the very areas that had been untouched by bombing during the Second World War. They had survived that catastrophe only to be doomed forty years later by an unexpected earthquake. Those districts had been left unimproved, their streets unwidened, as their populations grew in the 1950s and 1960s. As a result, some 82 hectares of the city area were lost in the fires that broke out right after the quake (Nagame 1995; and see Figure 1.4). The number of fire engines and firefighters that could be mobilized in the crowded inner-city districts proved to be completely inadequate; and because the water supply had been cut off by the quake, not enough water could be drawn from fire hydrants. On top of this, the firefighters and ambulance services often arrived too late after being caught in severe traffic jams. It was fortunate indeed that the weather on January 17 was calm; had it been windy, the fires would have spread more quickly (see Murosaki 2005). The Emergency Phase In the days immediately following the quake, many concerns were raised regarding the national and local governments’ crisis-management performance. In addition, people’s confidence in Japan’s civil engineering technology was shattered. This disquiet revolved around the apparent lack of

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preparedness for a large earthquake in Kobe and the widespread damage to key infrastructure, including the city’s port but also its expressways and bridges. In addition, criticisms were raised about the utter confusion that developed in government and administrative circles in the immediate rescue and recovery period. Indeed, Japan’s crime syndicates – the yakuza – out­ performed the city government in terms of getting food and other supplies to the earthquake victims (see Sato¯ 1995; Terry 1998). The focus of my research is the longer-term post-disaster reconstruction rather than the immediate response to the crisis. Nonetheless, it is worth noting at the outset certain aspects of the public’s anxiety, considering that these early government responses would markedly strengthen negative perceptions of the city’s administration and its post-disaster reconstruction planning. Specifically, local residents would excoriate the national government for its delay in deploying the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) – Japan’s equivalent of the US National Guard – for rescue operations. Internal reports of the quake’s magnitude were slow to reach the government in Tokyo, and the government severely miscalculated the scale of the disaster. In fact, the prime minister (Murayama Tomiichi, 1994-96) did not obtain any official information about the temblor at his residence in Tokyo for the first two hours (see Appendix A). The SDF were not dispatched to the disaster for another four hours, and the initial SDF team had only 170 personnel. By the fourth day, however, troop deployment had soared, with about 14,600 SDF personnel employed in the disaster zone helping with rescue and relief work (Soeya 1995).8 Local governments – both the city and the prefecture – were also censured, mainly for not taking immediate command over key emergency routes (to avoid traffic congestion), for the general shortage of water for fighting the post-earthquake fires, and for having no immediate means to call in firefighting units from nearby cities unaffected by the quake. Many local officers of the city’s firefighting and ambulance services were themselves affected by the disaster in various ways and failed to turn up for work for several days. In the eyes of the quake victims, additional casualties had been caused by an inadequate response and poor coordination among different levels of government (Fukushima 1995). The national authorities’ efforts were widely criticized in the mass media as slow and badly synchronized (Nakamura 2000). Japan refused initially to allow international aid, and this was seen as an act of vanity by a government unwilling to admit it could not manage the problem alone (Nishimura and Chiba 1995).9 Critics contended that Japan’s top-down political economy and centralized bureaucracy had prevented emergency services and personnel from responding effectively “on the ground” (“Many” 1995). For instance, under protocols established by the disaster-response legislation enacted in the early 1960s, local governments had to request emergency support from the

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national government and would only receive it if a state of emergency could be proved. This overly bureaucratic process caused critical delays in Kobe: many lives could have been saved had there been enough rescue forces to search quickly in the rubble of collapsed houses (Terry 1998). The government’s own study of the earthquake would report that up to 70 percent of the deaths occurred on the morning of January 17 and were partly a result of the slow response of national and local governments (Tierney and Goltz 1997). Needless to say, these early blunders caused the general population’s confidence in the city’s administration to slide.10 By contrast, and in a more positive vein, much was made in the popular press of how the quake victims reacted stoically to their misfortune. There were few reports of vandalism or looting, and in the immediate aftermath of the quake, thousands of volunteers acted unselfishly. Indeed, many came to Kobe spontaneously to assist in the emergency, even though local governments were ill equipped to work well with NGOs (non-government organizations, sometimes called NPOs, or non-profit organizations) and volunteers, as there was no structure for them to fit into (Kusachi 1995; Hamano 1995; “Three Months” 1995). The Geography of the Victims of the Quake A second geographical feature of the disaster had to do with where the victims lived. It is a truism that earthquakes are only a disaster if there are vulnerable people in their way (Cannon 1994; Wisner et al. 2004). Also, vulnerability can be fickle. This axiom can best be seen through the “geography of crisis” theme, which in this case refers to how Kobe’s highly uneven physical and social geography not only contributed to the devastating impact of the quake but also played a role in how disaster risks and outcomes were distributed disproportionately throughout the city. Thus, beyond the immediate damage sustained to housing and other physical infrastructure, such as transportation lines and the port, an analysis of the earthquake shows clearly that disaster risks were unequally meted out in Kobe. As noted in many other studies, the victims of any disaster tend to be the old, the very young, the disabled, the poor, and others politically and economically disadvantaged (Hewitt 1997). I have already shown that a substantial proportion of the victims in Kobe were elderly – which highlights that senior citizens are especially vulnerable when disaster strikes (see also Miyamoto 1996a, b).11 The analysis of census data by ward in Table 3.1 indicates more precisely the geography of the victims. It shows that the inner wards of Nagata and Hyo ¯ go, which were badly damaged by the quake and subsequent fires, tended also to have higher-than-average percentages of seniors and rental housing. For instance, in Nagata ward in 1990, 16.4 percent of the residents were over sixty-five; for Hyo¯go ward the figure was 18.8 percent. Both figures were

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Figure 3.8  Emergency refuge in a school.  Source: Photograph courtesy of the City of Kobe

higher than the city’s average of 11.5 percent and nearly double the rates for suburban Tarumi, Kita, and Nishi wards. Hirayama (2000) casts more light on Kobe’s social geography. His study indicates that before the earthquake there was a marked difference in income between the suburban and urban areas of the city. For example, 42 percent of households in the western Hyo¯go ward and 39 percent in Nagata ward had incomes of less than ¥3 million per year (US$30,000), compared to less than 20 percent of households in the suburban Nishi ward. Moreover, many seniors living in the inner city were used to paying very low rents and so were greatly disadvantaged by the destruction of housing. Hirayama reported also that quake victims who were sixty or older tended to live in wooden apartments or tenement houses at low rents – between ¥20,000 and ¥30,000 (US$200 to $300) per month. In short, many of the displaced were elderly (toshi yori) and poor living in low-rent, dilapidated housing in the inner western suburbs of Kobe. Clearly, one prominent feature of the earthquake was an uneven distribution of vulnerability. As will be discussed later, the large number of elderly victims in Nagata and other western wards signalled that it would be necessary for the city to somehow provide special services for inner-city residents, in the form of low-rent public housing for tenants or funds for the reconstruction of private dwellings. Welfare and medical help for aged people displaced and traumatized by the quake would also be essential.

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Within hours of the earthquake, survivors took refuge in public schools, city halls, hospitals, community centres, gymnasiums, and playgrounds (see Figure 3.8). All told, about 320,000 people lost their homes and sought safety in parks and schools, often cold, in shock, and fearing afterquakes. To make matters worse, over a vast region supplies of electricity, gas, and water had been cut off and telephone lines had been interrupted, forcing people in the affected areas to live in very difficult conditions with a lack of food and water (Hyo¯go Prefecture 1996a). In an era just before the mass introduction of cellphone technology and the Internet, the loss of land-line telephone communications was an especially severe hindrance to daily life. The hundred or so formally designated emergency shelters quickly became crowded, leaving many evacuees living in tents set up by the victims themselves in parks, green spaces, and parking lots. Figure 3.9 confirms that as of January 23, some seven days after the quake, more than 316,000 people had evacuated their dwellings throughout the Hanshin region. The geographical distribution of victims displaced to official refuges (see Figure 3.10) substantiates that the vast majority were in Kobe. After some days, many victims chose to return to their homes even though these had been partly destroyed (many would later be condemned). Others left the stricken area altogether to seek refuge outside the Hanshin region as soon as private transportation was available (Hay 1995 a, b, c). Of the evacuees, well over 235,000 in Kobe were living in emergency shelters – mainly elementary schools and junior high schools. Others survived in tents pitched in schoolyards and parks (see Table 1.1). Prolonged living in shelters in cramped conditions, sleeping on the floor or on tatami mats ( Japanese straw mats) without adequate bedding, caused emotional fatigue to seniors in particular,

Figure 3.9  Number of evacuees, January to August 1995, Hyo¯go prefecture.  Source: Hyo¯go prefecture (2005a)

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Figure 3.10  Location of shelters and number of refugees, January 1995. Note: numbers of refugees shown in brackets.  Source: Data provided by the City of Kobe

along with negative psychological effects and inconvenience owing to the delays in restoring lifeline infrastructure (electricity, water, sewerage).12 The Restoration Process and the Geography of Temporary Housing A third aspect of the geography of the crisis related to Kobe’s immediate relief and the provision of temporary public housing for earthquake victims. This period covers parts of the “emergency phase” and “restoration phase” under Kates and Pijawka’s schema (see Figure 2.1). In the first few months after the disaster, the main priorities were clearing away the overflowing debris and constructing temporary housing for those who had lost their houses. By the end of 1995 the replacement of private housing (for some) was accelerating, and planning had commenced for a major public housing program. Chapter 4 discusses restoration arrangements in further detail; here it can be noted that more than ¥16 trillion (US$162.5 billion) in national government money was invested during the first year after the quake to reconstruct and rehabilitate roads, the port, and other infrastructure; these were given priority and restored at a rapid pace.

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As might be expected, the displaced quake victims yearned to leave the emergency shelters in schools and parks and return to the lives they had led and the homes they had known before the disaster. This, however, would require the building of replacement residences in the communities damaged by the quake, which was far easier said than done. The biggest problems were two: few in Kobe had any insurance money to draw from; and there were no public agencies (similar to the US FEMA or SBA [Small Business Administration]) in place (at least initially) to provide loans and grants to the evacuees. As noted earlier, Japan’s approach after disasters had generally been to repair public infrastructure, with individuals relying on themselves for their own recovery, especially in terms of housing and income support. Consequently, the national government’s stance during early 1995 was to refuse to distribute any cash assistance for rebuilding; instead it opted for benefit “in kind” (meaning temporary housing units) based on the provisions of the Disaster Relief Law, even though this was clearly incompatible with the large-scale devastation and the needs at hand in post-earthquake Kobe (Kikumoto 2005). Thus, faced with the immediate need to repair broken houses but having no access to extra income, those survivors who had lost housing and who were in the prime of their working years were required to take out extra loans for house repair or rebuilding. This was in addition to finding funds for basic daily necessities and repaying existing house mortgages.13 For elderly victims, the act of borrowing additional funds to replace shattered homes was usually out of the question owing to their lack of income and/or lack of any collateral (“Kobe Seeks” 1995). In numerous cases disaster victims who had owned land, but few resources, or who had lived in private rental housing were forced to abandon any hope of rebuilding and to rely instead on the public authorities’ housing assistance. Those survivors who were younger and/or who owned their land were usually more secure and so did not need public accommodation, and started to rebuild their own homes within a year or two of the disaster (Honjo¯ interview). The Kobe city government, to its credit, recognized the burden on those residents who were having to fund housing recovery through loans, and proposed that a national emergency relief fund be established to cover at least part of the remaining payments on loans for homes lost in natural disasters. This appeal was rejected by the national government in Tokyo, which reasoned that taxpayer money could not and should not be used to reconstruct private properties unless there was a special and well-recognized need.14 In lieu of any national funding, the city founded its own low-interest housing loan program from the Hanshin Earthquake Recovery Fund (discussed in detail later). Besides house owners, many of these loans went to residential condominium owners who had no alternative funds to pay repair

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costs, particularly after their neighbours decided to repair the entire condo building (“Kobe Seeks” 1995). Still, despite the ungenerous stance of the national government, an important component of post-disaster relief in Kobe involved the public authorities providing a large amount of temporary housing for those left homeless. Under the Disaster Relief Law there was a long-standing assumption that temporary housing would be made available free of charge for all who had lost their homes in quakes, fires, and other disasters.15 Thus in Kobe many thousands of people who immediately after the quake were forced to live in emergency shelters were accommodated during 1995 in temporary housing (“Kobe ‘Closes’” 1995). Much of this housing consisted of singlestorey barrack-style units provided by the prefecture and the city. Most of these units had just two rooms and about 26 square metres of floor space (see Figures 3.11 and 3.12). As might be imagined, these units were hastily built and were unsuitable for long-term living; they were either too hot in the summer or too noisy in the Japanese rainy season (Kanaji 2005; see Figure 3.13). The temporary housing program in Kobe proved to be an extremely thorny and high-profile issue. Speed was critical, but there was no standard operating procedure for implementing such a large program. Locations needed to be identified in land-strapped Kobe; units then had to be transported and constructed and allocations made to the city’s refugees. As about 149,000 houses across the Hanshin region had been damaged beyond repair in the quake, the national government decided to allocate funds to local governments sufficient to build and manage 48,500 units of this “temporary housing” (about one-third of damaged units). The preparation started two days after the earthquake, and by the end of March 1995 the first 30,000 units had been constructed. The rest had been completed by August (seven months after the quake) through a concerted effort by the national and local governments as well as private construction companies, including more than 1,000 units located outside Hyo¯go prefecture ( Jo¯ 1995; Kanaji 2005). In the absence of established policies, evacuees in Kobe’s schools were given access to temporary housing according to a lottery system. Also, a portion of the units were reserved for the elderly, disabled people, and children who lost both parents (Beaumann 1998). This allocation might appear fair, but it had two unfortunate outcomes. First, little regard was paid to the original neighbourhood that victims came from, and this led to the breakup of established communities, with many people living in temporary housing complexes next door to strangers. This tended to work against any “natural” formation of support networks in the temporary housing complexes through the maintenance of neighbourhood ties. A second effect was that some temporary housing sites were occupied almost solely by the elderly and the disabled. Takagi (1996) notes that while the percentage of elderly in the Kobe

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Source: Based on a plan given to the author by Professor Sazanami Hidehiko

Figure 3.11  Temporary housing project in Sumiyoshi Park, No. 2 Emergency Housing, Higashi-Nada ward. 

Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

59

Figure 3.12  Plan of temporary housing units (two units are shown here, side by side). Note: measurements in mm.  Source: Shiozaki (1996)

Figure 3.13  Temporary housing, Chu ¯ o¯ ward.  Source: Photograph courtesy of the City of Kobe

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city population as a whole was around 14 percent in 1995, this demographic group comprised over 30 percent of all temporary housing residents during the same year. The transfer of so many seniors into shelters in large-scale projects, often in relatively remote locations throughout the urban region, led to a kind of “culture shock” for many elderly evacuees, and some fell ill and suffered depression. So even though the temporary accommodation was free, forming temporary communities was a struggle for residents and operators alike. Many problems arose because no special funds had been set aside for formal counselling or to provide home help programs in these transitory communities. In response to these needs, volunteers as well as NGOs did the best they could to foster a sense of community for those living in temporary shelters (HIC 1996). The spatial distribution of temporary housing projects was an especially difficult problem. One notable reason for this was the challenge of finding suitable public land in crowded Kobe that could be used for this type of accommodation – especially in the inner wards, where most of the quakerelated damage had occurred and consequently where most of the homeless came from. Temporary housing in the city would have to be built on public land. The bureaucrats in Tokyo had ruled that if temporary housing were built on private land, this would amount to a national government subsidy for the development of private property. That was not allowable under a strict interpretation of the law. In addition, the government worried that if privately owned land were used, there might be trouble later if the residents refused to move out when asked to do so (Kanaji 2005). Yet Kobe had a unique resource that few cities in Japan could boast of – public land on the yet undeveloped Rokko¯ Island, and on land that had been identified for future development on the outskirts of the urbanized area north of Mount Rokko¯ (see Figure 3.3). Both areas could be made available for temporary housing, and it was in those places that government officials focused their efforts on providing adequate numbers of units. National government policy and the lack of available public land anywhere close to the inner city thus led Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture to locate almost half of all temporary housing units in the outer suburbs to the north and west, beyond the Rokko¯ Mountains, at least one hour from the city centre by train or by bus. Those living in temporary housing in these outlying suburbs would be severely inconvenienced by the remote locations as well as by poor (at the time) transportation to the city centre. Evacuees often found themselves separated from jobs, shopping, and health services. Other prefab housing was built in inner-city parks and other public spaces, such as high-school baseball diamonds, as well as on Port Island and Rokko¯ Island (HIC 1996). Table 3.2 indicates the distribution of temporary housing built in Kobe during 1995. It shows clearly the unevenness of its locations throughout the city. The provision of temporary housing in the central urban areas,

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where damage was very severe, reached only 4.3 percent of the number of totally or partly collapsed houses (just 2.2 percent of the total was built in Nagata ward). Exceptions to this were the temporary housing projects built on vacant land on the artificial Port Island and Rokko¯ Island, fairly close to inner Kobe. But even including the units built on the artificial islands added, the proportion of temporary housing in the central area amounted to only

Table 3.2 Distribution of temporary housing in Kobe following the Hanshin earthquake Totally collapsed Temporary or burnt Uninhabitable Provision Provision Ward housing houses houses rate rate (A) (B) (C) A/B (%) A/C (%) (district) Inner-city areas   Higashi-Nada ward   Nada ward   Chu¯o ¯ ward   Hyo ¯ go ward   Nagata ward   Suma ward

1,793 986 696 654 647 385

24,320 21,571 18,292 16,882 29,144 9,860

14,624 12,942 11,623 10,869 19,821 6,199

7.4 4.6 3.8 3.9 2.2 3.9

12.3 7.6 6.0 6.0 3.3 6.2

  Subtotal

5,161

120,069

76,078

4.3

6.9

Other urban areas   Rokko ¯ Island     (Higashi-Nada ward)   Port Island     (Chu¯o¯ ward)   Kita-suma   Tarumi ward

2,090

(16.0)

(26.6)

3,100

(18.9)

(32.7)

1,740 2,308 1,081 1,128

(21.6) 213.5

(34.3) 204.6

  Subtotal

9,238

1,081

1,128

(11.9)

(18.7)

5,838 8,941

457 545

481 523

1,277.5 1,213.7 1,640.6 1,709.6

  Subtotal

14,779

1,002

1,004

1,475.0 1,472.0

Total (Kobe city)

29,178

122,152

78,210

Suburban areas

  Kita ward   Nishi ward

Outside Kobe city Sum total

23.9

37.3

3,168 32,346

Notes: For city ward boundaries, see Figure 3.3. Figures inside the brackets show the provision rate of the ward when the number of temporary housing in the “Other urban areas” is added to the number in the “Inner-city areas” of the same ward. Source: Kuroda (2005)

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around 32 percent of the total provided. Moreover, the provision rate in inner Kobe amounted to just 6.8 percent of the number of houses destroyed or damaged. On the other hand, in the two suburban wards (Kita and Nishi) the provision rate was almost 1,500 percent relative to damaged houses in these areas. Indeed, the number of temporary housing units in these two wards combined exceeded that in the seven inner-city wards. Yet another unforeseen outcome of so many temporary dwellings being located far from the centre of Kobe was that close to 5,000 units remained unwanted and empty at the end of 1995, representing a serious waste of resources. Paradoxically, even though housing was at a premium in Kobe after the quake, many temporary housing complexes failed to attract applicants because earthquake victims perceived they would be far from work. This was especially the case with store owners, operators at synthetic shoe factories, and other employees of small businesses in inner Kobe. In effect there had been a breakdown in communications: knowing little or nothing about location preferences or about what citizens thought and felt about temporary housing, the authorities had gone ahead and built housing projects at inconvenient locations. Because of the remoteness of some locations and lack of accessible transit, it was difficult for those with jobs to commute, which heightened the economic impact of the earthquake. Consequently, many disaster survivors opted to stay in city parks or emergency refuges until they were forceably moved out, often a full year after the quake (“Down” 1995; Nakamura 1995a; “Kobe Seeks” 1995; Yomiuri Shimbun 1996; Murakami 2000a). A further consequence of the temporary housing program was the extreme loneliness suffered by some seniors in these projects. The logic that the “weak, such as the aged and the disabled, should be given relief as soon as possible” sounded fair in this extreme situation. In practice, though, it meant that disadvantaged survivors were relegated more often to outer suburban areas, away from the confusion of rebuilding but also cut off from their traditional sources of support. Apart from the distance back to inner Kobe, the large scale of many temporary housing complexes in the northern Kita ward locations made it difficult for residents to develop a sense of local community. For instance, the prefecture government built roughly 4,400 units at each of sixteen suburban locations, and around 1,000 temporary housing units were built at a further two locations in remote areas hours from the inner city (Kuroda 2005). Neighbourhoods in Nagata and Suma wards, where seniors had previously enjoyed access to their friends and families, had been shattered. This had the effect of isolating the more needy members of the populace, leading many to live under difficult circumstances. By the end of 1995 more than two hundred people over sixty-five and living alone had been found dead in their temporary housing units. The term “death in isolation” (kodokushi) was coined for people who died of sickness

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or malnutrition or by suicide and were not found until long afterwards (Karasaki 1995; Kadoya 2005).16 Some time after these housing units were constructed, a policy of providing community spaces and support services was established. In 1997, funds were earmarked to provide air conditioning as well as community spaces where seniors could engage in group leisure and social activities (from notes made by the author during a site visit to Sumiyoshi Park, No. 2 Emergency Housing, Higashi-Nada ward, in June 1997). Despite the many problems recorded with the temporary housing complexes, a large number of the evacuees living in them found that one year later they had few prospects of moving on to better and more permanent housing. A Hyo ¯ go prefecture government survey of more than 42,000 families living in temporary housing in and around Kobe in 1996 reported that as many as 70 percent had incomes of less than ¥3 million (US$30,000), that more than 60 percent of household heads were over sixty-five, and that more than half those household heads were living alone (see Table 3.3). Table 3.3 Survey of evacuees living in temporary housing, Hyōgo prefecture, 1996 Item

Distribution (%) (totals = 100%)

Age and sex

Age 70 years and >: 19.3%; Age 60-70: 22.7%; Age 65 and > living alone: 21.4% Male: 44.0%; Female: 50.8%; No answer: 5.2%

Total income of the   household per year   (unit: 10 thousand yen)

< 100: 29.3%; 100-200: 23.1%; 200-300: 17.2%; 300-600: 18.2%; 600 and above: 6.9%; No answer: 8.3%

Source of income of the   household

Pension: 36.9%; Salary: 33.6%; Self-employed: 6.3%; Savings 3.4%; Other/No Answer: 19.8%

Housing before the quake

Own house: 27.4%; Private rental housing 45.0%; Public rental housing 9.5%; Others/No answer: 18.1%

Rent paid before the quake   (yen per month)

< 20,000: 16.1%; 20,000-30,000: 23.9%; 30,000-40,000: 15.9%; 40,000-70,000: 16.4%; 70,000 and >: 3.6%; No answer: 24.1%

Any plans to move out?

Yes: 7.1%; No: 92.9%

Desired permanent housing Public rental housing: 68.3%; Own house: 16.3%; Other/No answer: 15.4% Note: Survey conducted in February-March 1996. Number of surveyed households: 42,668. Response rate: 37.1%. Source: “Bleak ...” (1996)

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Faced with such a bleak picture, national and local governments had no option but to develop strategies to provide large numbers of subsidized long-term public housing units.17 Under the Building Standards Law, 1970 (kenchiku kijun ho¯), temporary housing in Kobe was only expected to last for two years, over which time disaster victims were expected to move into more permanent housing, either by rebuilding with their own funds or by relocating to public housing. However, due to the slow start of the long-term public housing program, many poor and aged people who had once lived in low-rent housing were forced to stay in temporary housing for three or four years. The public housing program commenced much later than expected owing to the difficulty of securing suitable sites, and until construction was substantially under way many displaced people in temporary shelters had nowhere else to go because of their lack of income, especially as temporary housing was offered free of charge. In late 1997 many who had been living in temporary accommodation started to move into newly constructed public housing units or went elsewhere. But even at the end of 1998 and into 1999, when many temporary accommodation complexes were eventually torn down and removed, survivors often did not leave voluntarily because of the perceived inadequacies of the more permanent public housing that was being offered to them. Many were refusing to move because the housing now available to them was far away, north of the Rokko¯ Mountains. Indeed, many were eventually forced to leave their temporary homes after public subsidized housing became available ( Johnston 2000a). Figure 3.14 indicates the transition from temporary housing to permanent public housing. It shows that indeed, large numbers of people were still living in temporary housing several years after the disaster. About half the survivor households (roughly 23,000, or 60,000 people) were still living in substandard temporary housing in early 1998, three years after the quake. The last of Kobe’s temporary housing was dismantled only in 2000, more than five years after the quake (see Appendix A).18 Moving people out of temporary accommodation as occupancy levels fell also proved to be a problem. The city began to move residents in order to consolidate temporary housing units and complexes as vacancies grew and as vacant units were removed. Some tenants suggested renovating these temporary complexes, where residents had successfully formed strong social bonds, as a way of supporting the elderly by further stabililizing these communities. In the event, a lottery system was again used to allocate survivors to the permanent public housing complexes being built by the city and other housing authorities. As a result, communities that had been built up in the temporary housing projects were split up yet again by the vagaries of the city’s lottery system (Watanabe 2001).

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Figure 3.14  The transition from temporary housing to permanent public housing, 1995-99, Hyo¯go prefecture.  Source: Hyo¯go prefecture (2005a)

Replacement Reconstruction and the Geography of Public Housing A fourth aspect of the geography of the crisis in Kobe involves the locating of more permanent public and private housing. This occurred during the “replacement reconstruction” phase of Kates and Pijawka’s (1977) schema. Following the provision of temporary housing in 1995, the national government agreed to fund a three-year emergency housing plan (shinsai fukko¯ ju¯taku ¯ seibi kinkyu ¯ san kanen keikaku) drawn up by the city to cover the fiscal years 1995 to 1997. Under this plan around 72,000 permanent new housing units would be constructed throughout Kobe and Hyo ¯ go prefecture to replace the estimated 82,000 houses lost to the quake. It was decided that around 8,200 would be provided by the private rental market (with publicly funded subsidies for their construction) and that more than half the total would be provided directly by various public housing agencies. In the event, this overall target level was achieved by March 1998, and more than 120,000 new housing units had been constructed by the end of the three-year emergency plan, ironically far exceeding the aims of the initial plan. The accumulated number of new housing units built by 2005 was estimated at more than 222,000 (City of Kobe 2005b). Government housing agencies and private-sector developers provided almost all of this replacement accommodation in multirise condominium structures, with around 56 percent in public housing units at low rents (see Table 3.4).19 Figure 3.15, showing the number of new housing starts in Kobe for the years following the earthquake, indicates that the years 1995 to 1997 recorded almost a threefold annual increase in new housing starts compared with the years before the quake. The data also indicate that more than half this increase occurred in rental units, mostly in condominiums built by either the public or the private sector. Figure 3.16 reveals that most of the new housing

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stock was constructed in the eastern wards of Kobe, specifically Higashi-Nada, Nada, and Chu ¯o¯ wards. Though not indicated in this figure, much of the new housing in the more popular eastern wards was provided by privatesector developers (sometimes with government subsidies) rather than in the form of public housing.

Table 3.4 The three-year plan for restoring housing in Hyōgo prefecture after the Hanshin earthquake (a) Original 1995 Plan

Type of housing units

Number of units

Public   Built by the City of Kobe   Built by Hyo ¯ go Prefecture

10,000 7,500 2,500

Private-sector rental housing   in Kobe city   in rest of Hyo ¯ go prefecture

10,5001 7,500 3,000



Housing provided in redevelopment projects

4,000

Housing built by public corporations   National Housing and Urban Development Corporation   Kobe city Housing Corporation   Hyo ¯ go prefecture Housing Corporation

15,900 12,900 2,000 1,000

Housing built by the private sector

31,600 2

Total

72,000

1 2

rent subsidized by the city government 4,600 units to have public financial assistance

Source: Takagi (1996)

(b) Revisions made in 1996

Breakdown of new starts



Public housing units



Total planned units Units in Kobe city 16,000

10,500

High-quality rental housing units

6,900

5,700

Redevelopment-related housing

4,000

Semipublic housing (including the   Housing and Urban Development   Corporation and Kobe City   Housing Corporation)

13,500



Private housing

31,6003

Total

72,000



3



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includes 4,600 by public subsidy

Source: City of Kobe (2003a)

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Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

67

Overall, there is a striking mismatch between the location of new housing favouring eastern wards, such as Higashi-Nada ward, and the relative loss of housing stock in the western Nagata ward (see Figure 1.8). After this rapid rebuilding period the number of new houses constructed each year in Kobe returned to around the same annual level as before the quake, indicating that most of those dislocated by the earthquake had been rehoused by 2000 (see Figures 3.15 and 3.16) (City of Kobe 2005b). Figure 3.17, indicating the location of public housing projects, suggests that most were located in outer suburban wards such as Nishi, Tarumi, and Kita (see also the photo of a suburban public housing complex in Figure 3.18). As had been the case with the temporary accommodation, the government’s public housing program was poorly perceived. Besides starting late, the geography of these new permanent public housing units was especially problematic. Much as with the temporary housing projects, this was due to a serious mismatch between sites where the city and prefecture and the national government housing authority (the Housing and Urban Development Corporation) could find space to construct public housing – usually in the outer suburbs north of Mount Rokko¯ and on reclaimed land close to the waterfront – and the locations where displaced people reliant on temporary housing wanted to live, which was mainly in the traditional inner city

Figure 3.15  New housing starts by type, 1993-2005.  Source: City of Kobe (2005b); City of Kobe (2006)

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Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

Figure 3.16  New housing starts by city of Kobe wards, 1993-2005. Source: City of Kobe (2005b); City of Kobe (2006)

(see Hirayama 2000). City officials told many victims still living in temporary housing between 1995 and 1999 that they could not return to their previous residential areas in Nagata and other inner-city wards; if they required subsidized public housing, they would have to locate to either the Rokko¯ Mountain area or to new developments along the Kobe waterfront (“Kobe’s Recovery” 2001). Table 3.5 supports this claim by showing the geographical distribution of public housing built in Kobe up to 1998. It indicates that 31.8 percent of low-cost public rental housing (provided directly by Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture) was constructed in the outer suburban wards (Tarumi, Kita, and Nishi), while 31.2 percent was provided in the older west-side wards (Suma, Nagata, and Hyo¯go). On the surface this may seem to have been a rather equal distribution throughout the city; but the geographical mismatch of public housing projects with the destroyed housing units can readily be

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69

Figure 3.17  Location of public housing projects in Kobe, 1998.  Source: Data provided by City of Kobe

Figure 3.18  Newly constructed public housing in large-scale high-rise suburban projects, Tarumi ward, 2005.  Source: Photograph by E. Yasui

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Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

seen. Table 3.5 indicates that over 54 percent of housing units destroyed by the quake and fires had been in the inner west-side wards compared to just 6.5 percent in the outer-city wards. The disparity between new low-cost public rental housing and the distribution of destroyed old wooden (cheaperrent) nagaya (single-family row houses) and mochuchin (older-style multifamily rental houses with shared facilities) was even more pronounced: over 64 percent of this type of accommodation was located in the inner west-side wards of Kobe. In effect, the location of public housing was extremely imbalanced, and its spatial pattern severely disadvantaged those who had come originally from inner-city communities. Many victims of the earthquake – especially those from Suma and Nagata wards – were effectively forced into public housing in unfamiliar and outer suburban locations. The uneven geography of temporary housing and public housing projects proved to be important in shaping survivors’ perceptions of the underlying unfairness of recovery programs in Kobe. As will be examined in Chapter 4, the isolation of many victims in faraway housing contributed to a sense of distrust and dismay among citizens vis-à-vis the public authorities (“Legacy” 2001). Shimokobe Atsushi, the chair of the national government’s Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee, examined this issue and drew important comparisons between the attachment of people to their homes and neighbourhoods in Japan’s capital, Tokyo, and in Kobe. He reasoned that in Tokyo, most residents after 1945 had come from somewhere else in Japan in order to earn a living. Consequently, they likely had little attachment to any particular neighbourhood. By contrast, the people of Kobe were far less mobile and so valued their immediate community more (Shimokobe 1996, 51). “We often heard people protest that they could not agree to be moved to new housing, as far away from their old neighbourhood they would lose touch with their original community” (ibid.). Indeed, many seniors in the inner areas of Kobe had been living in these older wards for fifty or sixty years, and before the earthquake they had entertained no plans to move away. After the quake, all they could do was wait in temporary housing until their neighbourhoods were rebuilt, or resign themselves to living in public housing. Countless people in Nagata and other inner-city wards had been employed locally in small stores and factories, which made it hard for them to find jobs in other cities or other parts of Kobe. They often simply could not move away. By comparison, younger people and families were more flexible about where they lived after the disaster, and often voluntarily moved out of damaged areas into new suburban housing. The overall model of housing recovery formulated by the government, therefore, was that people first in need were first evacuated to public shelters, then moved into temporary housing, and finally into public housing. However, Hirayama (2000) has argued that the housing reconstruction strategy that evolved for Kobe was polarized in the following way. On the one hand,

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1,771 9,543 88.7

Low-cost public rental housing3

Total construction starts4

Reconstruction rate (%)5

2,002

3,181

7,984

Hyo ¯go Nada

2,924

1,568

1,982

4,124

5,964 10,050

¯ Chu ¯o

57.3

155.3

230.0

177.6

Source: Derived from data contained in Kinmokusei International Project (1999)

143.6

23,231

1,823

3,402

16,174

Higashi-Nada

East side

13,355 12,401 13,720 17,848

1,934

11,711

23,301

Nagata

West side

Inner city wards

Note: For city ward boundaries, see Figure 3.3. 1 including buildings torn down after the earthquake, but excluding public housing units 2 old wooden buildings 3 Kobe city and Hyo ¯go prefecture 4 public and private sector 5 total construction starts/destroyed housing units 6 data for Kita and Nishi wards combined

4,958

10,761

Suma

Destroyed housing units of the   nagaya and mokuchin type2

Destroyed housing units1







Geographic distribution of public housing provision and replacement rate by city ward, 1998

Table 3.5

154

–

287.1 1,164.06

–

–

1,153 1,999

413

1,9556

153.5

121,736

18,247

30,642

77,283

Kita Nishi Kobe total

8,882 22,7566

2,659

1,131

3,094

Tarumi

Suburban wards

72

Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

targeted groups such as seniors and low-income residents were accommodated in public evacuation centres, public temporary housing, and finally long-term public housing projects. On the other hand, the government embraced a self-reliance policy for all other survivors. Owing to the national government’s long-standing reluctance to provide public assistance for urban recovery after disasters, there was no proposal – initially – to offer financial assistance for rebuilding all the homes that had been destroyed. In the allocation of public housing – especially housing with rental subsidies for low-income households – priority was given to those still living in Kobe’s temporary housing complexes. Victims of the earthquake who had moved away from the city, either to private rental housing or to stay with friends and relatives, were regarded as “self-helped” and therefore no longer “victims” in need of housing. Consequently, many of those who wanted to return to Kobe were unable to obtain any assistance from the public housing program. Apart from the national government’s endorsement of a three-year plan to fund private and public housing to replace buildings lost in the quake, Kobe city took its own steps to support the building of new accommodation. These included founding a housing information centre to facilitate reconstruction work, renting privately owned apartments to accommodate those who had lost houses, and providing subsidized loans to low-income earthquake survivors – the latter financed by the special Greater Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster Reconstruction Fund (see Chapter 4). In 1997, the city also upgraded its acknowledged below-par health and medical care and welfare services; the new programs paid special attention to the needs of the elderly (Honjo¯ interview; City of Kobe 2005b).20 Note as well that after the spring of 1998 a portion of the HAT (“Happy Active Town”)Kobe Project on former industrial waterfront land to the east of the city centre was opened, with new public apartments for those who had suffered in the 1995 earthquake (see Chapter 7). This helped in some measure to address the imbalance between the geography of housing supply and demand in the city. The Geography of Population Loss and Revival A final dimension to the geography of crisis following the quake relates to the distribution of population loss after the disaster and the rate at which Kobe’s population levels recovered. Before the earthquake the city’s population had been estimated at around 1.5 million, and this had been increasing at a rate of about 10,000 per year. The immediate evacuation of people away from the stricken area after the temblor led to a dramatic loss of population. Apart from deaths and injuries caused by the quake, more than 55,000 people were estimated to have migrated out of Hyo¯go prefecture in the first few weeks (“Kobe’s Population” 2004). Due to the widespread disruption and closing of firms and the loss of jobs, this population loss continued through

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73

1995. For instance, in the October 1995 national census the population of Kobe had fallen to 1.42 million – a decline of almost 100,000 from just before the disaster (see Table 3.6). After 1995 the population of the city and Hanshin region as a whole began to recover, albeit slowly. At the ten-year anniversary of the disaster, Hyo¯go prefecture announced that population levels in the designated Hanshin earthquake region (the ten cities and ten towns designated under the Disaster Relief Law) had been fully regained. Indeed, the population of the wider Hanshin region was beginning to rise to pre-earthquake levels within six years of the temblor (ibid.). But this recovery was far from evenly distributed. Table 3.6 provides an analysis of Kobe’s population changes from before the quake in 1990 up to just after the ten-year anniversary of the disaster in March 2005. It indicates that for Kobe as of 2005, population levels in the western part of the inner city (Suma, Nagata, and Hyo¯go wards) remained well below their pre-quake levels – a sign of continuing regional disparities throughout the reconstruction process. In part, this spatial disparity in recovery was due to the relative speed of rebuilding private housing and the rather slow start to the public housing program. Above all, demand for new private houses was concentrated initially in the eastern parts of the city in areas that were home to relatively affluent residents, such as Kobe’s Higashi-Nada ward and the adjoining residential cities of Ashiya and Nishinomiya, on the Osaka side of Kobe.21 To be sure, these eastern, predominantly white-collar neighbourhoods saw a great deal of new housing built between 1995 and 1997, in the form of either multirise condominiums or family-style housing. This was largely because of the presence of high-income households and the opportunities developers saw for providing housing in areas where demand was strong (i.e., within commuting distance of Osaka). Hirayama (2000) records that housing in these eastern wards (Higashi-Nada and Nada) had more or less been restored by the middle of 1996. Makino, Ito¯, and Katoh (2006) observed that the eastern wards (Higashi-Nada and Nada) as well as the central Chu ¯o¯ ward experienced an inflow of newcomers from outside Kobe, whereas the eastern wards Hyo¯go, Nagata, and Suma, and the northern wards Tarumi and Kita, had a higher proportion of population who moved in from another ward of Kobe. Construction was much slower in western Kobe, including the lowerincome and largely blue-collar Nagata ward. In the western part of the urban area, new housing supply was almost stagnant even in 1998, three years after the disaster. Chang (2001) and Chang and Miles (2003) have studied the spatial structure of Kobe and confirm the spatial disparities in recovery that were observed after the earthquake, wherein older neighbourhoods lagged behind new areas in private investment and housing development. As a result of the sharp geographic disparity in rebuilding destroyed homes, the inner-city population of Kobe – especially in Nagata ward – continued

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Hyo ¯go

Chu ¯o ¯



Higashi-Nada

Tarumi

Kita

Nishi

Kobe city



(b) Suburban wards







210,530 1,529,365

1,477,361

217,166

237,735

191,716

124,538

111,195

117,558

129,978

188,949

(b) Estimated population Jan. 1, 1995

158,581

198,443

235,254

190,354

129,578

116,279

123,919

136,834

188,119

(a) National census Oct. 1, 1990

Sources: Japanese population census and material derived from data in City of Kobe (2005a)

Note: For city ward boundaries, see Figure 3.3.

Nada



East side

Nagata

Suma



West side





(a) Inner-city wards



Population change in Kobe’s wards, 1990-2005

Table 3.6

1,423,792

222,163

230,473

240,203

157,599

97,473

103,711

98,856

96,807

176,507

(c) National census Oct. 1, 1995

1,519,878

242,260

225,529

223,590

203,182

126,983

114,634

107,497

104,113

172,090

(d) Estimated population March 1, 2005

100.0

115.1

103.4

94.1

106.0

102.0

103.1

91.4

80.1

91.1

Recovery rate (d)/(b) (%)

Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

75

its pre-quake trend and “hollowed out,” which led to a collapse of many communities in terms of shopping and local jobs as well as community services. If we return to Table 3.6, the analysis confirms the uneven nature of population revival – both between the western and eastern wards of Kobe and between the suburban wards and the inner city. Thus, as many new apartments were built in Higashi-Nada ward after the earthquake, the population increased in this east-side ward by 6 percent up to 2005. In the same period the population increased sharply – by about 15 percent – in the outer suburban Nishi ward, and by over 3 percent in the outer suburban Kita ward, due mainly to the large public housing projects located there. Indeed, the rapid suburbanization of Kobe would be one of the lasting legacies of the 1995 earthquake. Increases in population were also recorded by 2005 in the central Nada and Chu ¯o¯ wards. On the other hand, Nagata ward, which suffered from massive fires immediately after the earthquake, had only 80 percent of its pre-quake population by that year. Over the same ten-year period the population of the west-side wards of Hyo¯go (not to be confused with Hyo¯go prefecture) and Suma dropped by around 9 percent. Of course, these older, poorer wards had been losing population even before the earthquake. For instance, Table 3.6 indicates that Nagata ward lost around 6,900 residents between 1990 and 1995. That said, following the quake, delays in rebuilding local housing contributed to a continuing decline in population, which contributed to setbacks in rebuilding viable communities in Nagata ward. In Chapter 5, I show that local planning procedures involving land readjustment programs also did much to hinder reconstruction and the repopulating of this district. Evaluation How can the material in this chapter be evaluated in terms of the framework of this study provided by Figure 2.2? First, I have pointed to a number of important preconditions (factor 1) that affected the direct impact of the earthquake and the initial emergency and recovery period. These included the physical and social geography of Kobe, especially differences between the inner city “damage strip” and the outer suburban areas of the city, and also important differences between the more affluent eastern side of the city and the older, blue-collar communities on the western side. The high-density urban development in this city, together with a lack of land available for temporary and permanent public housing, produced a distinct “geography of crisis,” which included the inability to rebuild quickly in certain of the city’s inner areas. In later chapters I will show how other preconditions in Kobe, such as its history of local machizukuri planning, shaped responses to the problems of long-term reconstruction. In addition, Kobe’s problematic industrial structure and increasing city debt affected the opportunities taken

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Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake

in reconstruction planning. For instance, the administration relied on the national government to fund developments aimed at shifting the city into new forms of job growth. Second, the nature of the quake itself led to unequal processes of damage and immediate relief for residents (factor 2). The analysis pointed to a spatially uneven distribution of victims, and of temporary and permanent housing, private investment, and population recovery. These outcomes tend to reinforce Geipel’s (1982) broader notion that disasters are not “the big equalizer” and that they invariably reinforce existing inequalities. In this case, the Hanshin earthquake appeared to exacerbate the structural disparities that existed between Kobe’s more affluent eastern districts and its blue-collar western wards.

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4 The Planning and Reconstruction Response

An entire chapter of the Kobe City Restoration Plan is devoted to creating a disaster-safe city through the formation of greenbelts and neighborhood disaster prevention bases which could function as safe havens ... Missing from the plan, however, is a clear financial and implementation strategy to achieve these comprehensive and ambitious planning goals. Atsushi Shimokobe of the Prime Minister’s committee on reconstruction stated in his closing remarks that “the problem here is not what to do, but determining who will implement it and who will take responsibility.” So far, who’s in charge and who pays are evolving concepts.

— C. Eadie, Kobe Eight Months After

Faced with such serious damage as a result of the Hanshin earthquake, how did the national and local governments respond in the months after the disaster? In this chapter I examine the reconstruction plans for Kobe that were drawn up during the first year after the quake, including those necessary to address the immediate recovery and those aimed at long-term rebuilding. This period covers aspects of the “replacement reconstruction” and longer-term “developmental reconstruction” phases identified by Kates and Pijawka (1977). I pay particular attention to the planning process and to the relationship between the central and local governments. Appendix A indicates the major reconstruction events during this time. 4.1 Actions Taken by the National Government Desperate to shore up its image after failing to respond quickly to the initial crisis, the national government made a strong commitment to facilitate Kobe’s long-term reconstruction. The various measures the government took soon after the quake are shown in Appendix B. For instance, as empowered by the Disaster Countermeasures Law, Relief Law, 1961, the government

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The Planning and Reconstruction Response

declared the earthquake a “severe disaster” one week after it struck – an indication that it was prepared to take maximum financial measures to help rebuild the affected area.1 This led Kobe city to establish a “headquarters” (to be discussed) to draw up a restoration plan while the national government focused on providing financial support and low-interest loans for reconstruction. To help the victims, bureaucrats rushed to prepare earthquake emergency measures. For instance, the Ministry of Finance suggested setting up refunds of taxes paid in 1994 to quake victims; it also offered government properties in the Hanshin region for temporary housing construction. The Ministry of Health and Welfare proposed short-term loans of ¥200,000 (US$2,000) to affected households for living expenses, and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry considered setting up a new low-interest credit system to help reconstruct small companies (Shinmura 1995a). Just ten days after the quake the Kobe city government set up an eight-member Reconstruction Headquarters and tasked it with the early recovery of the city. While mapping out concrete plans, city officials convened a hastily assembled Reconstruction Planning Council consisting of academics as well as citizens of Kobe. The city quickly decided that priorities for reconstruction would be set by the end of March and a long-term plan for reconstruction drawn up by July (Moriguchi 2005). To coordinate these diverse measures, on February 2 – just two weeks after the event – the national government established a Basic Policy for Recovery from the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (“Government Will” 1995). Based on this, the national government abandoned any thoughts of creating an independent agency for addressing the disaster and instead established its own Earthquake Recovery Measures Headquarters, with Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi as its head and including all cabinet ministers concerned, such as the Minister for Construction and the Minister for Transport.2 On February 16, just one month after the quake, an advisory panel called the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee was created to report to the prime minister on reconstruction priorities. This panel included officials of the local governments affected, business leaders, and experts in city planning. It set to work establishing an action plan for the region’s assistance and recovery.3 By the end of February 1995 it had submitted a three-part proposal calling for national government assistance for the removal of all debris, the immediate formulation of a ten-year reconstruction plan, and an all-out effort to address the housing crisis that the quake had precipitated.4 As noted in the previous chapter, this latter objective was to be carried out by constructing 72,000 housing units over the next three years. The same committee called for the prompt demolition of unsound structures and recommended that concrete from the rubble be crushed and used for construction as well as for repairs to the Kobe port area. As noted earlier, the

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79

city’s port had been the busiest in Japan before the quake; so it was considered vital to reviving Kobe as well as the Hanshin regional economy. Between March and October 1995 the Reconstruction Committee submitted additional suggestions and guidelines for rebuilding. These touched variously on the full reconstruction of port facilities, job creation to help the local economy, the speedy resumption of medical and welfare services, basic concepts for the ten-year reconstruction plan, and the selection of specific projects for priority implementation (Shimokobe 1996). New Legislation and Financial Matters The national government moved ahead on other fronts. For instance, within three months of the catastrophe it had enacted sixteen new or revised laws to support post-quake recovery (see Table 4.1). This legislation extended from tax exemptions for victims, to special provisions for local unemployed survivors in the rebuilding programs, to deferment of municipal elections in the Hanshin region that were slated for 1995. Throughout February and March a number of other laws were applied to the stricken areas; these granted special financial assistance to local governments, reduced the burden of local social insurance to subscribers, and provided financial assistance to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and homeowners whose homes had been destroyed (the local governments designated under the Disaster Relief Law are shown in Figure 4.1). Legislation was also drawn up to control rebuilding in the disaster-stricken area. The new laws incorporated a special financial aid program totalling around ¥3.4 trillion (US$25.8 billion at 1995 values), devised under the Special Financial Aid and Subsidy for the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Law, 1995 (see Table 4.2). To implement this law, the national government enacted a second supplementary budget for fiscal year 1994-95 (ending March 31, 1995). Despite the strains already imposed on the national budget by the economic recession of the 1990s, this financial plan exceeded ¥9 trillion (US$75 billion), with around ¥1.0 trillion (US$8.3 billion) set aside for redevelopment programs in Kobe and its surrounding area. These resources were used during the remainder of the fiscal year to repair damaged roads, such as the overturned national highway (Highway #1), and to begin restoration of the Port of Kobe.5 As shown in Table 4.2, the national government raised these funds largely by issuing bonds, which were taken up by major Japanese banks in lieu of any taxation increase (Ikeya 1995).6 The national supplementary budget for fiscal year 1994-95 was developed in January 1995 and was passed by both houses of the Japanese Diet (Parliament) in February 1995. The same month, the government drew up its first supplementary budget for fiscal year 1995-96 (ending March 31, 1996); this one included funds for reconstruction costs, emergency disaster measures, and certain other expenditures unrelated to the quake. This huge budget

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February 17

February 22

11 Act on Temporary Special Exceptions to National Ministry of Finance February 17 Taxes to Disaster Victims of Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Prime Minister’s Office and National Land Agency Ministry of Construction National Land Agency and other ministries and agencies

12 Act on Basic Policy and Organizations for Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Reconstruction

14 Special Measures for Recovery of Disaster Areas Act

16 Act on Special Financial Aid and Subsidy for the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake

February 28

18 Act on Special Exceptions to Total Amount of Local Grant Tax for Fiscal 1994

February 24

February 28

17 Act on Special Exceptions to Issuance of Public Ministry of Finance February 24 Bonds in Fiscal 1994 Against Great Hanshin- Awaji Earthquake Ministry of Home Affairs

February 28

February 24

February 17

February 24

February 17

10 Act to Revise Part of Law on Reduction of or Ministry of Finance February 17 Exemption from Tax and Tax Collection to Disaster Victims

February 17

February 17

Ministry of Home Affairs

9 Act to Revise Part of Local Taxation

Determination by cabinet meeting Enactment February 17

Competent authority

Act

Table 4.1 Legislation introduced in 1995 related to Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake

March 1

March 1

March 1

February 26

February 24

February 20

February 20

February 20

Promulgation and enforcement

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Ministry of Justice

Ministry of Finance March 24

Ministry of Home Affairs

43 Act on Special Measures for Reconstruction of Disaster Area-Owned Buildings

48 Act to Revise Part of Act on Temporary Special Exceptions to Laws for National Taxes Related to Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster Victims

49 Act to Revise Part of Local Tax Law

Source: National Land Agency (2000)

Ministry of Justice

Act on Special Exceptions to Adjudication of Bankruptcy of Corporation and Limitation of Minimum Capital of Company Accompanying Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake

42

March 24

March 14

March 14

March 7

Act on Special Exceptions to Fees of Application for Mediation under Law for Conciliation of Civil Affairs Accompanying Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake

31

Ministry of Justice

March 3

February 17

Act on Temporary Special Exceptions to Selection Ministry of Home of Members and Chairman of Municipal Affairs Assembly Accompanying Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake

Ministry of Labour

20 Act of Special Measures to Promote Placement of Unemployed Persons in Public Projects in Area Stricken by Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake

February 24

25

Management and Coordination Agency

19 Act of Emergency Measure to Extend Validity Permission Periods

March 24

March 24

March 17

March 17

March 10

March 8

February 17

February 28

March 27

March 27

March 24

March 24

March 17

March 13

March 1

March 1

82

The Planning and Reconstruction Response

Figure 4.1  Local governments in the Hanshin region designated under the Disaster Relief Law, 1948.  Source: HERO (1996a)

was delayed in the Diet by debate over the mixed nature of its measures, but it finally passed the Upper and Lower Houses in May 1995. This financial plan totalled around ¥2.7 trillion (US$22.5 billion), with around ¥1.4 trillion (US$12 billion) set aside for earthquake recovery, including condolence money (mimaikin; given to victims who had lost family members, and not to be confused with “compensation money,” considered later in this chapter), as well as funding to dispose of waste and debris and to carry out public works (see Table 4.2). A second supplementary budget for fiscal year 1995-96, totalling ¥3.2 trillion (US$26 billion), was passed in October 1995. Of this sum, ¥1.5 trillion (US$12 billion) was to cover construction work in the quake-devastated areas. In summary, the national government quickly set aside a vast total of around ¥3.4 trillion (US$28 billion) for infrastructure reconstruction, for tax relief for victims and local businesses, and for other measures deemed necessary to restore Kobe and the Hanshin region.

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83

Table 4.2 Costs related to the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in the first and second supplementary budgets for fiscal years 1994 and 1995 (billion yen) FY 1994 Second Supplementary Budget. Passed by both houses of the Diet on February 28, 1995. Expenditures            

Disaster-related rescue services Waste disposal Public works Restoration of facilities Financing (loans to small business, etc.) Other Allotment tax given to local government

 

Total

Revenue          

Tax Revenue other than taxes Other (Local bonds issued (Construction bonds (Special bonds

 

Total

(¥ billion) 141.0 34.3 54.4 91.3 11.9 30.0 659.4 1,022.3 602.0 34.3 386.0 1,590.0) 779.4) 810.6) 1,022.3

FY 1995 First Supplementary Budget (costs shown relate only to the Great Hanshin Earthquake). Passed by both houses of the Diet on May 19, 1995. 47.3 Expenditures Shelter for victims (loans, condolence money)   Waste disposal 128.2   Public works 1,077.0   Financing (loans to small- and medium-sized 122.5   enterprises, etc.)   Others (subsidies to welfare facilities, medical care) 54.3  

Total

1,429.3

FY 1995 Second Supplementary Budget (Hanshin Earthquake measures). Passed by both houses on October 18, 1995. Government total

778.2

Ministry of Construction component   Rehabilitation measures (status quo ante)   Recovery measures (status quo plus)

25.1 521.2

Total Three supplementary budgets 3,229.8   Allocation from the FY 1994 preparatory reserve 14.8   Special allocation from the FY 1995 public works 130.0   budget Total earthquake-related spending ¥3,380 billion (¥3.4 trillion) Source: Compiled from Ogawa and Nagano (1995); and Research Institute of Construction and Economy, Ministry of Construction (1996)

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Figure 4.2  Analysis of earthquake reconstruction budgets, 1994-95.  Source: Hayashi (2006)

Two points are worth noting about all of this budgeting. First, the government’s supplementary budgets for reconstruction (which totalled well over ¥3 trillion, or US$25 billion) were well over and above the Finance Ministry’s “ordinary” annual budgets. Yet they still fell short of the staggering sum – estimated at ¥15 trillion (US$125 billion) – that Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture themselves deemed necessary to rebuild all damaged infrastructure and private buildings, as well as for the many “extra projects” proposed in their own detailed reconstruction plans (see Chapter 5). Second, the government’s funding priorities are relevant here. While these budgets are very difficult to itemize, it is clear that the national government was focusing mainly on replacing public infrastructure rather than rebuilding lives, in line with past government approaches to reconstruction after disasters. As Table 4.2 indicates, the extra funds were aimed strongly at restoring port facilities and transportation, providing temporary housing, removing debris, and subsidizing public housing. An analysis of the budgets carried out by Hayashi (2006) confirms this (see Figure 4.2). Except in the fiscal year 1995 Second Supplementary Budget, physical recovery and economic recovery dominated the national government’s financial commitments. In other words, as might be expected from the discussion of disaster planning mechanisms in Japan (see Chapter 2), the largest portion of national government financial support was set aside for the reconstruction of essential infrastructure (e.g., waterworks, sewage systems, and hospitals), industry restoration measures, including port redevelopment, and the rebuilding of urban facilities such as roads and transportation lines.7

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What was novel in the national government’s approach was that for the first time, the financial package for post-disaster recovery included funds for substantial public housing as well as loans to individuals for rebuilding houses and other premises. Such measures had always fallen outside the rather minimal provisions of the Disaster Relief Law. (The array of financial assistance provided directly to victims by the national government under the Disaster Relief Law is given in Table 4.3). One might ask why the government Table 4.3 Examples of national government-approved services extended to the Hanshin earthquake victims under the Disaster Relief Law, 1948 Services extended to earthquake victims Life insurance and non-life insurance • easier and faster reimbursement (payment) • temporary reprieve from premium payment • earthquake-caused fire insurance of ¥3 million (maximum) for victims who had been policyholders of fire insurance, even if they did not have earthquake insurance Settlement of bills • temporary reprieve for “Failure of Payment” and “Suspension of Transaction” of dishonoured bills due to the earthquake Special payment of unemployment benefit • payment of unemployment benefits to workers laid off due to earthquake damage to offices Reduction and exception of tax payments • two-month extension of final return, and one-year reprieve from tax payment • reduction and exemption of fiscal year 1995 income tax Housing loans • reduction of interest of 1.5 percent maximum for enforced loans • temporary reprieve from payment of enforced loans • setting of interest at 3 percent minimum for reconstruction loans Disaster restoration loans • low-interest disaster restoration loans offered by the Small and Medium-Size Business Public Loan Corporation, People’s Finance Corporation, and Commerce and Industrial Union Loan Corporation Condolence money • deceased (head of family): ¥5 million (US$50,000) • deceased (family members): ¥2.5 million (US$25,000) Source: Shiono (2000)

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exercised flexibility in this case. For some commentators, the reasons had to do with the fact that 1995 was an election year in Japan. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), then in a coalition with the Japan Socialist Party, felt that it would gain politically by providing subsidies to the Kobe region, such as low-interest loans for housing and local industries, as well as other programs. The fear that Tokyo could be devastated by an earthquake and the need to set a precedent in Kobe’s recovery was another possible explanation for the government’s early largesse. It was well recognized that the nation’s capital was more than fifteen years overdue for a significant temblor (the next “big one”) and that the government would be scrutinized regarding how it helped recovery in the Hanshin region (interview with Professor Sazanami Hidehiko, Faculty of Policy Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, June 1996) (see also Hadfield 1991). Still, despite this apparent generosity from the national government, no direct financial support for individual survivors was offered, such as immediate cash compensation for the damage resulting from the quake. This was in contrast to the emphasis placed on infrastructure rebuilding, public housing, and limited loans for rebuilding private housing. Under the Disaster Relief Law, the government paid only limited “condolence money” (mimaikin) to those households that had lost immediate family members (see Table 4.3). Indeed, except for private donations from the Japanese Red Cross and other sources, victims of the disaster often had little to fall back on for the expenses incurred in restoring destroyed shops and houses.8 Nor were there any special provisions for those who suddenly found themselves without income, other than unemployment insurance. As noted in Chapter 2, this reflected a long-held view in Japan that damage should be handled largely by the residents and businesses themselves rather than by the public authorities. In other words, the national government felt that it should support the clearance of debris on private land with public funds but that it could not help reconstruct people’s private lives. Income support programs – vital as they might appear to the survivors of the Hanshin earthquake – were viewed as breaking with the oft-observed principle that “all Japan people should be treated equally in the provision of government services and support” (Igarashi 1996, 124). Thus, even though they had endured severe losses, the earthquake victims received no special assistance. Another example of this rigid approach to income support related to nationality standards and other qualifying circumstances. Specifically, emergency relief following the quake was given only to those earthquake victims who had Japanese nationality, those who already had earned or received some kind of income, those who could claim a certain amount of assets, and those who intended to find work afterwards. Relief was not available for those who did not satisfy these rather stringent conditions, though temporary housing was made available for foreigners on a case-by-

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case basis (“Police” 1995; “Care” 1995; “Kobe Housing” 1995; Igarashi 1996).9 This sad state of affairs compounded the plight of victims housed in temporary accommodation (see Chapter 3). It was reported that many tenants in temporary housing during 1995 and 1996 committed suicide, having lost hope of ever recovering their livelihood. In all, some two hundred people died alone in emergency temporary housing during those two years (CGAEC 2000). To compensate for the stringencies of the national legislation, an innovative Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Fund (fukko¯ kikin) was set up by Hyo¯go prefecture and Kobe city in April 1995 from a foundation established with (somewhat restricted) help from the national government in the form of guarantees to Japanese banks. The goals were to overcome the meagre assistance under national legislation, to help households and local companies rebuild their livelihoods, and to help revive commerce and production. The total amount of the Reconstruction Fund was ¥900 billion (US$9 billion) with the prefecture contributing two-thirds and the city contributing onethird of the cost. This fund would operate for ten years beginning in April 1995 (see City of Kobe 2005a). Long-term loans would be provided to the prefecture and the city by private banks; the national government would establish a similar-sized fund to ensure against possible default. Over time, the interest received from the fund would be applied to restoration programs, including loans to support new housing and the recovery of small businesses in Kobe.10 A particular objective of the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Fund was to alleviate interest payments on loans taken out by small- and medium-sized enterprises. The same fund would subsidize the rebuilding of shopping districts and help individuals launch new businesses. All told, the fund provided interest-free long-term loans to more than 30,000 businesses and households and supported other reconstruction activities that could not be covered by the government under existing legislation (interview with Inoue Ichiro, Director, Planning and Coordination Division, Hanshin-Awaji Economic Revitalization Organization [HERO], November 2003). Because this fund had been established in lieu of any general compensation from the Ministry of Finance, in the strict sense it was not considered public funding and the national government “turned a blind eye” to its activities (interview with Ohta Toshikazu, Director, Disaster Reconstruction Office, City of Kobe, June 1996). The Hyo¯go prefecture government also allocated special funds of ¥100 billion (US$1billion) in 1996 to help individuals who had lost their jobs because of the earthquake and were seeking work, and whose national unemployment benefits had run out. Qualifying recipients received a maximum of ¥1 million (about US$10,000) per person at an interest rate of 3 percent (HERO 1996a).11

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Planning for Reconstruction Besides securing adequate funds to assist rehabilitation and deciding on eligibility for victims’ relief, the national and local governments considered who should prepare reconstruction plans and programs for the devastated region. Based on the advice of the newly appointed Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee, the government in Tokyo concluded that the reconstruction program should be implemented entirely by local city and prefecture governments, with Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture bearing most of the responsibility. This reflected a spirit of “decentralization” – a popular policy trend in the 1990s ( Jun and Wright 1996).12 At the time of the Hanshin earthquake the National Land Agency was nominally in charge of earthquake measures, but it was widely seen as having little real authority to coordinate the government’s response to the disaster (Yoshiyama 1995). This agency, which was staffed by section chiefs from other ministries and agencies, was meant to focus on long-term planning and was too weak to cope with a major emergency such as the Hanshin earthquake. Accordingly, the government created a Reconstruction Headquarters with the prime minister in charge. It is noteworthy that leading members of the government-led coalition expressed opposition to a disaster-relief ministry or a similar agency because “the idea goes against administrative reform, which aims for smaller government” (Shinmura 1995a, 2). In any case, it was decided that Kobe and Hyo¯go would set objectives and design recovery projects on their own initiative and then present these for possible funding by the national government. Consequently, along these lines and as mandated by the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Law, Kobe city founded its own Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters immediately after the quake. That was on January 25, just nine days after the temblor. This headquarters was to be led by Kobe’s mayor; it was meant to be a coordinating body that would oversee the restoration effort. Hyo¯go prefecture also established its own Reconstruction Headquarters on January 30 to coordinate revival in other parts of the prefecture and to synchronize programs with Kobe city (Ogawa and Nagano 1995). While the national government favoured a decentralized model of reconstruction, Hyo¯go prefecture and Kobe city argued that it should move even further in that direction. Specifically, they proposed that special legislation should be enacted, and special financial measures arranged, with the goal of reconstructing the stricken area. Such an approach would be in contrast to the traditional approach, which was for each ministry or agency to allocate budgets on a yearly basis. This would foster certainty and speed up funding decisions (“Deregulation” 1995). The eventual scheme for funding and managing reconstruction was a compromise. Figure 4.3 illustrates the division of functions during the reconstruction period between the national government and local governments

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in the Hanshin region. It shows that the national-level Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Headquarters, set up in February 1995 and lasting for five years, was managed directly by the prime minister. It took advice from the HanshinAwaji Reconstruction Committee, which had been founded to examine proposals from the prefecture and Kobe city. It was empowered to present its own opinions and suggestions relating to reconstruction projects. The national government’s headquarters would also coordinate relief and reconstruction work among the various ministries concerned. In effect, reconstruction projects would follow traditional budgetary procedures in Japan and would depend on approval from each ministry or agency involved. After the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee was disbanded in February 1996, the government’s Reconstruction Headquarters continued life as a liaison with local governments and the Kobe Chamber of Commerce and Industry regarding implementation of priority reconstruction projects. It also served as a watchdog over their final completion. At first glance, Figure 4.3 suggests that a substantial role was reserved for the national government in post-disaster reconstruction. But one can argue otherwise. First, the government in Tokyo was loathe to take on the redevelopment of Kobe itself as a priority national project – as it had with Tsukuba Science City (completed in the 1970s) and Kansai Science City (commenced in the 1980s) (Edgington 1994; Dearing 1995). Rather, large amounts of national funds flowed both to Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture to facilitate the rebuilding of the devastated area with the understanding that local governments would themselves ultimately be responsible for the detailed planning and realization of projects. Indeed, Table 4.2 shows that a major expenditure in the 1994-95 Second Supplementary Budget involved special transfers of funds (“allotment tax” transfers) to local governments, meant to cover tax shortfalls arising from the earthquake in order to implement immediate recovery and, later, long-term reconstruction. Second, while national government ministries were involved directly in aspects of the reconstruction (e.g., the recovery of national roads and other facilities), the bureaucracy did not cope well with programs that crossed the sectoral boundaries of different ministries, or even those that crossed divisions within ministries. This is because in Japan, government financial planning and its associated legislation is typically sector by sector, division by division, which makes cross-boundary decision making and coordination extremely difficult (Murphy 1996). For example, the Ministry of Health and Welfare helped people evacuate to school gymnasiums and then move on to temporary housing in the first half of 1995 (see Chapter 3). But the construction of permanent housing for earthquake victims was managed by the Ministry of Construction, and this led to problems in achieving consistency between the management and care of tenants in temporary housing and

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Figure 4.3  Division of responsibilities for post–Hanshin earthquake reconstruction between central and local governments.  Source: Derived from National Land Agency (2000)

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their movement to permanent housing, including the priority of movement by displaced earthquake victims (Igarashi 1996). 4.2 Actions Taken by Local Government Appendix C offers a detailed chronology of Kobe city’s own reconstruction planning during 1995. As will now be explained in some detail, the city’s efforts in the year following the quake involved three stages: first, the designation of priority areas – a task that was necessary to control rebuilding and to finance urban reconstruction; second, limited public participation regarding necessary road widenings and other replanning measures for stricken areas; and finally, the preparation of a long-term reconstruction plan. This section examines the technical measures that were taken by local governments (Kobe city in the main) to secure the necessary controls over rebuilding and to establish priorities for reconstruction. These measures resulted in the designation of twenty-four priority reconstruction zones – which, as I will show later, comprised only a small portion of the total area affected by the quake (essentially the “damage strip” indicated in Figure 1.1). Designation of Priority Reconstruction Areas Immediately after the quake, the city attempted to inventory the damage and to devise a basic strategy for restoration. The inventory showed that many houses had indeed been destroyed and that while the damage was citywide, the destruction was mainly in the city’s downtown-west wards. As already noted, these were the older parts of the city – the districts with narrow lanes and little open space that had received little upgrading through land readjustment in the past. In the event, the city identified Kobe’s western inner suburbs as opportune for redevelopment. This was due in part to the role played by the city’s mayor, Sasayama Kazutoshi. Before rising to that post, Sasayama had been a long-time member – and eventually director – of the city’s planning department (the same one that had rebuilt the city after the Second World War). The older, western districts of Kobe were precisely where infrastructure and open spaces had not been improved after 1945 (see Chapter 3). So it is perhaps not surprising that the mayor and his senior administrators were inclined to exploit the catastrophe by upgrading these older, “troubled” inner areas. Indeed, they quickly adopted land readjustment procedures to widen streets and create new open spaces where people could shelter in future emergencies. It was hoped that a “disaster-proof” inner city would thus be created. The “geography of opportunity” metaphor comes into play here, in that a chance was grasped to replan and improve large areas of the city’s inner

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western districts (and certain other districts) using national government funds, which the planners hoped would become available. Moreover, realizing that any public funds would probably be limited relative to the task at hand, it was decided to direct national and local government resources toward a restricted number of priority areas in the expectation that these would encourage a broader array of private-sector restoration efforts throughout the city (Honjo¯ interview). On the evening of January 20, 1995, staff of the Ministry of Construction arrived at Kobe City Hall from Tokyo. In line with the national government’s stance that local governments were to assume the largest burden of reconstruction, two issues were discussed: whether to designate land readjustment (kukakuseiri) promotion areas under national legislation in particular areas; and whether to accelerate the lengthy reconstruction under this system by acquiring private land directly with public funds under urban redevelopment programs (saikaihatsu). As will be shown shortly, the more radical approach of land acquisition in advance of comprehensive urban redevelopment would be taken in Kobe in only two circumstances (Honjo¯ interview). On January 23 a list of heavily damaged areas for priority restoration was drafted in-house by the city administration. Urban areas amounting to just 350 hectares were chosen. These separate areas were to be improved and replanned in a comprehensive manner, through either land readjustment or urban redevelopment approaches (see Chapter 5). Highways would be broadened to help prevent the spread of fire, and smaller roads would be widened to allow better access by emergency vehicles. Water pipes and electrical wires would be buried to protect them in the event of future disasters, and small parks would be developed as possible refuges for local residents. This early attempt to plan and control rebuilding in priority areas may be seen as the genesis of Kobe’s longer-term reconstruction plan (interview with Yajima Toshihisa, Assistant Manager, Urban Redevelopment Division, Urban Planning Bureau, City of Kobe, Kobe, March 2005).13 Controls over Private Rebuilding Based on these initial deliberations, Kobe’s city planners began working “around the clock.” The city took its first public action toward long-term reconstruction just two weeks after the disaster. It was geared toward speedily imposing strict controls over unplanned and haphazard rebuilding in the wake of the disaster. Based on a preliminary assessment of damage sustained, this policy called for selective controls over rebuilding in the seven priority areas. These were published by the city on February 1, 1995. Subsequently, under Clause 84 of the Building Standards Law, 1970, the city designated six districts in inner Kobe amounting to 233 hectares as “areas where construction is restricted” (kenchiku ga seigen sareru kuiki) (see Figure 4.4).14 The

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Figure 4.4  Location of six districts chosen to be controlled under Clause 84 of the Buildings Standards Law, 1970.  Source: derived from Kinmokusei International Project (1999)

decision to control private rebuilding by householders and business owners, and draft reconstruction plans for each area (including new plans for public streets and expanded open spaces), was publicized first on February 19 and again on February 23 in an official City of Kobe “Machizukuri Newsletter,” which was widely distributed throughout the city, or at least throughout as much of it as possible, given the chaos of the first weeks after the quake (City of Kobe 1995a, b) (see Figure 4.5). In the main, the six designated areas corresponded to the older inner-city neighbourhoods that had been ravaged by fire. The exceptions to this were the badly damaged Moriminami district and Rokko¯-michi Station area in eastern Kobe (see Figure 4.4). The designation process had been conducted by the city in full accordance with the Ministry of Construction in order to impose blanket controls over the rebuilding of older inner districts for at least one month, as allowed by Clause 84 of the Building Standards Law. This formal procedure to control private rebuilding bought time for the city to make its own detailed plans for reconstruction and improvement. The city added a further month to the initial period of control on February 17, 1995. Then on March 17 the city planning department designated these six

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Figure 4.5  City of Kobe official “Machizukuri Newsletter” (showing Shin-Nagata redevelopment proposals), February 1995.  Source: Courtesy of City of Kobe

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areas to be rebuilt under the auspices of either land readjustment or urban redevelopment projects (see Appendix C). While Kobe city was introducing these controls, the national government was introducing legislation to control building after severe earthquakes, as part of a package of post-Hanshin earthquake laws introduced in the Diet in February (see Table 4.1). On February 19, 1995, to conform with this new legislation, the city enacted the Kobe Earthquake Disaster Reconstruction Emergency Ordinance (Ko¯be-shi shinsai fukko¯ kinkyu ¯ seibi jo¯rei) under the newly established Special Measures for Recovery of Disaster Areas Law (hisai shigaichi fukko¯ tokubetsu shochi ho¯) (see Appendix B). This redesigned local provision was much broader than had been allowed by Clause 84 of the Building Standards Law, in that it permitted the city to designate almost the entire city – except for the outlying western and northern suburbs – as an Earthquake Disaster Restoration Promotion Region (hisai fukko¯ sokushin kuiki). Under the new provisions, rebuilding (except for temporary structures) could be strictly controlled for up to two years rather than for just two months (RICE 1995, 17). Designating Areas Targeted for Upgrading and Road Widening The national government’s new legislation opened the way for the city to designate many other reconstruction areas for priority improvement and replanning, either under land readjustment programs or through comprehensive urban redevelopment projects. Accordingly, on March 21, 1995, Kobe city announced that it had designated twenty-four Intensive Restoration Zones ( ju ¯ ten fukko¯ chiiki) as priority redevelopment districts (about 1,225 hectares in total): the six areas depicted in Figure 4.4 (designated under Clause 84); and a further eighteen heavily damaged areas (see Figure 4.6). In all twenty-four zones, householders and other developers would have to notify the city before starting rebuilding. These controls would provide local governments some leverage over piecemeal reconstruction, though not as comprehensively as the controls placed on the six “special zones” designated the previous month. How were the city planners able to designate so many “priority areas” so quickly? The designated zones had all sustained tremendous damage, so it was obvious that the city’s planners needed to single them out for special assistance in physical reconstruction (Kinmokusei International Project 1999; Honjo¯ interview). Also, in some of the eighteen zones added to the original list, machizukuri councils had existed before the quake and upgrading activities were already being carried out – such as in the inner-city Mano district in Nagata ward (see Chapter 3). Mano and similar neighbourhoods were thus specified as areas for “housing environment improvement in

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Figure 4.6  Location of major city-sponsored redevelopment projects (showing the twenty-four zones designated under the Special Measures of Disaster Areas Law, 1995).  Source: Derived from City of Kobe (1995c)

cooperation with the machizukuri council” (machizukuri kyo¯gikai to no renkei ni yoru ju ¯ taku oyobi ju ¯ kankyo¯ no seibi) (interview with Shimizu Masahiro, Mano District Restoration and Town Planning Office, Kobe, June 1997). The important role played by machizukuri councils in Kobe’s post-quake urban reconstruction will be detailed later. Of the twenty-four Intensive Restoration Zones identified in March 1995, eight were eventually chosen for publicly funded reconstruction – that is, for property-line replotting, infrastructure upgrading, street widenings, and the provision of open space. This was to be carried out either by land readjustment or urban redevelopment procedures. These eight major redevelopment projects scheduled for special treatment and public financial assistance are listed in Table 4.4 together with a broad chronology of their implementation progress in the subsequent ten years (about which I will explain further). They are all located in Kobe’s residential areas. The twenty-four zones highlighted for intensive reconstruction included the Sannomiya central shopping and office district and the new city centre along the waterfront in eastern Kobe (a project known as HAT Kobe – or

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6.7 4.6 5.4 16.1 3.6 8.9 5.6 4.5 59.6 8.5 19.7

September 1997 March 1998 October 1999 November 1996 August 1996 March 1996 June 1996 January 1997 July 1996 November 1995 March 1997

As at January 2005. Including private-sector buildings

Source: Derived from City of Kobe (2005a)

2

1

18 of 40 planned multirise buildings completed 2; 5 under construction

Shin-Nagata Station South 20.1 Jan/Oct. 1997 July 1997

2005 completion rate1

100 100 100 96 100 100 100 100 87 100 89

2005 rate of replotting (%)

All 14 multirise buildings completed; major disasterprevention park being built

Commencement of construction

February 2003 February 2003 (May 2000) (February 1997) July 2001 July 2001 April 2003 ( January 1998) ( January 1997) February 2001 ( January 1997)

Final (or preliminary) replotting

5.9 Jan./Oct. 1997 July 1997 Rokko ¯-michi Station South

Urban redevelopment projects District Area (ha.) Plan approval

Moriminami: 1-cho ¯me 2-cho ¯me 3-cho ¯me Rokko ¯ -michi Station: north west Matsumoto east Misuga: west Shin-Nagata Station: north Takatori east: #1 #2

Land readjustment projects District Area (ha.) Plan approval

The eight major districts targeted for special treatment following the Hanshin earthquake (the “black zones”)

Table 4.4

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“Happy Active Town” Kobe; see Chapter 7). Because of their strategic importance they were deemed to require intensive city-government planning as well as comprehensively designed improvement projects. By contrast, smaller sites outside the twenty-four prioritized zones would be rebuilt using mainly private funds. Here, reconstruction plans would be led by local communities, and buildings and plots of land would be restored largely according to their original layouts, with no land readjustment. “Black Zones,” “Grey Zones,” and “White Zones” Despite the uneven distribution of the damage, the city wanted to distribute the priority zones in a fairly uniform manner within the city’s “damage strip” (see Figure 4.6). It was expected that this would help activate privatesector restoration activities in the areas between the priority zones and thus over a broader part of Kobe than could be reasonably afforded by the city, even with substantial national government funding. By and large the twentyfour zones were local shopping and community centres surrounded by residential areas. Nearly all were close to a railway station – again, the hope was that by building these priority areas first, the local government would stimulate private investment and encourage positive citywide effects. Put another way, Kobe’s administration hoped that the concentrated use of limited public funds in priority areas would restore damaged urban areas more quickly than a “scatter-gun” approach. Urban planning professor Nishiyama Yasuo (1997, 2) allegorized that the city’s line of attack was “analogous to the system of ‘spots [tsubo] and linkage [keimyaku]’ in oriental medicine. Spots are placed at main JR ( Japan Railway) stations where various functions are clustered and JR rail lines are regarded as linkages.” Figure 4.7 shows that the tactics of priority redevelopment in Kobe also took on a “fried egg” structure, with the “yolk” representing the high-priority districts and the “white” being the area of spinoff development (interview with Watanabe Shun-ichi, Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning, Science University of Tokyo, July 1996). In the process of defining the strategy of redevelopment, local planners in Kobe utilized a third metaphor – the original twenty-four priority zones were designated as “black,” “grey,” or “white” under the new citywide ordinance (shinsai fukko¯ kinkyu ¯ seibi jo¯rei) (see Figure 4.8). The distinction related to the level of commitment and involvement by public agencies. Black zones included the eight districts designated early on as Building Restriction Areas; in these, any rebuilding would be strictly controlled under Clause 84 of the national Building Standards Act (kenchiku kijun ho¯). In effect, “black zones” could expect substantial government support – specifically, through land readjustment or urban redevelopment projects (see Table 4.4), and through the funding of machizukuri organizations for community planning (see Chapter 5).

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Figure 4.7  Schema showing the three types of designated reconstruction zones in Kobe. Notes: The three types of designated reconstruction areas in Kobe: 1

Building Limitation Areas (“black zones”). These are the areas that suffered extreme damage due to fires and building collapse. Approximately 247.8 ha in six districts were designated for land use planning reconstruction and redevelopment projects on March 17, 1995.

2

Critical Reconstruction Areas (“grey zones”). Approximately 1,225 ha in twenty-four areas were designated as “Important Reconstruction Areas” (ju¯ten fukko¯ chiiki) (see Figure 4.6) according to the Kobe Earthquake Recovery Emergency Reconstruction Regulations of the City of Kobe (also translated as “accelerated reconstruction areas.” Specific instructions were given for cases such as cooperative rebuilding, for which plans were required to be submitted to the municipal government before a construction application plan was submitted. Kobe city provided assistance for construction plans led by local communities in these areas.

3

Reconstruction Promotion Areas (shinsai fukko¯ sokushin kuiki) (“white zones”). About 5,887 ha. No public assistance was given for reconstruction in these areas.

Source: Based on a schema in City of Kobe (1995c)

It was implicitly assumed from the outset that the Ministry of Construction would help fund only the black zones – that is, the two priority redevelopment areas (strategic subcentres) and the six land readjustment areas (see Table 4.4). The black zones would enjoy other special treatment as well; for instance, any sale of land up to ¥50 million (US$500,000) would be exempted from tax (Honjo¯ interview). However, because of the significance of black zones in the minds of Kobe’s planners and their official priority, far from being rebuilt rapidly, they suffered a virtual building moratorium following the quake. Significant time elapsed while detailed plans for rebuilding were hammered out between the city and local residents (see Chapter 5). As it turned out, one of the major paradoxes of Kobe’s reconstruction was that plans for the replotting and rebuilding of urban blocks in these areas were not finalized until two years after the earthquake (see Table 4.4). Consequently, a large number of vacant lots and temporary buildings were still visible in the “priority” black zones many years after the quake (City of Kobe 2005a). “Grey areas” involved the remaining eighteen Priority Reconstruction Areas ( ju ¯ ten fukko¯ chiiki; see Figures 4.7 and 4.8). These were not covered by government-sponsored land readjustment or urban reconstruction schemes. In the grey zones, public supports for improvement and reconstruction of the residential environment were available; however, these depended not on legal compulsion and procedures established under national legislation

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Figure 4.8  Black zones, grey zones, and white zones. Notes: “Black zones” were those restored with public funds and where the lead agency was the City of Kobe (through either land readjustment or urban redevelopment programs). “Grey zones” were those where some public funds were available for community-led restoration. “White zones” were those where no public funds were available for restoration.  Source: Based on a concept included in Matsumoto (1996)

but rather on the cooperation of the local residents, who could request public funding and assistance for reconstruction. In these areas the major reconstruction strategies involved joint or collaborative housing projects in densely built areas and comprehensive projects in urban residential areas. In some grey zones there had been machizukuri organizations before the earthquake. Government subsidies to assist in area-wide planning in grey zones were available, up to 80 percent of any project’s costs. However, planning and design consultants could not be supported financially by the city, so volunteer effort was necessary in these neighbourhoods. Often this work took longer than in the “black zones” (Watanabe interview). The “white zones” are designated in Figure 4.7 as “Earthquake Disaster Reconstruction Promotion Areas” (shinsai fukko¯ kuiki) (totalling 5,890 hectares). These comprised all the districts lying outside the twenty-four priority areas – between 80 and 90 percent of the overall stricken urban area. Indeed, almost all of eastern Kobe was zoned in this way (see Figure 4.6). Here, even though many residential lots were extremely small and often without adequate street access, formal public assistance was not provided and rebuilding was left largely to the residents themselves. However, planning consultants were available on an ad hoc basis to owners who coordinated rebuilding with their neighbours. Still, owing to eastern Kobe’s more advantageous location in relation to Osaka and the higher-than-average incomes of residents, it turned out that more reconstruction occurred in the white zones of Higashi-Nada and Nada than in other residential wards after the earthquake, leading to a faster repopulation of these stricken areas. Figure 4.9 indicates the geographical pattern of building damage and building reconstruction in the six years from 1995 to 2000. This pattern confirms that western Kobe’s suburbs were affected most. In fact, rebuilding (of housing and other buildings) commenced first in the eastern suburbs of

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Figure 4.9  Patterns of damage and recovery, 1995-2000.  Source: Ohnishi (2001)

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Higashi-Nada and Nada. Eastern Kobe was not entirely without problems in its rebuilding. After the quake, many buildings there were in poor physical condition; also, many of the building lots were “non-conforming” in terms of ownership and tenant rights and related vagaries. So even after four or five years, in many parts of these wards, fewer than 75 percent of buildings had been reconstructed (see Figure 4.9; see also Kinmokusei International Project 1999). To summarize, only around 3 percent of the stricken area in Kobe was designated “black” and thus enjoyed substantial public assistance in reconstruction. This designation provided for 124.6 hectares of land readjustment in the six priority districts for the purpose of widening streets, improving utilities, and providing more public open spaces; and for 25.9 hectares of comprehensive redevelopment for the two strategic subcentres of ShinNagata and Rokko¯-michi. The latter two subcentres would be rebuilt at much higher densities than before, with multirise housing and commercial buildings replacing single-storey or double-storey buildings (see Table 4.4). Around these black zones, a further eighteen grey zones (totalling 1,225 hectares, or about 25 percent of the damaged area in Kobe) were singled out as Major Reconstruction Areas (ju ¯ ten fukko¯ chiiki), where the city’s approach allowed for more piecemeal restoration block by block with much less commitment by local or national government to wholesale reconstruction than was anticipated for the “black” category. In these and the remainder of the stricken areas of Kobe, very few public funds were to be spent on neighbourhood reconstruction and upgrading other than for basic services and street repairs.15 Evaluation This chapter has detailed some of the immediate post-disaster reconstruction planning. The findings can be evaluated in light of Figure 2.2, factor 3: “efforts made by government to facilitate recovery.” Despite its initial mishandling of the crisis, the national government lent extensive support to Kobe and the Hanshin region’s long-term revival by quickly securing adequate funds and by changing laws. The Japanese authorities made sure the most important infrastructure was “up and running” in the shortest possible time. This was appropriate to a style of urban development that placed public infrastructure ahead of social facilities such as housing and individual services. For instance, the toppled intercity highway and the damaged port received priority funding, and the government completed these projects in 1997. The approach to funding rebuilding of the broken residential areas of Kobe was more far contentious. Fewer funds were made available by the national government, and these were directed mainly toward temporary housing and longer-term public accommodation for those in dire need. The problem of

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what to do about destroyed homes was relegated to individual households. According to the national government’s rather literal interpretation of the principle of “self-restoration,” most households in Kobe were expected to rebuild their destroyed and damaged houses essentially on the same building lots as before. This assumption was made even in the knowledge that, for some, rebuilding would be financially difficult. For others it would be impossible, both physically and legally, for it would mean rebuilding wooden two-storey houses on substandard building lots adjoining narrow roads, which was prohibited under Japan-wide city-planning regulations. Only in the handful of priority reconstruction areas (the so-called “black zones,” comprising about 3 percent of the total area of destruction) could public money be offered to advance rebuilding, improve congested land patterns, and upgrade urban infrastructure. The principle of not offering assistance for the restoration of individual lives of earthquake victims meant that most of the devastated areas in Kobe were designated as “self-reconstruction areas” (the “white zones,” comprising around 72 percent of the total damaged area), which were left to rebuild without any public assistance whatsoever.

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5 Protest, Participation, and the Phoenix Plan

“Why cannot the city wait for a moment?” “This process lacks the involvement of residents.”    — residents at a City of Kobe council meeting      concerning post-earthquake reconstruction      plans, March 14, 1995

The recovery period following a major disaster tends to be marked by conflict and disillusionment. Conflicts between government and the community and the reconstruction process itself can become a topic of intense debate. What conflicts emerged in Kobe? While designation of priority zones for reconstruction was taking place, the Kobe city administration engaged in a limited public-participation exercise regarding proposed redevelopment and land readjustment projects. In this chapter I show that this process (or lack of adequate process) was extremely controversial, and so was the making of the city’s longer-term ten-year reconstruction plan (the “Phoenix Plan”). Introduction On February 28, 1995, the city released details of its redevelopment priorities for each of the twenty-four Intensive Restoration Zones. The city’s plans indicated the roads that were to be widened and rebuilt, together with the lands to be taken for public open spaces and for emergency shelters in the event of further disasters. For certain zones a substantial increase in allowable building densities was made in order to stimulate the comprehensive redevelopment of high-rise housing and commercial land uses. As noted earlier, the city distributed promotional materials during February announcing these provisions for the eight land readjustment and urban redevelopment projects (see Table 4.4). Also, consultation offices were set up in all eight areas (City of Kobe 1995a). In its publicity pamphlets the city promised

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it would build large parks to serve as disaster-preparedness centres, restore burned shopping streets, promote housing, facilitate the joint construction of buildings, and bring back small businesses (such as the chemical shoe factories in Nagata ward). (The devastated Sannomiya commercial area was not included in these original plans, since a limit on building heights in this district had yet to be established.) As part of its efforts to foster participation, the city office set up information booths in the badly damaged residential districts and began promoting its reconstruction plans. Simultaneously, the city’s plans were exhibited at city government offices for two weeks (as required by the City Planning Law, 1968, toshikeikaku ho¯) beginning on February 28, and a public meeting was announced for March 14 at the city office (see Appendix C).1 Considering Kobe city’s past commitment to substantial consultation with local communities – through support of machizukuri planning in Mano and other districts – one might wonder why the twenty-four priority zones were designated so quickly after the quake and without stronger public input. Three reasons were apparent from interviews that I conducted with city officials and national government bureaucrats. First, the planners maintained that disorderly rebuilding had to be controlled. This sort of rebuilding had the potential to impede improvement of local districts – for example, by blocking the creation of 17-metre roads and the provision of local open spaces (interview with Honjo¯ Yu¯ichi, Manager, City Planning Division, City of Kobe, May 2003). The February 1995 designations bought some “breathing space” for the authorities to decide what to do (and how to do it) in the most devastated areas.2 Second, the planners saw a chance to upgrade Kobe’s inner districts in ways that would have been almost impossible before the quake. Indeed, the quotes that opened this monograph, obtained in interviews with city planners in the summer of 1995, confirm that officials saw a golden opportunity to dust off many postwar redevelopment plans for stricken areas, such as Nagata and Hyo¯go wards – areas that had been consigned to the “too hard to handle” category over the previous five decades. (Remember here that Kobe’s Mayor Sasayama had once been the city’s planning director.)3 The fact that six Clause 84 areas had been identified by Kobe’s planners within two weeks of the quake suggests that a “blueprint for redevelopment” of Kobe’s older districts had been drawn sometime before the quake. Indeed, the planners’ priority areas were in line with the earlier “fourth master plan” for Kobe prepared just before the quake (dai yonji Ko¯be-shi keikaku zentei shu ¯ ). This plan prioritized decentralization of the city’s commercial activities on a metropolitan basis and earmarked twelve new suburban nuclei based around shopping centres, as well as two subcentres in the areas of JR ( Japan Railways) Rokko¯-michi Station (in the east) and JR Shin-Nagata Station (in

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the west) (Honjo¯ interview). These subcentres were the very two districts chosen for comprehensive post-disaster urban redevelopment projects in February 1995 (see Table 4.4). Kobe’s planners had a third reason for anxiety – entirely financial. Even before the earthquake struck, the city’s finances were stretched to the limit, and the prospect of spending heavily on recovery programs was equally appalling and implausible. Hence, the city had no choice but to follow very closely the appropriate procedures for urban reconstruction laid down in national legislation and regulated by bureaucrats at the Ministry of Construction in Tokyo. Only in this way could the city be sure of maximizing any available national government subsidies. The planners felt they had no choice but to position themselves quickly to secure national funds in budget negotiations with the Ministry for fiscal year 1995-96, beginning in April 1995 (Honjo¯ interview).4 5.1 The Citizens’ Protest The city had hoped that good planning opportunities would come out of the earthquake, but things did not go as smoothly as was imagined. Pressured from several directions to introduce controls and designate priority districts as quickly as possible, the city followed the skimpy public consultation procedures as laid out in the Urban Planning Law, 1968. Thus, only two weeks were allowed for public input into the planning process; concerned citizens (residents and local business people) were required to inspect the plans at city government offices and then to comment in writing. This two-week consultation came at the very worst possible time for the public, for during February and March 1995 most people were still living in emergency accommodation in schools, parks, and other places, or they had left the Kobe region altogether. The citizens’ anger at the measures being taken by the city at that time was palpable. Some, seeing similarities to preearthquake plans with which they had disagreed, saw the process merely as a way to avoid public discussion of Kobe’s ongoing development. The plans for the eight priority (“black”) zones (see Table 4.4) called for substantial road widenings as well as provisions for open space; it was clear that these districts would be completely replotted and rebuilt. Even more controversial were the property readjustments that would be necessary to widen roads and create open spaces; in the minds of local landowners, such adjustments would require “donations” of land from property owners to the city.5 Furthermore, the city’s plans would involve a shift to high-rise housing for each of the eight priority zones. All of this would bring drastic changes to these traditional neighbourhoods. The crowded low-rise buildings and narrow streets that the quake and subsequent fires had destroyed would be turned into areas with wider roads, high-rise buildings, and substantial parks.

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”We are against the plan because our shopping street would disappear.” “We do not understand why they have to make a huge park right in front of the Shin-Nagata Station.” “I asked how many years the project will take, but the city official could not answer. I cannot even explain to neighbours how the plan will affect them.” “To look at the pamphlet the city has passed out, the project looks as though it will take years to complete, but I cannot suspend my business that long.” — comments from storekeepers at the Shin-Nagata   Ichiban-gai shopping arcade, destroyed in the Hanshin   earthquake, reported in Minami 1995

The city’s plans were intended in part to make Kobe safer, but the overall approach had its problems. People still deep in grief were appalled that a drastic overhaul of their city was being forced on them in haste. Nostalgia for the charms of older neighbourhoods – with their traditional shopping arcades and winding alleyways – only added to their sorrow, even though these were among the city’s most dangerous features. The proposals were discussed at length at a City Hall meeting held on March 14, where a strong falling out developed between the city government and local residents. More than two hundred angry citizens attended to protest the rezoning and redevelopment plans for the affected areas (“Why” 1995; and see Figure 5.1). At that meeting, the planners insisted that major rezoning and redevelopment plans were necessary and that only by incorporating earthquake-proof and fire-resistant construction (typically in multirise housing units), together with parks and wider streets, could Kobe emerge a safer city than before. The local newspaper reported: Residents began to appear in front of the flower clock in the north of the city hall in the afternoon and the crowd reached about 200 people. They requested that the city should review the plan and raised their voices, shouting “adopt our views” and “the council should not decide.” The residents requested the city that they might enter and directly observe the council meeting, but the city refused. Then, the residents stormed the city hall and vented their frustration against the city by facing the city officials inside, who blocked an entrance to the meeting room eyeball-to-eyeball for five hours (ibid., 1).

This protest involved only a small proportion of the population affected by the city’s plans; even so, it was significant. This sort of spontaneous citizen opposition was a serious development, for Japanese culture does not easily accommodate protest and dissent (see McKean 1981). Local citizens had

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Figure 5.1  Protest at the City of Kobe Office, March 1995.  Source: Photograph courtesy of the City of Kobe

little idea of what was in store, and the absence of their full participation in city rebuilding amounted to a grave exclusion of quake victims at a time when they were highly vulnerable. A Nagata ward resident, Tadao Furuichi, commented: “It was only one month after the quake when we first heard about the city’s rezoning projects. Many people were out of town. I did not even know what the project meant at that time. We had a bad feeling about the city’s officials because they did not extinguish the fires in our district soon enough. So, when the meetings first started, there was a storm of criticism against them” (in Nakamura 1995b). In addition to this City Hall protest, an unprecedented 2,400 objection letters were handed in during the two weeks the plans were on display and when comments were invited from the general public (Kodama 1996; Miyamoto 1996b). Many objected to the lack of any opportunity for dialogue between city and residents, and to the fact that the planners’ schemes had been drawn up for final approval by council without any citizen involvement – and this only three weeks after their original drafts. Most of the comments indicated that residents disagreed with the city’s policies and with the very short time frame allowed for finalizing plans. Others were more specific, raising objections to proposals for new 17-metre-wide roads through residential areas (“Innovative” 1995). To summarize: at a time when Kobe was still coping with an emergency, local citizens were astonished that the authorities would seize land to widen roads and provide open space and that further sacrifices would be required of them as part of land readjustment or urban reconstruction schemes. Most local residents simply wanted to move back to their original neighbourhoods

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as quickly as possible and rebuild their lives as tenants or owners on their previous home sites. They could not understand the need for the city’s reconstruction proposals, and they were angry that after losing their houses and often their livelihoods as a result of the quake, they were now being expected to give up part of their property in accordance with land readjustment laws and bureaucratic procedures. Moreover, many citizens charged that the “Kobe Inc.” image of the city, associated in the recent past with landfill sites and land sales, had led to the city’s interest in reconstructing stricken areas in order to profit from post-disaster urban planning. All told, there was an acute sense that the city’s urban-planning decisions amounted to an abuse of power in the middle of a crisis for the purpose of expanding the city’s tax base (see Sakawa 1997).6 5.2 The City’s Response and the Commencement of “Machizukuri” Planning Despite the strong protests by local citizens, Mayor Sasayama confirmed the designated areas as set out by the planners without any further deliberation by the Kobe Council. Still, in the face of the public outcry and continuing strong residents’ opposition to the initial set of reconstruction plans, on the evening of the March 14 meeting the mayor held a press conference. He acknowledged the criticism regarding the lack of citizen involvement, arguing that “there was little time to make a plan in the emergency situation ... We needed to make a plan urgently in order to prevent the illegal occupation of land, for example” (“Why” 1995). He promised further consultation with the residents, a reduction in the amount of land to be donated by owners (genbu-ritsu), improved public information and consultation, and the establishment of local planning committees (machizukuri kyo¯gikai) to reflect residents’ views in detailed neighbourhood planning. A second phase of reconstruction planning now unfolded. Indeed, after the initial publication of the redevelopment plans, Mayor Sasayama appeared to backtrack from his earlier stance, stating that “there would be no detailed redevelopment without community agreement” (ibid.). Following the mayor’s announcement, a number of novel planning approaches were taken by the city in order to encourage community agreement and participation. First, to end the impasse between local citizens and the municipality, the mayor and city administration built on past experience by fostering machizukuri community groups to develop a local consensus regarding reconstruction outcomes for each of the prioritized reconstruction districts. The city had attempted machizukuri approaches to local planning in the past, but at the time of the quake there were only twelve local community associations (including the celebrated Mano residents association) (see Figure 5.2 and Table 5.1). Prior to the earthquake there had been only twenty-eight or so small areas in Kobe that held machizukuri community

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Figure 5.2  Location of machizukuri groups in Kobe, 2000.  Source: Ohnishi (2001)

development meetings. These were mainly in the central and western inner areas and reflected the experience of local planning in the Mano district. Due to the mayor’s emphasis on involving the citizens in local reconstruction, this number would increase to 115 by the summer of 1996 (the peak number). These were also held in areas that were outside the eight “black zone” districts designated for priority urban renewal or land readjustment projects.7

Table 5.1 Machizukuri groups in Kobe, 1998

Before 1995

After 1995

Total

15

63

78

Reconstruction promotion areas

5

6

11

Other areas

8

1

9

28

70

98

Priority reconstruction areas

Total Note: Some groups had already disbanded by 1998. Source: Ohnishi (2001)

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As part of its machizukuri program, the city provided consultant planners and architects to these groups. Around five hundred such appointments were made during the twelve months following the earthquake, at an estimated expenditure of ¥500 million (US$5 million), mainly from national government subsidies (Watanabe 1997). The city also assembled a large number of local private-sector architects and planners from the wider Kansai region (e.g., including those practising in Osaka and Kyoto), especially those who had experience working with local communities to achieve machizukuri projects. Local architects, planners, and other consultants met with city officials in April 1995; they decided that Kobe city would adopt a modified “twostage” approach to land readjustment (kukakuseiri) for the recovery of the priority areas. Thus, the city would confirm its choice of major road widenings for each of the designated areas listed in Table 4.4, as well as the locations of strategic parks and open spaces. To this end, the city planners would first set the major road widenings – usually those of 16 to 17 metres in width – and the positions of new parks; local citizens would then be asked to redesign their own rebuilding in conjunction with neighbours and to draw up local community roads (4 metres or more in width) within each major block, with a specified percentage of land (genbu) – usually around 10 percent – taken by the city without compensation for public uses and to defray the costs of infrastructure rebuilding. Thereafter, local citizens – working through neighbourhood machizukuri groups and aided by the planning and design consultants recruited by the city – would draw up plans and solutions for rebuilding individual blocks as well as set out the locations and widths of minor “community” roads and the distributions of local “pocket parks” and open spaces (Honjo¯ interview). Chapter 6 describes this neighbourhood process in more depth. In this way the city offered opportunities for local communities to involve themselves in their own reconstruction, based on the experiences of machizukuri groups set up prior to the earthquake. The city hoped that local residents would be willing to provide input into rebuilding their communities and that the antagonistic relations between citizens and the municipal administration would thereby be softened. A third set of initiatives involved a public information program to help citizens’ and private firms’ reconstruction efforts. Besides setting up local machizukuri councils in the priority districts, the city dispatched specialist architects and planners to other districts of Kobe – wherever these were requested. It also provided on-site coordination centres in each of the stricken districts.8 As well, the city supported regular distributions of machizukuri newsletters by volunteers (Figure 5.3); these appeared in Kobe between February 1995 and August 1998 (see Kinmokusei International Project 1999).9

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Figure 5.3  “Kinmokusei“ local machizukuri newsletter, 1997.  Source: Kinmokusei International Project (1999)

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To summarize: the March 14 urban planning meeting, the decision to designate districts for priority reconstruction a few days later, and the events that followed had several distinctive features. The mayor of Kobe hoped that despite the citizens’ hostility the survivors of the earthquake would rebuild their own communities largely by themselves; to that end, they would be offered opportunities to express their own proposals. These measures had never before been attempted in Japan, so the mayor’s compromise amounted to a remarkable break from traditional planning processes, during which only bureaucrats had managed urban redevelopment projects of any scale.10 5.3 The Phoenix Reconstruction Plan In the year following the disaster the city administration also prepared a Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan, as provided for by the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Law, 1961 (see Appendix C). An initial set of Reconstruction Plan Guidelines was published by the administration on March 27, 1995. These were sent to the city’s Reconstruction Planning Committee for review. Backed by secure and substantial national government funding, the Kobe City Reconstruction Plan was finalized and made public on June 9, 1995. This was followed by a much more extensive redevelopment plan compiled for the disaster area by Hyo¯go prefecture named the “Hyo ¯ go Phoenix Plan” (Narumi 1996; Hyo ¯ go Prefecture 1996b). Together, these two reconstruction plans envisaged a staggering total of 1,680 individual projects involving a massive ¥12.1 trillion (US$132.2 billion). Each plan included urban reconstruction projects and infrastructure repairs, to be completed by the end of 1995; a three-year plan for housing, industrial renewal, and infrastructure replacement; and a set of longer-term projects to be completed by the end of 2005. The goals of these two reconstruction plans are listed in Figure 5.4. In common with the “comprehensive plans” issued from time to time by cities and prefectures in Japan (CLAIR 2004), both plans were broad-scale statements of intent rather than detailed proposals. A consideration of how successfully these plans were implemented is deferred to this book’s concluding chapter. The financial measures estimated as necessary to implement Hyo¯go prefecture’s Phoenix Plan are set out in Table 5.2. That table indicates that nearly two-thirds of the funds required were to go toward reconstructing urban infrastructure and public works. In terms of Kobe city’s revenue sources, the same table indicates that transfers from the national government would amount to more than three-fifths of the budget; one-third would be provided by city loans. Cost subsidies for specific projects sometimes were higher than three-fifths because the Hanshin earthquake had been designated as a “special disaster” (see Chapter 2). In launching the Phoenix Plan, Hyo¯go governor Kaihara Toshitami remarked on the importance of full economic recovery after the quake: “Merely

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Figure 5.4  Overall goals of the Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture’s ten-year reconstruction plans.  Sources: Hyo¯go Prefecture Government (1995); City of Kobe (1995c)

restoring the area to its state before January 17th would be inappropriate. Instead, restoration must unfold consonant with changes brought about in the area’s economic structure.” By this he was drawing attention to the important economic goals embedded in the reconstruction plans. Except for a new emphasis on housing, many of Kobe’s pre-earthquake economic development ideas were being carried forward to these post-quake plans. Tourism, fashion, high technology, and international trade were still seen as sectors promising future growth. Symbolic projects were also proposed – high-profile projects that would lead the recovery. These would include a health science centre featuring a branch of the World Health Organization; an international media and entertainment project; a fashion centre; and an enterprise zone. Kaihara also stated that the prefecture and city governments would ask the national government to ease various restrictions on economic development and would be seeking its financial support for the plan’s various projects (in “Governor” 1995). Symbolic Projects and the Citizens’ Responses As with the short-term redevelopment proposals, there was citizen reaction to the long-term projects in the Phoenix Plan. When it was first released there was considerable criticism that there had been insufficient public

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Table 5.2 Financial measures to implement the Hyōgo Reconstruction Plan, 1995-2005

¥ billion

(%)

Division of expenditures National government financial measures Financial expenditure of Hyo ¯go prefecture     for matters related to the earthquake Kobe City disaster reconstruction expenses

2,567.1 2,546.0

(40.2) (39.9)

1,270.7

(19.9)



6,383.8

(100.0)

768.2 8.9 407.7 .5 68.4

(60.5) (0.3) (32.1) (1.8) (5.4)

1,253.7

(100.0)

Total

Kobe city revenue sources Expenditure from the National Treasury Expenditure from the prefecture City loans Other special sources of revenue General sources of revenue

Total

Hyo¯go prefecture reconstruction (Phoenix) Plan project expenses (first five years) Housing, welfare 2,100 (17.4) Culture 200 (1.7) Industry recovery 1,500 (12.4) Disaster-prevention systems 300 (2.5) Urban infrastructure and public works 8,000 (66.1)

Total

Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Reconstruction Fund (funded by Kobe city and Hyōgo prefecture)

12,100

(100.0)

900

Source: Miyamoto (1996b)

involvement. The two local governments had produced their plans quickly and with a sense of urgency, and neither had included substantial public outreach as part of the process. Still, the enormous need to rebuild Kobe overwhelmed any public sentiment that planning was proceeding too quickly. Indeed, many people were still preoccupied with day-to-day survival, some of whom had been displaced from their neighbourhoods into temporary housing, and as a result had little time or energy to involve themselves in comment or organized protest.11 Nonetheless, the release of the Phoenix Plan spurred some controversy. On the one hand, it was generally considered commendable that a comprehensive Reconstruction Plan for Kobe had been prepared within six months of the quake, given the wide scope of the disaster. On the other hand, many people suffering from the

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quake’s effects were offended by many of the ideas being proposed, especially those involving toshikeikaku-style urban planning (i.e., top-down large-scale urban infra­structure schemes). What sorts of proposals caught the citizens’ ire? One controversy related to the rather indiscriminate mixing of short-term reconstruction priorities (focusing on road and rail-line rebuilding) with medium-term disaster mitigation programs (such as housing) and longer-term projects aimed at revitalizing the city’s national and international economy and image. One critique argued that “the reconstruction plan has become something of a catchall, mixing projects unrelated to the earthquake, those resulting from the quake, and those that should be implemented quickly because of the quake damage” (“Plan” 1995, 6). Especially problematic was the inclusion of seventeen major “symbolic projects” (see Table 5.3). These were to be emblematic of the city’s Phoenixlike rise from the disaster. Besides disaster-prevention programs, such as the strengthening of urban infrastructure and the establishing of greenbelt corridors along Kobe’s rivers, these projects included a number of innovative “big-ticket” approaches to economic recovery. Some had already been proposed by Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture (e.g., an airport, an enterprise zone). Others were in effect symbolic memorial projects to commemorate the rebuilding of Kobe after the earthquake. But many citizens saw these as extravagant megaprojects and as wastes of public money. Quake survivors who were still facing the hardships of emergency accommodation and temporary housing saw them as irrelevant. By way of illustration, the Phoenix Plan highlighted a “New Eastern City” (later named “Happy Active Town Kobe,” or the HAT Kobe project). This project envisaged waterfront development on a former industrial site. It was to include a variety of new international research institutes as well as 100,000 high-rise condominium units.12 Yet another symbolic project called for an “enterprise zone” that, through reduced national and local taxes, would attract foreign and domestic investment in high-tech industries. A separate symbolic project called for an airport to be built on an artificial island (272 hectares) 5 kilometres offshore, south of the second stage of Port Island (see Figure 3.5). Mayor Sasayama personally favoured this initiative; indeed, he had called for such an airport even before the quake. The plan for a new airport had been conceived around the time that nearby Kansai International Airport was completed in 1994, just across Osaka bay from Kobe, south of the Osaka metropolitan area. In this way (and in the eyes of the local citizenry) the Reconstruction Plan continued the image of Kobe as a city that could only expand through massive public projects. The plan also proposed a convention centre, multimedia facilities, and the formation of a Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Memorial Park, as well as twentieth-century memorial museums (see Table 5.3).

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Table 5.3 List of seventeen symbolic projects, City of Kobe Reconstruction Plan, June 1995 Disaster-prevention measures • Reconstruction plan of citizen housing • Creation of a safe and comfortable city area • Creation of communities with welfare services for the 21st century • Citizens’ safety and security network • Creation of multiple transportation networks 1 • Development of a local disaster-prevention base • Creation of a city with water and greenery 2 • Development of lifeline utility systems Industry-promotion measures • A plan for the new city centre in eastern Kobe 3 • Development of a Kobe Business Start-Up Zone (Enterprise Zone) • China/Asia Exchange Zone (Shanghai-Yangtze Valley Trade Promotion Project) • Creation of Kobe as a “Hub Port” for the 21st century • Foundation of an international and modern culture in Kobe • Development of a base for next-generation telecommunications research (the KIMEC Plan)4 Long-term projects • Development of a city-centre symbolic zone connected to the sea • Provision of a legacy to remember the disaster • Construction of a Museum of Disaster Science and a complex of 20th-century museums 1

Includes the proposed Kobe airport, with 2,500-metre runway, off Port Island, Stage Two Includes upgrading north-south river systems and the Rokko ¯ Mountain greenbelt system 3 Includes the HAT subcentre in eastern Kobe, with 10,000 housing units in multirise housing, condominiums, international research centres, and art gallery 4 KIMEC = Kobe International Multimedia and Entertainment City 2

Source: City of Kobe (1995c)

A further criticism was that the city’s Reconstruction Plan was presenting as many projects for national government funding as possible (Miyamoto 1996a, b). The Kobe Reconstruction Plan – with more than one thousand projects and programs in eleven separate subthemes – was extensive and comprehensive in scope. A major drawback was that it failed to identify priorities within the array of suggested projects. Another was that it ignored the possibility that money might not be available for them. Kobe’s Reconstruction Plan and Hyo¯go’s Phoenix Plan had been developed in terms of Japan’s standard process for local government comprehensive planning (so¯go¯ keikaku), as required under the Local Government Law, 1947 (City of Kobe 1995c). That law requires all local governments to prepare

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public plans that encompass long-term infrastructure projects as well as cultural and industrial policies. In Japan, such comprehensive plans tend to be generous in their goals, to set long-term targets, and to avoid articulating project priorities or any total budget. Observers soon noted that nearly all the “symbolic projects” envisaged to assist Kobe’s long-term recovery had been “on the drawing board” in some form or another long before the earthquake and had simply been transferred to the 1995 Reconstruction Plan once it became clear that national government funding might be available to implement them.13 The city recognized that the disaster was a unique opportunity to obtain special funding for large-scale projects that would not otherwise have been prioritized by central ministries and that certainly could not be funded solely through local taxes. Indeed, an economic impact of the disaster had been to shrink the tax revenues of Hyo¯go prefecture quite drastically in fiscal 1995, down to the levels of the late 1980s; the finances of Kobe city were in even worse shape as a result of the quake. So it was perhaps only natural that the hopes of project implementation should be placed on financial support from the national government. For this reason, the draft Reconstruction Plan issued in the summer of 1995 gave no concrete dates for the completion of the various projects, other than the hope that all could be finalized within ten years. Another type of critique concerned the balance between “hard” infrastructure projects and “soft” welfare services. Ambiguous priorities and the lack of a fixed timetable for major projects meant that expenditures on new construction were perceived as out of balance with those measures aimed at restoring disaster-affected individuals and local businesses.14 Indeed, the Reconstruction Plan assigned hardly any priority to launching special welfare programs for the disaster’s victims, especially the elderly. Moreover, no plans had been drafted to expand day care and home visit services for elderly and handicapped people in the proposed public housing projects, and no plans had been included to provide extra nursing homes for the many aged survivors who would require long-term care. When combined with the national government’s original intention that these services be provided largely by individuals themselves, or by self-help groups, the frustration felt by Kobe’s citizens is understandable. There was an underlying fear that the rebuilding of Kobe and its infrastructure might be completed in accordance with the priorities of the reconstruction plans, and that the people might be prevented from leaving their temporary shelters and housing projects and returning to the city because of a lack of support services for victims, as well as a lack of local jobs. An irate resident’s remark on Kobe’s administration was quoted in the report of a city planning meeting held in the summer of 1995. This observation represented a widely held perspective in the community: “Why do they

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now reconstruct the city all at once like a thief at the scene of a fire? I think it is the meanest thing to do, knowing that they could not do this in the usual way. They took advantage of our vulnerable position” (in Kawamura, Hirohara, and Yamashita 1996, 51). Truth be told, the Japanese “thief at a fire” (kajiba dorobo¯) metaphor “stuck” and would trouble city planners for the next several years. Other critiques were more specific. They included the fact that the plan called for a new airport, something that had met with residents’ opposition in the early 1990s (see Chapter 7). A condemnation of the reconstruction plans by environmentalist Miyamoto Kenichi pointed out that it assumed the continuation of a car-dependent society in Kobe. Also, the Phoenix Plan foreshadowed proposals for a major new north-south highway in the city to augment the existing east-west elevated Highway Number 1. Miyamoto went on to criticize the plan’s large-scale coastal land reclamation program. Coastal land reclamation is often resorted to in Japan; even so, he censured the idea of moving more earth from the Rokko¯ Mountains to reclaim land for the airport and the second stage of Port Island, not only for safety reasons but also as an act contrary to urban sustainability and environmental conservation. Nonetheless, the city continued to place land reclamation at the very core of its reconstruction plan, including the construction of a new airport on reclaimed land in Osaka Bay (see Figure 3.5) (Miyamoto 1996a, b). The city’s Reconstruction Plan and the prefecture’s Phoenix Plan had been developed with some input from local residents; but among the latter there remained considerable resistance. In the event, and despite many misgivings among citizens, when Kobe city finally published its Reconstruction Plan in July 1995, there were no further formal protests. Those residents opposed to the plan seemed to have given up. Perhaps this was because they were already skeptical about the municipal administration, which had badly “lost face” as a result of the “bungled” rezoning schemes and the plans for priority areas published earlier in the year (Kawamura, Hirohara, and Yamashita 1996). But if citizens’ voices were mute, this could not be said of journalists, academics, and national government officials (see, for instance, comments in “Plan” 1995; “Out” 1995). 5.4 Review by the National Government In the summer of 1995 the “Phoenix” Reconstruction Plans were submitted formally to the national government’s Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee. The committee generally approved the overall approach as well as the contents, and it passed on the requests for funding to the national government. But it also pointed out to both Hyo¯go prefecture and Kobe city the importance of adequate communication with citizens during the reconstruction. And it requested that the order of priority for the many projects be set

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as follows. First, measures should proceed to improve medical care and address employment loss, and subsidized public housing should be arranged to tackle the issue of poverty alleviation for residents who had no other means of long-term accommodation. Second, a review of comprehensive transportation and communications should be carried out to provide more flexibility of movement throughout the Hanshin region in the event of a future earthquake. Third, Kobe should implement a model disaster-resistant city with green corridors and common conduits for vital lifelines (Ogawa and Nagano 1995). Moreover, while the committee was willing to recommend government subsidies for the initial five-year recovery phase, further study would be necessary regarding the division of financial burdens between the central and local governments. This would affect a range of development projects (mainly the long-term symbolic projects noted above) that had been planned to commence in the five years after 2000 (Shimokobe 1996). Commenting specifically on the 600 or so projects proposed by the prefecture and the more than 1,100 projects put forward by Kobe city, the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee opined as follows. Since government contributions had already included two supplementary budgets – which, as noted earlier, added up to ¥2.5 trillion (see Table 4.2) – together with sixteen revisions to existing laws (see Table 4.1), perhaps sufficient measures had already been taken. Consequently, it might not be possible to allocate further funds for any specific project implemented beyond the first five years of the post-disaster period (i.e., beyond year 2000) – such as the long-term plan to found a complex of twenty-first-century memorial museums in Kobe, or the proposed Kobe airport. Regarding a memorial, Hyo¯go prefecture in 1996 installed a large exhibit about the earthquake and the region’s recovery in the first year. This was located in a prominent temporary building in central Kobe called the Kobe Phoenix Plaza. It included displays about the damage, earthquake hazards and risks, and future plans for the Hanshin region, and it provided information on technical assistance and resources available to citizens. Years later, in April 2002, the Kobe Phoenix Plaza was turned over to Coca-Cola and made into a World Football Cup 2002 advertising and ticket-sales centre (recorded in site visits made by the author in 1996 and 2002). As a more permanent reminder, some roped-off and unrepaired dock sections – damaged and broken by the quake – have been left at Meriken Park (see Figure 5.5), and a brand-new museum has been opened to continue the work of the Phoenix Plaza (see Figure 5.6). This latter project, known as the Kobe Earthquake Memorial Museum, also serves as the city’s centre for training disaster-management practitioners. It is located in the HAT Kobe project (“Disaster” 2007). It became clear to the Reconstruction Committee that the real purpose of the major symbolic projects listed in Table 3.6 was to obtain funds from the

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Figure 5.5  Earthquake memorial (damaged pier) at Meriken Park, Kobe, 2005.  Source: Photograph by D.W. Edgington

Figure 5.6  Earthquake memorial museum, HAT project, 2005.  Source: Photograph courtesy of the City of Kobe

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national budget for infrastructure that might give Kobe some competitive advantage vis-à-vis other cities in Japan (such as Hiroshima and Yokohama) and in East Asia (e.g., Shanghai in China and Seoul in South Korea). Some of Kasumigaseki’s bureaucrats in Tokyo complained: “It is like reaping a profit out of confusion” (in Kawamura, Hirohara, and Yamashita 1996, 49).15 Consequently, the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee’s final stance in 1995, as already noted, was that it would certainly try to meet the financial requirements of elements of the Phoenix Plan for at least the first five years. With regard to longer-term development projects, such as the airport, these would be positioned according to a national priority list for large-scale urban redevelopment and renewal – a list that had to take into account many other local plans and megaprojects supported by other cities, towns, and villages in Japan. After its tenth meeting in July 1995 the Reconstruction Committee forwarded its recommendations for assisting the physical, economic, and social disaster recovery of Kobe to Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi, who commented that “coping with the Great Hanshin Earthquake is the Cabinet’s top priority” (“New” 1995). During the remainder of 1995 it was not entirely apparent whether the national government would actually commit to funding the full list of proposals contained in the ten-year plans. As the year following the disaster wore on, it became apparent that the national government’s perception of the Hanshin earthquake had undergone a change – Kobe’s reconstruction was now viewed as a local matter rather than one of national importance. This was especially so owing to the country’s continuing poor economic performance and the worsening situation of Japan’s banking industry in the wake of the stock and land market bubbles of the early 1990s (Masuzoe 2000). After the high-profile poison gas attack in a Tokyo subway by the Aum Shinrikyo¯ cult in March 1995, and the lacklustre performance by the ruling parties in the Japanese House of Councillors election in July 1995, the government’s strong initial support of Kobe’s reconstruction appeared to simply fade away (Blaker 1996). Besides, many other cities in Japan were clamouring for special attention (e.g., Hiroshima following the demise of its local shipbuilding industry and after various problems in the local Mazda car plant in the mid-1990s) (“Winds” 1998). Indeed, during that year every city in Japan seemed to be demanding new projects to attract business and stimulate the local economy. Thereafter, the national government’s attitude evolved toward one that asked, “Why should we give more funds to Kobe? We have to treat every city as equal” (comments by Hanaki Akira, City of Kobe, Disaster-Recovery Division, reported in Moffett 1996). Academic observers from the Hanshin community echoed this sentiment. Kobe University economist Konishi Yasuo argued: “Why should Kobe expect to receive special treatment?” (“Kobe Still” 1997).

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Evaluation In terms of the framework developed in Chapter 2, the material in this chapter has focused on factor 4 in Figure 2.2, which deals with local community attitudes to the disaster and to local government reconstruction plans. The analysis has revealed the problems inherent in post-disaster planning when a balance has to be struck between quickly drawing up plans and involving local citizens. In Kobe, the city appeared to fumble its moves toward rebuilding – at least to begin with – by making too much haste in implementing legislation imposed by the central planning and finance systems. While Japanese citizens have traditionally acquiesced in response to bureaucratic actions, in Kobe the plans for rebuilding were met with sharp disapproval. Still, from the city administration’s perspective, there were very good reasons why the twenty-four priority districts and the long-term Reconstruction (Phoenix) Plan had to be made somewhat hastily: rebuilding needed to be controlled, and national government budget timelines had to be met. Also, the city authorities saw the reconstruction period as an opportunity to rebuild Kobe – in particular, to improve the port area, the city centre (the Sannomiya shopping area), the bayside redevelopment areas, and the subcentres destroyed by fire (Shin-Nagata and Rokko¯-michi) – and to upgrade disaster-mitigation facilities in older residential areas. The quote at the beginning of this monograph, recorded in 1995 during an interview with a city planning official, best sums up the attitude embedded in the Kobe Reconstruction Plan: “A crisis is a dangerous opportunity.” In Kobe the risks and dangers were visible in the financial uncertainties the city faced, in the unexpected protests from local residents, and in the national government’s disparagement of proposed megaprojects. Even so, the link with the well-known Eastern aphorism connecting a “crisis” to an “opportunity” was appropriate: out of crisis could come an opportunity for Kobe to do better. The city’s reconstruction plan might not match entirely the wishes of the local community; but in the circumstances it was surely a “second best” plan (in economic theory), one that was made under severe time constraints and under the limitations inherent in a Japanese urban policy system that championed “hardware” projects over social planning and physical infrastructure over welfare services.16 Despite the uncertainty over Kobe’s longer-term project, the physical reconstruction and infrastructure recovery during the first few months after the quake got off to a relatively good start (Hirao 1995a; “Connections” 1996). Appendix A indicates that telephone services were restored by January 31, 1995, gas supplies by April 11, water by April 17, and sewage disposal by May 1. Subway lines were all functioning by March 1995, and commuter trains to Osaka on the Hankyu ¯ and Hanshin private railways were running again by June 1995. After the Hanshin earthquake, 15.5 million cubic metres of rubble were left behind. Public funds were used to tear down buildings, and

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roughly 80 percent of buildings were demolished and removed by the end of May 1995.17 The waste then had to be sorted; debris disposal was completed in March 1998, more than three years after the disaster (see Appendix A). The remaining section of the collapsed Hanshin Expressway between Osaka and western Japan through Kobe was reopened in September 1996. Considering the devastation caused by the Hanshin earthquake, this rate of recovery can be viewed as no mean feat. Kobe felt that it could take some pride in the repair, rebuilding, and replacement work it had achieved by the end of the first year (see City of Kobe, 1995d). Less advanced, however, was the full social and economic restoration of stricken neighbourhoods. During the first year of reconstruction, city and prefecture officials faced increasing apathy in Tokyo; closer to home they were confronted with the ire of the quake’s victims. Still, in most cases the city administration refused to budge on safety issues and stuck to its guns on the need to widen roads and open up public spaces in priority districts. If the residents were given a voice, they were not given veto power. Once full restoration of land transportation in the Kobe area was completed, around six months after the earthquake, life became somewhat easier for the region’s inhabitants. During the summer of 1995, most railways and roads resumed service, the wreckage of buildings was substantially removed, and many damaged areas were restored. The tragedy of the redevelopment process was that little progress had been made toward restoring the victims’ daily lives. In special circumstances the Hanshin-Awaji Restoration Fund offered loans for housing construction and the restoration of small shops and other local businesses (City of Kobe 2005a). But other issues, such as the painful circumstances of the elderly in temporary housing and delays in constructing long-term public housing, remained unresolved by the end of the year; the same is true of the replanning for the twenty-four priority reconstruction districts and the restoration of the region’s economy. For instance, not until 2000 – about halfway through the ten-year reconstruction process – was the replotting of property boundaries completed for the eight major redevelopment districts shown in Table 4.4. This was a critical prerequisite for long-term rebuilding in what were considered to be the worst affected neighbourhoods (“Land-Readjustment” 2000a). Up to that time, only temporary two-storey prefabricated buildings were allowed in these areas, causing local residents anxiety over the exact limits on their right to rebuild houses and shops (“Reconstruction” 1995). After this general evaluation of the four dimensions of post-disaster reconstruction outlined in Figure 2.2, and how they applied in the case of the Hanshin earthquake, this book now moves to a series of case studies. Chapter 6 considers the rebuilding of residential neighbourhoods in the western and eastern suburbs of Kobe.

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6 Neighbourhood Case Studies

It is difficult promoting such a project when residents refuse it emotionally or people care about losses and gains brought about by a rezoning plan. Residents have got to understand that a rezoning project means offering their property to their communities.

— local consultant architect Morisaki Teruyuki

We have been receiving more complaints than encouragement from property owners. For them, perhaps our plan appears to be an attempt to seize their land. But the rezoning will provide benefits for property owners as well.

— an official at Kobe’s Urban Planning Department

This chapter follows the ten-year history of three neighbourhood reconstruction projects, examining some of the opportunities and problems encountered during this time, especially in persuading local landowners and residents to comply with the land readjustment and urban redevelopment processes. The case studies all relate to “black zone” priority districts: first, the North Shin-Nagata land readjustment project; then, the urban redevelopment project of South Shin-Nagata (both in western Kobe); and, finally, the Moriminami district in eastern Kobe (refer to Figure 4.6). The analysis draws attention to the importance of the pre-disaster conditions in these areas as well as to the complexity and diversity encountered by the community planners involved in these neighbourhood reconstruction projects. As indicated in Chapter 5, for the first year after the quake the city’s reconstruction plans commenced in rancour as the city authorities began remaking and upgrading Kobe’s stricken districts. At the start, the planners

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offered a fait accompli to local residents in the form of revised road systems, open spaces, and high-rise construction. These plans were drawn up with the minimum of public participation prescribed by the City Planning Law, 1968.1 After strong opposition from residents who felt that their views were being ignored, the city had no choice but to introduce a two-step method of local reconstruction. This involved setting up machizukuri committees assisted by professional consultants. This program was wide-ranging; indeed, it involved what to this date has been Japan’s most intensive public participation exercise. While planning committees involving the general public are found in many parts of North America and Europe, they have been the exception in Japan (Sorensen 2002). All through the spring of 1995, local citizens continued to express their frustration and anger. They sabotaged the city’s reconstruction plans through strident protests at the city’s meeting in March of that year, and then later with letters opposing the proposals. But by the end of the summer the frustration had waned as residents began considering the merits and demerits of the various rezoning and street-widening plans. Moreover, in the twentyfour “black” and “grey” priority zones, neighbours began to focus on the specific implications of the municipal plans for their own reconstruction options and to solicit opinions from city-sponsored architects and planners regarding how to rebuild their homes, businesses, and lives. Outside these areas, in the “white zones,” residents and shopkeepers were left to their own devices when it came to rebuilding. The local street-widening and open-space plans formulated by the city were reviewed through machizukuri committees; some of these commitees were newly formed after March 1995; others had existed before the quake. Organized by local residents and ward officials and chaired by community leaders, the machizukuri committees set up for the “black” and “grey” zones during 1995 were greatly assisted by local government-funded planning consultants. The appointed consultants worked with residents and local business leaders in the machizukuri committees from the summer of 1995 through to the middle of 1997; these people helped build consensus and negotiate the complex agreements needed to implement the reconstruction plans. The two key issues faced by the machizukuri committees throughout Kobe were how to balance the aims of the city with those of the residents, and how to implement reconstruction in a timely manner. This latter goal was especially important, as most people, residents and businesses alike, wished to return “home” to their neighbourhoods – home from the widely scattered temporary housing projects and also from the temporary industrial estates for displaced small-scale factories that had been established during the summer of 1995. But before that could happen the planners’ objectives regarding road widening and open spaces in Kobe’s dense urban areas had to be met.

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6.1 Shin-Nagata in Western Kobe 6.1.1 History of Shin-Nagata Shin-Nagata refers to the area surrounding the Japan Railways ( JR) station in Nagata ward.2 During Japan’s Meiji period (1868-1912) the Shin-Nagata area was still farmland, far beyond the early urban districts of Kobe (see Figure 6.1a). Roads were established gradually during the late Meiji era and also in the Taisho¯ period (1912-25),3 and Nagata’s farmlands and paddy fields were converted into densely inhabited residential areas. The traditional pattern of paddy fields separated by narrow paths determined the layout of the new residential blocks and roads, which in some cases were less than 4 metres wide. Later, as Kobe started to expand away from its original harbourside, small factories were founded in the Nagata district. During the interwar years the area became part of Kobe and was subsequently called Nagata ward (Figure 6.1b). Nagata ward is today the second oldest of Kobe’s nine wards. By the 1940s this area had grown into a blue-collar district. Following the Second World War, Nagata ward developed a mix of land uses, including a “chemical shoes” industry alongside residential uses and traditional retail shopping arcades (Figure 6.1c). In the 1990s the chemical shoes production cluster was already in decline because of competition from cheaper manufacturing in China and other Asian countries. Population levels were falling, too, as younger people left for new housing in Kobe’s suburban areas. Nonetheless, elderly people remained in the neighbourhood, which was jammed with shops, wooden houses, and inexpensive but rundown two-storey apartment buildings called bunka ju ¯ taku (“cultural housing”). All told, many locals preferred this older, traditional neighbourhood because of its numerous conveniences when compared to the new suburbs, which were far away and north of the Rokko¯ Mountains (Shibasaki 1995). Kobe city planners had already attempted land readjustment in Shin-Nagata in the immediate postwar years but had failed to achieve the community consensus necessary for any worthwhile project to succeed (see Chapter 3). This was for a number of reasons, including the small size of the original building plots; the mix of ethnicities living in Nagata ward, who could not agree with one another (including Korean and Chinese workers and their families, who had been brought to Kobe by the Japanese Army for factory employment during the Second World War); and the irregular mix of housing and industry. For these reasons, the city planners simply gave up trying to widen the roads and provide more open spaces for this congested neighbourhood. No further planning was undertaken for some time. The zoning assigned to this area in 1970 (when the first city zoning plan was introduced) was “quasi-industrial,” meaning that just about any type of land use was permitted. Indeed, this type of zoning was the very worst in terms of providing an incentive for improvement or rationalization (see Callies 1994, 1997).

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a Figure 6.1a  Historic map of the Shin-Nagata area, Meiji period: 1899. Source: Based on map provided by planning consultant Takada Susumu

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b Figure 6.1b  Historic map of the Shin-Nagata area, late-Taisho¯ period: 1924. Source: Based on map provided by planning consultant Takada Susumu

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c Figure 6.1c  Historic map of the Shin-Nagata area, postwar (Sho¯wa) period: 1967. Source: Based on map provided by planning consultant Takada Susumu

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By the 1980s the whole of Nagata ward was considered an “inner-city problem area.” This was because of falling population levels, declining retail sales, and the high proportion of seniors who lived there. Still, Nagata ward remained attractive for factory workers and for retired people due to the ample supply of cheap housing. Just before the earthquake, Nagata ward houses typically contained either the elderly or students, and often there were concentrations of working-class immigrant labourers (who made up around 10 percent of Chu ¯o¯ and Nagata wards), squatters,4 and buraku – historically the untouchable caste, still poor and not fully integrated into Japanese society (Saito¯ 1995).5 For all of these reasons the Kobe planners regarded Nagata ward as having many social and environmental problems, not least because of its particular mixture of deteriorating, narrow houses and small-to-medium-sized industrial plants making shoes and other products, interspersed with modern condominium structures. One dimension of the perceived problems was that the area was failing to attract and retain younger people and families. Planners noted that the population had declined rapidly since the early 1970s – by half over the twenty years prior to the quake – while the age of the remaining population had been rising. By 1990, 16.4 percent of Nagata’s population was over sixtyfive (see Table 3.1) – well above the city’s average of 11.5 percent. Faced with these and other indicators, Kobe’s planners thought that without decisive intervention the population would continue to age and job opportunities would continue to decline (interview with Honjo¯ Yu ¯ichi, Manager, City Planning Division, City of Kobe, May 2003). In light of Nagata ward’s continuing debility, in the 1980s the city finally commenced a land readjustment project on either side of the Japan Railways ( JR) station at Shin-Nagata. The objective was to create a new business hub that would eventually emerge as one of two subcentres in Kobe’s long-term development (the other being Rokko¯-michi in western Kobe; see Evans 2002; Funck 2007). Compared with earlier attempts at land readjustment in the area immediately after the Second World War, this scheme appeared to go smoothly. By the time of the 1995 earthquake the initial replotting of the old streets immediately to the south of the station had been completed. A large station square (hiroba) had been laid out on the southern side of the station entrance through a combination of land readjustment and urban redevelopment (interview with Hara Sho¯taro¯, Planning Official, Shin-Nagata Project Office, Kobe, June 1996). Yet while this project updated the immediate vicinity to the south of the JR station, including a new department store, conditions in other parts of Nagata ward continued to pose many problems. These included substandard narrow streets that impeded emergency access for fire trucks and ambulances; a lack of open space either for amenities or for refuge at times of emergency and to retard fires; an inappropriate mix of

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Figure 6.2  Houses opening onto a narrow street in Nagata ward, 2005.  Source: Photograph by D.W. Edgington

land uses (e.g., small factories beside wooden houses were storing chemicals, rubber, and gasoline); and a very low incidence of earthquake insurance (ibid.; see Figure 6.2). The area north and south of the station was completely devastated by the earthquake. Around 80 percent of its houses and factories were destroyed. Of the 450 or so shoemaking factories in the area, around 85 percent were

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either totally destroyed by the quake or razed in the ensuing fire. Indeed, according to officials of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, the temblor almost completely destroyed the production facilities of that entire industry, which before the quake had employed some 50,000 people (“Earthquake” 1995). Because of this extreme damage, Shin-Nagata was designated as one of six areas where reconstruction was to be strictly controlled through Clause 84 of the Building Standards Law (see Figure 4.4). The area south of Shin-Nagata JR station (about 25 percent of the total Shin-Nagata area) was designated an urban redevelopment project; this would allow the realization of a western subcentre for Kobe through comprehensive redevelopment and land purchases (see Table 4.3). The remainder of Shin-Nagata, north of the station, was designated for reconstruction by land readjustment. By this time the city had to a large degree already brought the local community together, albeit under very different circumstances. 6.1.2 The North Shin-Nagata Land Readjustment Scheme At the time of the earthquake the North Shin-Nagata project area comprised around 7,600 residents and 2,200 individual landowners (see Table 6.1). Figure 6.3a suggests the crowded conditions of this neighbourhood before

Table 6.1 Summary of the North Shin-Nagata land readjustment project Land area

59.6 ha

Before the quake   Total population and households 7,587 people, 3,267 households   Total no. of buildings 2,217 houses Earthquake damage   Complete collapse   Half collapse   Damage rate

1,580 houses 200 houses 80 per cent

Land readjustment project   Final agreement

July 9, 1997 (42.6 ha)

Reduction in individual property   area (genbutsu)

9.0 per cent

Major improvements

4.5-metre roads and pedestrian roads; 6-metre, 8-metre, and 17- to 30-metre wide new roads; five major parks (1,100m2-10,000m2); five pocket parks

Total project costs

About ¥96.4 billion ($960.4 million)

Source: City of Kobe (2004b)

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Figure 6.3  North Shin-Nagata. (a) North Shin-Nagata before the earthquake. (b) North Shin-Nagata after the earthquake. (c) Kobe’s plan for North Shin-Nagata showing road widenings (in metres) and new parks. (d) North Shin-Nagata’s machizukuri kyo¯gikai (local planning committees). Source: City of Kobe (2004a)

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Legend for map (c):

Legend for map (d):

Community housing (# of residents and units, as at 2003): (1) Tokyu doeru arusu oyashiki do¯ri (42 residents, 99 units) (2) Excel city mizukasa ko¯en (25 residents, 93 units) (3) Baruteire kagura no mori (19 residents, 35 units) (4) Rutasu mizukasa (45 residents, 88 units) (5) Wako-re sharou oyashiki do¯ri (20 residents, 73 units) (6) Verudeko-to muzukasa (19 residents, 73 units) (7) Gurandore o¯michi (17 residents, 34 units) (8) Shigaru pareseu (5 residents, 11 units)

Names of machizukuri kyo¯gikai (1) Oyashiki Do¯ri 1 (2) Oyashiki Do¯ri 2 (3) Oyashiki Do¯ri 4 (4) Oyashiki Do¯ri 5 (5) Oyashiki Do¯ri 6 (6) Mizukasa Do¯ri 1 (7) Sui ni (Mizukasa Do¯ri 2) (8) Mizukasa Do¯ri 3 (9) Mizukasa Do¯ri 4 (10) Sui go (Mizukasa Do¯ri 5) (11) Mizukasa Do¯ri 6

Temporary housing [1] Kagura housing (101 units) [2] Mizukasa nichi housing (42 units)

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( 12) Matsuichi (Matsuno Do¯ri 1) (13) Matsuno Do¯ri 2 (14) Matsuno Do¯ri 3 (15) Matsuno Do¯ri 4 (16) Kawanishi/o¯michi Minami 4 (17) Kawanishi Do¯ri 5/o¯michi Do¯ri 5 (18) Hosoda cho¯ 4 and 5 (19) Kagura fukko¯ (20) Kagura cho¯ 4 (21) Kagura cho¯ 5 and 6

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the quake; the area comprised mainly old wooden houses along narrow laneways (some less than 4 metres wide) punctuated with larger buildings – either high-rise apartments or factories. In the months following the quake roughly half the local residents who had lost their homes had found funds to build two-storey “short-term” dwellings (i.e., non-permanent housing, often prefabricated) on their original building lots, as allowed by the city through a special post-earthquake ordinance. The rest lived in the city’s temporary accommodation projects far away. (A small number of tightly packed temporary barrack-style houses situated on a local baseball diamond can be seen in the top right-hand corner of Figure 6.3b, revealing the damage caused by the earthquake to the Shin-Nagata North district.) After Kobe appointed outside planning consultants for this area in June 1995, officials based in the local Nagata ward office arranged for the formation of blockby-block machizukuri committees, each involving thirty to forty households. The city’s initial plans for North Shin-Nagata, published in March 1995, clarified the major road widenings that were thought necessary to facilitate through traffic in this area (ranging between 14 and 30 metres in width) as well as minor road widenings (6 or 8 metres in width). A number of pedestrian-only roads and major parks to be used in times of disaster were also specified. Figure 6.3c indicates the city planners’ road widening and openspace plans, as well as a number of “community houses” that emerged as part of readjustments in local property boundaries (covered in detail later). Figure 6.3d also shows the distribution and names of the twenty-one machizukuri-kai committees established for North Shin-Nagata. Problems in Achieving Consensus Within these parameters set by the city, the planning consultants’ tasks were to work with their respective block committees to design local community roads and small “pocket parks” (areas of open space) and to balance the city’s objectives with those of the local community. Consultants then had to coordinate local block plans within the district and deliver an overall plan for redevelopment that had been agreed on by the residents and that could be implemented by the city government (for details of machizukuri kyo¯gikai decision making in Kobe, see Evans 2002). Figure 6.3c shows the final allocation of local roads, pedestrian-only lanes, major parks, and “pocket parks.” In North Shin-Nagata the finalization of the machizukuri planning process proved difficult for a number of reasons. An initial problem was the complex nature of land ownership and tenure rights, which hindered any speedy forging of a consensus and made replotting of the various blocks extremely complicated. Indeed, a major task for the consultants and the local city ward office was to gather a full list of landowners and registered building tenants who could claim significant rights under Japanese law. Here, a noteworthy snag was that a high proportion of Shin-Nagata seniors had perished in the

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quake. Their legal heirs and successors now had to be contacted, and many of them did not want to be part of any land readjustment scheme or to sell their ancestral land to the city. Moreover, with all properties there were often a variety of “stakeholders” to deal with when promoting an overall scheme of reconstruction. These stakeholders included the landowners (naturally); also, for each land property there was often a principal tenant who had rented the land and had later built houses or other types of buildings on it; and then, finally, there were the people who had occupied the houses or shops. Each type of stakeholder had to agree to the final plan of land readjustment. The consultants’ preliminary work therefore involved contacting all of these people – a task made even harder by the large number of innercity residents and landowners who in 1995 were living in temporary accommodation or had moved away from the Kobe region. Surveys conducted in the North Shin-Nagata district found many combinations of land and building ownership. With around 22 percent of building lots, the landowner, building owner, and resident were separate individuals; with 15.6 percent, the landowner and building owner and also the lease holder were three different individuals apart from the resident; in 16 percent of building lots, things were even more complicated (interview with Takada Susumu, Director, Community Planning Institute, Osaka, CoPlan, November 2003). Tangled landownership and tenure rights had confounded any improvement to Nagata by Kobe’s planners in the immediate postwar period; the same issues now faced post-quake reconstruction. Any quick forging of a consensus was being hindered, mainly because individual stakeholders often had quite different views on how to proceed. A second issue was the large number of non-registered tenants in the area. Nagata ward as a whole had a much higher than average proportion of tenants: 16.4 percent in 1990 compared to the city average of 6.9 percent (see Table 3.1). While Japanese land law protected registered tenants from the loss of their occupancy rights, many people in the poorer parts of Shin-Nagata had been paying only nominal rent without a secure lease and so had no formal rights to occupy a new building. These and other tenants wanted to return quickly to Nagata from temporary accommodation; however, some owners of housing in the district were little concerned about their tenants’ circumstances and in many cases would not be able to rebuild unless they charged full market rents, using their land as collateral for a building loan. A third problem was the ethnic mix in Nagata ward: the area was home to one of the largest concentrations of long-term Korean residents in Japan (see Table 3.1). At the time of the earthquake, around 15,000 Koreans and about 12,000 Chinese lived in Nagata ward. About 85 percent of the chemical shoe industry in Nagata was owned and operated by Koreans, and at least half that industry’s local labour force was ethnically Korean (see Kim 1995). Korean people on the whole tended to be more individualistic in their

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attitude toward local reconstruction; in particular, they distrusted the city because of Japan’s record for discriminating against Koreans.6 A fourth difficulty was the mix of land uses in this older inner-city area: housing, commerce, and small-scale industry were often side by side. An especially contentious issue was whether to allow chemical shoe factories and other small industries to be rebuilt under existing mixed-use zoning. Naturally enough, those who lived and worked in Nagata had very different views from absentee landlords of housing and commercial premises. Typically, the latter group viewed the factories in Nagata as a menace because of the hazardous chemicals and other materials used in the production process. Absentee landlords (chakuji) and absentee tenants (chahuya) favoured redevelopment without industry. Yet local residential tenants often worked in the factories and wanted them to stay, and so did local shopkeepers, who wanted to keep the factory workers’ business (Takada interview). Fifth, the implementation of the kukakuseiri program – in particular, the taking of land for community uses – proved highly contentious. The city’s ward office, with the consultant planners as mediators, had to execute a formal land readjustment program to allow the building of new major roads (17 metres wide or more) and parks as delineated in the city’s plans for this district (see Figure 6.3c). As with other “black zone” land readjustment areas, major street widenings and realignments were designated by the city planners; with the assistance of consultant planners contracted by the city, streets within neighbourhood blocks and individual property lines were then readjusted to meet the wider streets. This involved detailed negotiations with owners and tenants over how road widening would impinge on each block. It also involved deliberations over the genbu ritsu (the taking of land from each individual building lot as provided for under the Land Readjustment Law) in order to help pay for the necessary infrastructure improvements. The principles of applying land readjustment to a neighbourhood are shown in Figure 6.4.7 The Japanese land readjustment process had worked relatively well in the outer suburbs of cities, where building lots were larger, and in urban development projects, where land prices were rising generally over time. In fact, escalating prices in Japan through most of the postwar period had provided an important financial incentive for landowners involved in readjustment schemes, for they would benefit from improved infrastructure in their immediate area. But in Kobe’s case, the taking of land (genbu) from private landowners proved highly contentious indeed, largely because land prices in Japan had been falling rapidly in the early 1990s and would continue to do so after 1995 ( Japan Real Estate Institute 2001). Before the earthquake the city would have expected to take up to 20 percent or even 30 percent of the land from each private lot owner in any scheme. This proved impossible in Nagata owing to the very small land plots in this area. Accordingly, to

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Figure 6.4  Land readjustment principles.  Source: Based on Doebele, Matsubara, and Nishiyama (1986)

obtain a quicker consensus among the community, the city administration decided in 1995 that only 9 percent would be taken in this district from each landowner’s plot. This meant, of course, that a higher percentage of the total costs of replotting and rebuilding the infrastructure would have to be met by municipal or national government funding (Takada interview). Finally, the land readjustment plans assumed that landowners would be able to rebuild on replotted and improved housing lots following the land readjustment program. Normally, there could have been enough land left over – even after road widenings, and after the provision of open space – to reconstruct similar buildings as before, such as two-storey family housing in row-type style, together with local shops. But due to the extremely small lots in Shin-Nagata this was not always feasible. Some landowners could not offer even the reduced 9 percent of their land in exchange for new infrastructure and still expect to keep a building plot for a single-family house. Besides, the Building Standards Law required that in any reconstruction, new houses had to be adjacent to a road 4 metres or more in width, and in general the rebuilding-to-site ratio had to be 60 percent or less. In North Shin-Nagata more than half the building lots were not adjacent to local roads of sufficient width, so their owners could not rebuild exactly as before. One solution to these problems was for the consultant planners to conduct a lot-by-lot examination of their assigned blocks to identify opportunities for joint building and other improvements. Often building owners and their tenants had to accept an apartment space in a multirise building called a

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 Figure 6.5  “Kyo¯yu ¯ ken” or “community housing” principles.  Source: Based on materials provided by City of Kobe

“community house” (kyo¯yu ¯ ken, or kyo¯cho¯ tatekae) standing on two or more adjoining lots where previously two or more nagaya (old wooden terraced housing) had stood (Evans 2002; Hein 2001). In this situation, there had to be a consensus among local residents that some landowners and tenants would lose the right to own individual plots of land in the neighbourhood; they would simply have to “double up” and accept a joint share in a multistorey housing project held in common ownership. The participants would give up their former lots in exchange for floor area and property rights to the land beneath the new building (see Figure 6.5). As a result, multirise “community housing” (sometimes called “cooperative housing” projects) changed the urban landscape of the traditionally low-rise neighbourhoods. (See Figure 6.5 for the principles behind providing community or kyo¯yu ¯ ken housing in Japan, and Figure 6.6 for its application to land readjustment in the Kita Noda area of western Nagata ward.8) In some cases, when property market conditions permitted, supplementary space from redevelopment at higher densities was created and sold to help finance the construction. Besides improving the housing stock, the new “community” building would occupy a smaller ground area, thus freeing up space for widening roads or providing some green space. Planning consultant Takada Susumu noted that in North Shin-Nagata the land readjustment program led to two types of people affected by post-earthquake upgrading – those who had to give up their original land and live in community housing, and those who did not (ibid.). For all of these reasons the planning consultants took between the summer of 1995 and the summer of 1997 just to hammer out a consensus plan for each of the twenty or so separate blocks in North Shin-Nagata and to provide a consolidated scheme that the city could implement. Figure 6.3c indicates the final proposals for local roads and pedestrian lanes (4.5 to 6

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Figure 6.6  Community housing principles applied in Kita-Noda, Nagata ward.  Source: Adapted from Tatsuki (2006)

metres wide) lying between the major through-road widenings imposed by the city, as well as for a small number of “pocket parks.” Also shown are the locations of eight community housing projects designated by 2003, and two “temporary housing” developments available for local residents waiting to be found more permanent public accommodation. The redevelopment of North Shin-Nagata and of other “priority areas” designated for rebuilding using kukakuseiri (land readjustment) programs lagged behind that of other residential areas in Kobe. During the planning period, the consultants hired by the city to work with local communities reported countless evening and weekend meetings with local residents and property owners. Overall coordination among the various block committees

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was managed by the Nagata ward office and by a special machizukuri committee, one set up for the area as a whole (Takada interview). Implementation Problems Table 6.2 shows the chronology of the planning and reconstruction of North Shin-Nagata under the land readjustment method. Once a full plan for the district had finally been agreed to between the city and the residents of each block, the area’s machizukuri-kai committee and the city (essentially the local ward office) could implement it. But even after consensus about replotting had been achieved in 1997, the scheme continued to be fraught with problems. The road widenings and open-space provisions would be engineered by the city, but individual house rebuilding would have to be carried out by the landowners, and in the post-disaster period financing for this was often unavailable or inadequate. For instance, prior to the quake wooden rental housing in Nagata ward had often been managed by individual landlords or families as a sideline business. As already noted, this led to many absentee landlords (chakuji), who supplied housing units at very low rents that would never have been provided by the real estate market (Hirayama 2000). After

Table 6.2 Chronology of reconstruction of North Shin-Nagata 1995 May 28

The first machizukuri kyo¯gikai was organized at Mizukasa Dori 4 block (kyo¯gikai were organized in twenty-one districts by June, 1996)



19 kyo¯gikai proposed local machizukuri plans to the city

October 4

1996 June 22

A federated Shin-Nagata Eki Kita Chiku Rengo¯ Machizukuri Kyo¯gikai was organized



Project plans were authorized by the city

July 9

1997 January 20

Tentative replotting of land readjustment program commenced

February 28 District plans for Shin-Nagata Higashi, Shin-Nagata Eki Kita-Kawanishi Omishi were authorized March 3

Revision of a land readjustment plan was made (an extension of the project area)

2001 October 22

A district plan for Takatori Eki Kita was authorized by the city

2002 April 1

Nagata Eki Chiku Tōbu (east side) Machizukuri Kyōgikai was organized.

Source: City of Kobe (2004a)

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the disaster, many of these absentee landlords lacked the ability to raise capital to reconstruct their rental houses; and if they were elderly – as many were – they often had little interest in doing so. Low-interest loans were made available for rebuilding. These were provided by a variety of housing authorities, including the national Housing Loan Corporation, the Hyo¯go prefecture government, and Kyoto city. Also, the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Restoration Fund provided interest subsidies for housing construction. Yet elderly landlords often had little or no credit status or collateral that they could use in order to benefit from the public loan programs. As it turned out, shortages of loan funds were less of a problem than the lack of credit available to senior residents for rebuilding. Thus, even though many residents living in temporary housing wanted nothing more than to return to Nagata, the large number of retirees and their inability to access new loans meant that funds to rebuild quickly were simply unavailable. Also, the city itself could not provide any public housing directly in this district because it was unable to secure local building sites there at a reasonable cost. So, beyond facilitating the construction of community housing for local landowners, Kobe’s administration could only offer accommodation to the district’s poorer displaced residents in new public housing built in outer suburban areas north of Mount Rokko¯ or at the HAT Kobe development along the waterfront. For some residents this type of offer was attractive. In particular, those landowners who could not raise sufficient funds to rebuild, decided to sell their land to the city in exchange for public housing elsewhere (Takada interview). Most of the physical reconstruction of North Shin-Nagata took place between 1998 and 2003. Rebuilding of houses and shops typically involved different types of projects on a block-by-block basis reflecting local conditions. Sometimes this meant the construction of community kyo¯yu ¯ ken for an entire residential block, consisting in certain cases of retail stores with houses above and some surrounding open space. In other projects, rebuilding entailed the reconstruction of apartment buildings and condominiums, or even the reconstruction of entire blocks as one unit and the replacement of individual houses with high-rises. To achieve coordination in rebuilding, local machizukuri groups often organized their own design guidelines regarding wall heights and building setbacks. The city approved a similar set of design principles for the whole area during 1998 (Takada interview). The slow implementation of this complicated scheme meant that large areas of vacant land to the north of JR Shin-Nagata railway station could still be seen in 2000, reflecting the limited capacity of the land readjustment projects to quickly repopulate the district (see Figure 6.7). Halfway through the ten-year reconstruction period, many blocks still seemed stranded at midpoint in the program, often bogged down in complex exchanges of land

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Figure 6.7  Vacant block in North Shin-Nagata, 2000.  Source: Photograph by D.W. Edgington

under the principles of kukakuseiri. “If one resident declines to exchange a site, the resident who hopes to move to that plot will not be able to, leaving the land vacant in a chain reaction” (Kobayashi Fumiko, Manager, East Area Land Readjustment Division, City of Kobe, in “Kobe Innovates” 2000). By the tenth anniversary of the earthquake, about 85 percent of individual lots had been rebuilt in this district, and nearly all the widened roads and new parks required by the city had been installed (see Figure 6.3c), based on a site investigation conducted by the author in May 2005 (see Figure 6.8). Some rebuilding of entire blocks and individual building sites had been delayed because of infrastructure improvement and landscaping of open areas. In the absence of any effective insurance program, a number of landowners and their tenants had been unable to rebuild by that time (interview with Yajima Toshihisa, Assistant Manager, Redevelopment Division, Urban Planning Bureau, City of Kobe, Kobe, March 2005). More distressing for the community’s hopes for full revival was that almost all the chemical shoe factories, which had once provided nearly half the jobs in the neighbourhood, had relocated to suburban sites, leaving behind only the industry’s wholesalers (tonya), together with the industrial association’s headquarters, and also a new “co-op” showroom provided by the city in order to upgrade this once-thriving industry (ibid.).

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Figure 6.8 (top and bottom)  North Shin-Nagata after land readjustment, 2005.  Source: Photographs by D.W. Edgington

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6.1.3 The South Shin-Nagata Urban Redevelopment Project The 20-hectare South Shin-Nagata urban redevelopment project followed a reconstruction trajectory considerably different from that of North ShinNagata. It was carried out under the Urban Redevelopment Law, 1969, and involved the city purchasing the rights of about 2,100 original landholders, largely by agreement, as well as building occupation rights from registered tenants.9 A summary of this project is shown in Table 6.3. At the time of the earthquake the area south of the JR Shin-Nagata Station had already undergone some changes with the construction of an open plaza (hiroba) and a new department store (see Figures 6.9 and 6.10). In addition, a high-rise mixed-use building close to the JR station was under construction, and a new east-west subway line (the kaigan line) was planned to connect ShinNagata to Kobe’s major commercial centre at Sannomiya (this subway line

Table 6.3 Summary of the South Shin-Nagata urban redevelopment project Characteristics • Land area: 20.1 ha. • Previous number of households and population: 1,600 households and 4,600 population (1994) • Number of landowners affected by the project: 2,126 Reconstruction policy (Kobe city) 1 Provision of disaster-prevention infrastructure and the formation of a safe and dependable urban area 2 Restoration of a viable subcentre of the city through reallocation of living, commercial, and industrial zones 3 Supply of good-quality housing with various facilities for the elderly Major public facilities provided as part of the redevelopment scheme • Wakamatsu park (1.6 ha) • Goinoike subway line • Street-corner plaza • Pedestrian deck linking individual projects at the second-floor level Housing supply plan Approximately 3,000 housing units in multirise buildings Major land uses Shops and offices on the ground and first floors with housing overhead; parking lots in the basement Total project cost Approximately ¥271 billion Source: City of Kobe (2004a)

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would open in 2001). Farther south, away from the station, stood sho¯tengai (traditional shopping arcades) surrounded by houses, and farther south again was a mixed-use area of shops and housing (see Figure 6.9). Due to the fires and devastation that destroyed this area, the city administration’s objectives focused on quickly taking control, using funds from the national government to implement a bold subcentre redevelopment

Figure 6.9  South Shin-Nagata, showing property boundaries and mixture of land uses before the earthquake.  Source: Based on a land-use map provided by Takada Susumu

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Figure 6.10  Plaza just south of JR Shin-Nagata Station, 2005.  Source: Photograph by D.W. Edgington

plan involving a mixed shopping and housing development with many high-rise condominiums. This was designed to change the cityscape of South Shin-Nagata from predominantly two-storey inner-city housing with older-style shopping arcades into a district with a large modern shopping centre – one that would incorporate a variety of multistorey housing towers, with retail outlets on the ground floors. The planners thought that such a scheme would provide a more positive image for Shin-Nagata and attract younger people and younger families to live in the modern condominiums that were envisaged as part of the final project (interview with Tatani Takahisa, Architect, Assistant Manager, Redevelopment Division, Urban Planning and Housing Bureau, Shin-Nagata Project Office, City of Kobe, Kobe, March 2005). As in North Shin-Nagata, the city appointed consultants to work with local machizukuri committees. The goal was to create a comprehensive redevelopment project, even though this would be much more expensive than land readjustment, for the city would have to purchase all existing properties in the development area. Local residents and shop owners would be required to sell their land and tenancy rights to the city government and then negotiate (through the machizukuri committees) how they might retain either accommodation or retail space in the final shopping and housing development.

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In this project, a number of shop owners served as local coordinators for the urban renewal scheme. Relative to North Shin-Nagata, local consensus regarding the final commercial development slated for this district was much easier to achieve. The reasons for this included a more frequent consolidation of landownership and a history of local businesses working together to manage the various sho¯tengai, or shopping arcades, that predated the quake (Tatani interview). Problems arose, however, when retail tenants wanted to remain in the district but the building owner did not. For instance, did existing tenants have any right to occupy new shops in the proposed redevelopment? The machizukuri committee helped resolve these issues, proving to be a successful mechanism for arranging consensus. The consultants and local committees helped shopkeepers identify those who wanted to stay and those who wanted to close their businesses; they also offered ideas on the physical layout for the new shopping project. People who had shops in Shin-Nagata before the quake had the right to choose their location in the new project; this took many meetings (Tatani interview). Many had been in traditional ground-level arcade-style shopping centres before the quake (e.g., the Taisho¯ Suji arcade and Sho¯wa arcade); these had been destroyed, and shopkeepers were unfamiliar with multistorey retail environments. After some time an overall redevelopment plan was crafted by the city administration, using design ideas provided by private-sector architects (see Figure 6.11). These incorporated pedestrian walkways linking various high-rise condominium buildings to the upper floors of a new multistorey shopping centre, as well as an integrated traffic and parking plan. The principles of Japanese urban redevelopment projects are illustrated in Figure 6.12. This procedure allows all landowners and registered tenants to retain their property rights but eliminates the need for detailed negotiations over genbu ritsu (i.e., the taking of land for road widening and open space). The increased densities in the final development allow space to be sold on the private market to help defray the costs of the project itself. In the subdistrict hub of Shin-Nagata (and in the eastern subdistrict hub of Rokko¯-michi), development was well under way by the second year of the Reconstruction Plan (i.e., 1996-97). The project involved new road realignments and new underground utility infrastructure. Nevertheless, in South Shin-Nagata many challenges presented themselves during the reconstruction process. Conflicts over Height and Bulk Throughout the planning of this project, local machizukuri planners often found themselves torn between intransigent city officials on the one hand and irate former residents on the other; the latter were not as eager as the shop owners for the redevelopment to go ahead. The city was insisting on high-rise buildings for the redevelopment, yet most tenants and homeowners

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Figure 6.11  The city’s redevelopment scheme for South Shin-Nagata.  Source: City of Kobe (1999)

wanted to move back into something that was close to what existed before the quake – namely, their traditional two-storey houses close to shopping arcades. From the city’s perspective, the financial feasibility of reconstruction depended in part on selling as much space in new high-rise buildings as the market would allow in order to cover the costs of land purchase and

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Figure 6.12  Procedures required to be taken regarding the exchange of property rights in accordance with the provisions of the Urban Redevelopment Law, 1969.  Source: Based on Doebele, Matsubara, and Nishiyama (1986)

construction work. As a result, and against some residents’ wishes, the permitted density was raised from a pre-quake level of “200 percent plot ratio” to a maximum of “700 percent plot ratio” (i.e., the volume of building to plot area).10 The maximum density was specified for the blocks closest to JR Shin-Nagata Station; the density controls were then stepped down to a maximum of “400 percent plot ratio” farther south. The new buildings erected as part of the redevelopment contained multistorey shopping with residential apartments on top (see Figure 6.13). To pay for these developments, the city had to offer bonds on the financial markets, and then recoup the costs through subsidies obtained from the national government once the shopping and housing projects had been completed. Relocation of Local Shopkeepers Apart from the height and bulk of new housing, two other important issues emerged in the machizukuri-kai process for South Shin-Nagata between 1995 and 1997. The first involved exactly how existing shop owners and commercial tenants would be relocated in the new development and the rent they would pay in the new premises (see KDDRCBA 1996). Before the quake, many shopkeepers had done business in old-style ground-floor arcades, renting these at a nominal cost. But since the city had to buy all the properties affected by the redevelopment outright, it had to extend certain guarantees to existing landowners and tenants depending on their pre-existing rights in the district. As with the kukakuseiri project carried out in North Shin-Nagata, these privileges varied according to whether shopkeepers owned their land, owned buildings, or were unsecured tenants. The owners of land

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Figure 6.13  Shin-Nagata high-rise condominiums, 2005.  Source: Photograph courtesy of the City of Kobe

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or buildings could be offered guarantees that they might expect to own or occupy shops or apartment units in the redeveloped complex. Tenants had fewer rights. If they could not be accommodated in the new scheme and were relocated, they would be partially compensated for their loss of business. For shopkeepers, this included compensation for lost income and moving costs. Building owners were given the right to rent units in the new high-rise condominiums, but often they needed a subsidy in order to defray the higher market rents. This was provided by the city, which placed serious financial strain on the local administration. The city told small, family-owned and operated shops that if they wanted to avoid expensive market rents and remain in the same location they would have to relocate to cheaper premises on the second or even third floor of a new shopping building. By contrast, retailers from outside ShinNagata that were attracted to the new scheme, including fast food restaurants and more “fashion-conscious” shops, were often able to pay full market rents and so tended to secure the more attractive ground-floor locations (Tatani interview). Overall, the working-class shopping district of South Shin-Nagata was transformed into a development that complemented the city planners’ aspirations to build a new subcentre for western Kobe. In place of tightly packed rows of shops and small factories, the end of the ten-year reconstruction period saw new twenty-storey luxury blocks complete with upscale Indian and Vietnamese restaurants and a neon-lit shopping centre called Asuta (“tomorrow town”; see Figure 6.14). Rents, which prior to the quake had been extremely low, by 2005 were almost on par with those in shopping districts associated with exclusive residential areas in eastern Kobe (Tatani interview). Unfortunately, unlike the crowded central Sannomiya and Motomachi commercial districts of Kobe, Nagata did not have the population base for this level of economic activity. As a result, some commercial bankruptcies of small-scale businesses were reported after the Asuta project opened in 2003 ( Johnston 2005). Accommodation for Seniors A second issue involved housing for those elderly tenants who had resided in this area prior to the quake and the difficulties they faced living in highrise condominium units. In South Shin-Nagata, subsidized public housing was limited mainly to a small number of units provided by the city in highrise condominiums. In these cases, Kobe city gave priority to elderly (toshi yori) Nagata residents, especially those who had been forced to live in temporary housing after the quake (Tatani interview). It was acknowledged that this program allowed only a fraction of those who wanted to return to the neighbourhood to actually do so (estimated at perhaps 50 percent of total

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Figure 6.14  Asuta town, Shin-Nagata, 2005.  Source: Photographs by D.W. Edgington

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residents by Takada Susumu, Director, Community Planning Institute [ComPlan], Osaka, November 2003). Elderly people who had been living in two-storey buildings before the quake found it hard to adjust to high-rise life in two- or three-room apartments. Consultants reported that it took many meetings and the use of scale architectural models and numerous illustrations of design outcomes to explain to seniors that high-rise housing was the only feasible redevelopment option. “The main problem was to persuade them [the elderly] to move into high-rise buildings and how to save their pride” (Takada interview). Elderly people in Shin-Nagata who were facing life in condominiums identified as problems the lack of space for community gatherings and the anticipated lack of interaction between neighbours. These deficiencies were especially difficult for them to accept. To soften the blow for seniors living in high-rises, the city agreed to construct a limited number of units that included many “extras” that its housing bureau would not normally be expected to provide. Many of these improvements were proposed after “visualization exercises” conducted by the consultants with groups of seniors to help them articulate their requirements in high-rise environments. Examples of these “add-on” facilities included upper-level garden areas and greenery in an open courtyard so as to provide an “ecological feel” to the buildings. Other projects offered community spaces – such as kitchens and rooms that could be set aside for volunteers and their associated offices – and made less use of exposed concrete in the final design. Hein (2001) noted that in order to make seniors feel at home in high-rise buildings, the environment was designed so as to revive a shitamachi (old inner area) atmosphere, including a limited amount of collective space. She also reported that architect Morisaki Teruyuki designed a deck space in one such project that could serve as a common area and neighbourhood plaza at the thirdfloor level, with attractive wooden decking, benches, and a plaza (Figure 6.15). This type of collective housing, with purpose-built community facilities (such as kitchens and Japanese-style rooms), had rarely been tested in Japan (but see the work of urban planner Ishito Naoko, reported in Murakami 2000b). Once these and other extra facilities were provided, most seniors agreed eventually to live in apartments in twenty- to thirty-storey buildings. Market-based apartments for the general public were provided in the top storeys of these buildings. As might be expected, the add-on facilities that were called for by the consultants were considered expensive by the city housing administrators. Indeed, whether or not they were provided for “elderly units” by the municipal government often depended largely on the negotiating skills of various NPOs, volunteers, and community leaders in machizukuri groups (Tatani interview). Where community spaces were provided, special services for

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Figure 6.15  Seniors’ dwelling in Shin-Nagata redevelopment scheme, 2005.  Source: Photograph courtesy of the City of Kobe

seniors – such as meal plans – were often maintained by an array of local NPOs specializing in facilities for the elderly.11 Implementation The chronology of the implementation of South Shin-Nagata shown in Table 6.4 indicates that this large-scale redevelopment project went through a number of stages, commencing in 1997 and ending in 2003 when the department stores and smaller shops opened to the public. Detailed design of some of the surrounding residential tower blocks took the various commissioned architects and planners until 1998. In many cases the design consultants and members of the machizukuri council played a crucial role in facilitating an agreement between residents and shopkeepers regarding aspects of landscaping and community areas and the allocation of retail spaces. The Asuta shopping project opened after various construction delays, which were mainly a function of how quickly the city could sell marketsector housing in new condominiums so as to pay for other parts of the

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Table 6.4 Chronology of the South Shin-Nagata urban redevelopment project Project approval Overall redevelopment plan approved by local residents and the city, February 1997 Implementation period Stage 1 (0.9 ha) project plan determined January 1997; implemented 1997-99 Stage 2 (5.0 ha) project plan determined January 1997; implemented 1998-2003 Stage 3 (8.1 ha) project plan determined October 1996; implemented 1996-2003 Stage 4 (4.4 ha) project plan determined October 1997; implemented 1997-2000 Source: City of Kobe (2004a)

project. Another consideration was that the department stores for the new retail project – the local firm Daiei and the national electronics retailer KS Denki – would not open until a certain amount of market housing had already been committed (Tatani interview). Overall, the urban redevelopment approach had converted South ShinNagata into an area with a new image, one that was probably positive in terms of keeping and attracting young people, in accordance with the city planners’ objectives. By the tenth anniversary of the quake in 2005, twenty high-rise buildings had been completed but three housing towers in South Shin-Nagata were yet to be constructed. It was estimated that once this project was completed (planned at the time of this writing to be in 2008), there would be about 5,000 new residential units, including 1,840 units of public housing. That number of units would exceed the number in place before the earthquake. The floor area for retail was meant to be roughly equivalent to what had existed before the quake (City of Kobe 2005b). About 50 percent of the units in the new housing towers were intended for (at market rates) either earthquake survivors who had been owners or tenants in the project area, or for residents who had moved to the district from other parts of Nagata. The remaining 50 percent were to be offered to people who were moving from other parts of Kobe and the Hanshin region. It was estimated that of the existing Shin-Nagata population, around 60 percent would choose to remain in the area after the project was completed, and 40 percent would choose to move out of the area. Overall, market housing in this project in 2005 was still cheaper than in the eastern parts of Kobe, reflecting the different nature and perceived attractiveness of the two sides of the city (Tatani interview).

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6.2 Moriminami in Eastern Kobe Moriminami in Higashi-Nada ward is on the more prosperous eastern side of Kobe, closer to Osaka.12 Here the earthquake destroyed about 70 percent of the 1,500 or so existing houses and killed 81 people. This land re­ adjustment project extends about 0.8 kilometres east to west but just 250 metres north to south (see Figures 6.16a and 6.16b). It is therefore much smaller in area than either of the two Shin-Nagata districts considered above. Nonetheless, it represents an interesting contrast, notably regarding the

Figure 6.16  Moriminami district, Higashi-Nada ward, (a) before and (b) after the earthquake, and showing (c) the three cho¯me (local areas) of Moriminami.  Source: City of Kobe (2004a)

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degree of organized citizens’ protests. Moriminami is also the most eastern of the twenty-four priority reconstruction districts in Kobe. It is served by the major Osaka-to-Kobe JR rail line (to the north) and by National Highway no. 2 (to the south) (see Figure 6.16a). The district has three sections (cho¯me in Japanese): 1-cho¯me (which consisted of about 640 houses before the quake); 2-cho¯me (350 houses); and 3-cho¯me (340 houses) (see Figure 6.16c).13 Before the quake about 3,280 people were living in the district as a whole; this number fell by about 35 percent immediately after the temblor. The Moriminami area was designated by the city in March 1995 as one of the six “black zone” districts to be upgraded through land readjustment (see Table 4.4a). It had experienced rationalization in its local road network even before the earthquake. In the early 1920s, local farmers had constructed a gridlike road system; then just after the war, at a time when Moriminami was still mainly agricultural land, the city itself had continued this work, constructing wide and regular roads, with each landowner “donating” up to 30 percent of his or her land for public use under land readjustment principles. Urban development then took place in the early 1950s. At that point, gridlike subdivisions came about, including 6-metre one-way streets, with two 10-meter-wide or wider roads running from north and south (identifiable in Figure 6.16a). The City’s Plan If the street plan of the Moriminami district had already been replotted immediately after the war, why was this area included in the group of twentyfour priority districts identified by the city planners in March 1995? After all, this was hardly a “problem inner neighbourhood” like Shin-Nagata; indeed, it lay in a rather well-off part of the city. The answer seems to be that the planners saw a golden opportunity to upgrade the highways and public-transport infrastructure in this district so as to meet existing citywide objectives rather than local priorities. One major reason for including this area in the list of priority land readjustment projects dated back to the early 1990s, when city planners persuaded JR to build a new station at Moriminami, Ko¯nanyamate Station. That building was completed in 1994, along with a station plaza (hiroba) at the northern entrance (see Figure 6.17). Though it had not opened at the time of the disaster, the planners wanted to capitalize on this facility to upgrade Moriminami with new infrastructure. A plan for the Moriminami district was published on March 17, 1995. It showed that an existing 6-metre-wide east-west street would be widened into a 17-metre trunk access road, which was to be routed through the entire district (see Figure 6.18). This new road alignment was intended to rationalize car access into the area from the east. From the city planners’ perspective the quake represented a timely opportunity to extend the major east-west

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Figure 6.17  JR Ko¯nanyamate Station and the northern plaza, 2005.  Source: Photograph by D.W. Edgington

trunk road – the Yamate trunk road – from adjoining Ashiya city into Kobe. This project would provide a long-term alternative route to the existing elevated National Highway No. 1, a section of which had toppled during the 1995 temblor. The existing Yamate trunk road ran from Osaka – where it had been constructed in previous years – and then stopped at the western border of Ashiya city immediately to the east of Moriminami. The proposed extension would allow alternative access into Kobe from Osaka and also bring traffic to the newly constructed JR station. The city also proposed widening two 10-metre north-south connecting roads (to 13 and 15 metres) to allow traffic into the station from the south (see Figure 6.18). The city’s planners thought that the station should also have a wide station square or plaza (hiroba) on the southern side for people arriving at the southern entrance (interview with Hara Sho¯taro¯, Planning Official, ShinNagata Project Office, Kobe, June 1996). As noted above, at the time of the quake there was only one station square or plaza on the northern side (see Figure 6.18). All of these upgradings were to be carried out by the land readjustment method, again on the assumption that a portion of land would be taken from each landowner. The replotting would be carried out so that local residents would be able to remain in the area. Table 6.5 shows the characteristics

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Figure 6.18  The city’s original land-readjustment plan for Moriminami, March 17, 1995.  Source: City of Kobe (2004a)

of land-readjustment projects conducted in Moriminami’s three districts (1-cho¯me, 2-cho¯me, and 3-cho¯me districts); Table 6.6 indicates the chronology of these projects. As in other readjustment plans, land readjustment would have meant each landowner giving up, without compensation, as much as 10 percent of his or her land in return for “improvements.” The Residents’ Opposition Local residents first heard of these proposals during a general planning meeting held at City Hall on February 24, 1995, arranged by the city to explain its actions as required under the Urban Planning Law. At this meeting the city planners explained that the street widening and open-space plan were part of long-term measures for softening the impact of future disasters. Local citizens were shocked to learn that the city was proposing a new 17-metre east-west road – a road that might lead to more traffic going through the Moriminami neighbourhood that would effectively divide the district into north and south portions (see Figure 6.18). From the local people’s perspective this area had completed its initial land readjustment before the Second World War, which was why the streets in Moriminami were already 6 metres wide and in a regular gridlike pattern. The residents expressed their dismay that the city wanted to redesign the area yet again, further widen roads, and take land from existing property owners. Indeed, they could not comprehend why either an extra 17-metre-wide road or a southern hiroba (station plaza) was required when National Route No. 2 and the JR rail lines already provided access to the area. Moreover, in terms of

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Table 6.5 Summary of the Moriminami land readjustment project

1-cho ¯ me

3-cho ¯ me

2-cho ¯ me

Land area

6.7 ha

4.6 ha

5.4 ha

Before the quake Total population and households: 3,283 people, 1,501 households Total no. of buildings: 902 buildings Earthquake damage Complete collapse Half collapse Damage rate

523 buildings 29 buildings 66 percent

Land readjustment project Final decision September 25, 1997

October 5, 1998

Reduction in site area rates (genbutsu)

2.5 percent

October 7, 1999

Major improvements

11-13-metre and 13-metre new roads, and 2,700m2 station plaza

13-metre and 9-13-metre new roads and 5,122m2 new park

6- and 9-metre, 13-metre, and 15-metre new roads

Total project costs

About ¥5.7 billion ($57 million)

About ¥2.3 billion ($23 million)

About ¥2.1 billion ($21 million)

Source: City of Kobe (2004a)

creating extra open space, local residents considered that the existing halfhectare Moriminami Park in this district (shown in Figure. 6.18) already amounted to about 3 percent of the total area – a citywide standard achieved by earlier kukakuseiri (land readjustment) projects (Ito¯ 1996). The local people’s antagonism toward the city plan was compounded by the fact that only about 20 percent of them had stayed in the district following the disaster. Those who had evacuated to other cities and prefectures, even if they heard about the new city development projects, would find it difficult to inspect the land readjustment plans in detail at the city administration’s offices. In the early spring of 1995, transportation into central Kobe was still a challenge because of quake debris, traffic jams, and construction work (interview with Ito¯ Akio, a partner in Ito¯ Architectural Design and

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a local activist, Moriminami, June 1996). But despite all doubts as to the validity of the city’s plan, it was approved on March 17, 1995, by Mayor Sasayama. The Residents’ Plan In the wake of local protests against the city’s reconstruction plans, community leaders emerged from this white-collar community. These people included architects, bankers, and other professionals. They began designing their own plan for repairing the streets in a way that would not be so different from before the disaster. After receiving an open letter from the mayor stating that “there will be no local planning without consensus among the residents,” local residents convened and judged that a revision of the council’s initial draft plan might be possible. They had established a machizukuri committee by the end of March 1995. Indeed, the Moriminami/Motoyamanaka machizukuri kyo¯ gikai was the first committee organized in the twenty-four priority zones to act as a liaison between residents and the city (“HigashiNada” 1995). Next, residents of Moriminami chose forty-seven people from the neighbourhood blocs. They would be responsible for organizing residents’ views and liaising with the city. During April 1995 a committee of this group conducted a survey of residents’ intentions, distributing questionnaires to all households registered as living in the district before the quake (see Table 6.6). The results revealed that around 90 percent wished to continue living in the area, even though around four in five residents had been forced to leave following the disaster. More important, the survey found that people wanted to reconstruct their original homes as soon as possible. In the spring of 1995 this community group established a “Basic Plan of Moriminami,” which contained the ideas of many local residents. Essentially, this group took the view that the basic infrastructure, width of streets, and provision of local parks and open spaces was already sufficient and that there was no need to extend the Yamate trunk road through the district. Moreover, the local feeling was that if a new trunk road from Osaka came into Kobe at all, it should be laid underground instead of cutting through the existing residential area. Regarding the station hiroba, the residents’ stance was that there was no need to upgrade the southern square to give greater access to the JR station because the new station already had an ample open plaza at the existing northern entrance (Ito¯ interview).14 Local activist Ito¯ Akio estimated that support for the local community’s plan was around 75 percent (of about 1,500 households). Because so many residents were living outside Moriminami during 1995, it took almost a month to collect the signatures necessary to show support for an alternative reconstruction plan. Realizing the extent of local resistance to its plans for

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Table 6.6 Chronology of reconstruction at Moriminami 1995   April 8    

April August 24

  December 2 1996   May 18  

   

Establishment of the Moriminami-cho ¯ and Motoyamanakacho ¯ Machizukuri Planning Meeting. Surveys and meetings held by local citizens. Submission of the “Moriminami Citizens’ Plan” to City of Kobe. Kobe city responds and revises the plan for Moriminami.

Decision to reduce genbu rate of land reduction to just 2.5 percent; new revised plan made by Kobe city. June/August Survey of Moriminami residents (30% still living outside area). 17.2% reject the plan; 13.3% approve the plan; 41.4% want to continue negotiations; 12.3% want to reconsider the plan; 3.0% want to refuse further negotiations. September 22 The machizukuri kyo¯gikai hold a meeting with residents and decide to refuse further negotiations with the city. December 8 Moriminami 1-cho ¯ me machizukuri residents hold a meeting and decide to make their own planning organization and to register this with the city with an eye to approving the city’s revised plan for their area.

1997   January 19

           

 

Moriminami-cho ¯ 3-cho ¯ me establish their own machizukuri planning meeting with an eye to approving the city’s revised plan. March 10 Moriminami-cho ¯ 1-cho ¯ me Urban Planning Group submits its first land readjustment proposal to Kobe city. May 29 Moriminami-cho ¯ 1-cho ¯ me Urban Planning Group submits its second land readjustment proposal to Kobe city. June 3 Kobe city changes its original plan for Moriminami 1-cho ¯ me September 5 Moriminami-cho ¯ 3-cho ¯ me machizukuri planning group submits its urban planning proposal to Kobe city. September 25 The land readjustment project for the first district of Moriminami (Moriminami-cho ¯ 1-cho ¯ me) is finalized. October 1 Moriminami 2-cho ¯ me and Motoyamanaka-cho ¯ machizukuri planning committee submits its land readjustment proposals to Kobe city. November 27 The city’s plan for Moriminami 2-cho ¯ me area is revised again.

1998   March 5

The land readjustment project for the second district of Moriminami (Moriminami-cho ¯ 2-cho ¯ me, Motoyamanaka-chō 1-cho ¯ me) is finalized. 

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  Table 6.6



   

March 12

Temporary land replotting in the first district of Moriminami commences. November 25 Temporary land replotting in the second district of Moriminami commences.

1999   March 9

 

April 10

 

July 23

 

October 7

Moriminami 2-cho ¯ me and Motoyomanaka-cho ¯ machizukuri planning meeting submits its first town planning proposal to Kobe city. Moriminami 1-cho ¯ me and Motoyamanaka-cho ¯ change the name of their machizukuri group to the Moriminami-cho ¯ machizukuri planning conference. Final changes are made to the city’s plans for the Moriminami-cho ¯ 2-cho ¯ me area. The land readjustment project for the third district of Moriminami (Moriminami-cho ¯ 2-cho ¯ me area) is finalized.

2000   May 31 Temporary replotting of Moriminami-cho ¯ 3-cho ¯me commences. 2001   December 19 Formal Urban Planning Agreement signed in Moriminami-cho ¯ 1-cho ¯ me district. 2003   February 14 Remainder of replotting in the first and second districts of Moriminami is finalized. Source: City of Kobe (2004a)

the district, Kobe city sent in its own consultant to mediate with the residents (as had been done with other designated priority districts under the machizukuri bylaw). The planning specialist championed by the city could not obtain the trust of the local community. Indeed, the local people chose a professional planner from within their own ranks – Professor Yoshimitsu Shiozaki of Kobe University, who on the residents’ behalf requested financial aid from Kobe city in order to run a local machizukuri-kai (planning group). This request was granted in the summer of 1995, and the residents continued to plan for their area’s reconstruction (Ito¯ interview). Beginning in July 1995, community leaders organized workshops to further analyze and evaluate the opinions of local residents (Kaga 1996). With the help of their own consultant, they submitted a plan representing the residents’ views to the city council in August 1995 (see Table 6.6). After a month, Kobe city proposed a meeting to discuss the new plan – insisting, however,

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that the original street widenings were non-negotiable. The local machizukuri kyo¯gikai group held firm, declaring that it would attend a meeting only if that meeting were based on the citizens’ own ideas for their area. A standoff then ensued between the city and the local community, and no further work by either side was undertaken for some time. Table 6.6, which shows the timetable for arranging land readjustment in Moriminami, indicates that between August and the end of 1995 the city administration did not respond to the residents’ plan for Moriminami. During those months, many residents built temporary (usually prefabricated) housing of the type allowed under the city’s bylaw, in the knowledge, however, that these structures might have to be removed should land readjustment take place (Ito¯ interview). The Compromise Plans The city administration eventually revised its own plan. In December 1995 it offered to compromise with local residents in the following ways. First, as a result of strong community opposition, the city dropped its idea of implementing an east-west 17-metre access road that would meet with the Yamate road from Ashiya city. In effect, the planned road widening was removed from the city’s plan. Instead, a 13-metre east-west road was proposed; also, a new 13-metre road running north-south beside the district’s shopping centre was added in order to provide greater access to this area from the direction of Ashiya city and to provide an evacuation route in the event of a local emergency. The city also proposed a greenbelt along the 12-metre road to the south of the JR line in order to mitigate railway noise. A local newspaper commented on this unusual compromise: “It is quite exceptional that a road plan is reviewed once it is authorized as an official city planning road in a land readjustment area” (“17 Meter” 1995). In May 1996, while this adjustment was being studied, the city proposed a second dimension to the compromise plan. This involved reducing the percentage of land taken without compensation (genbu). In effect, the city would be demanding only 2.5 percent as genbu rather than the 9.0 percent required under all other land readjustment schemes in the city. This reduction was made even though the house plots in Moriminami were already about three times larger than in other areas, especially when compared to those in Kobe’s western districts such as Mano and Shin-Nagata. This lower genbu rate was exceptional in post-disaster Kobe – and an object of envy among landowners in other land readjustment areas. It was set at this level – albeit belatedly – in recognition of the road widening that had taken place in the Moriminami district before the quake. Financial compensation was to be paid to individual landowners when the land taken from a property was over 2.5 percent of its area (“Reduction Rate” 1996). This meant that a higher proportion of infrastructure improvement in Moriminami would

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have to be paid directly from the city’s budget or from national government subsidies (Hara interview). The city offered further compromises with regard to open space. The original plan had specified a station hiroba on the south side of around 3,000 square metres; this was reduced to 900 square metres. The city’s December 1995 revised plan retained the proposal for a southern hiroba (albeit reduced in size) to serve the new JR station, which had been opened the previous October. This new station was expected to have equal use from the north and south. Consequently, the planners stuck to their position: that if the new station was to be viable, it should accommodate the needs of people from outside the immediate neighbourhood and provide adequate access for cars (interview with Muranushi Kiyotatsu, Subsection Chief of Moriminami District, Section of East Kobe, Restoration and Land Readjustment, Office of City Planning, City of Kobe, June 1997). The city’s compromise was well received by some neighbourhood residents; others, though, continued to oppose the scheme. Thus, the city’s compromise split the community. Even as Kobe city proposed concessions for Moriminami, some residents consistently resisted the city’s plans. In residents’ meetings during the summer of 1996 there were demands that all further negotiations be called off; some residents called for an administrative lawsuit against the city (see Table 6.6) (“Restoration” 1996). But there were others in the district who wanted to use the revised plan as a basis for detailed negotiations over plot reduction ( genbu ritsu) and land substitution (kanchi). As a result of this fracture in community consensus, three different groups emerged, which in turn led to the dissolution of the machizukuri committee in the fall of 1996. It was replaced by three separate local committees. In the 1-cho¯me section, immediately to the east of the new railway station (see Figure 6.16c), the residents were opposed initially to the city’s land readjustment program. They would be the ones most affected by the proposed 17-metre road alignment, and they were afraid of having any of their land taken away by genbu ritsu. Members of this group had already fought with Kobe city over a large supermarket that had come to the area in the late 1980s – the first incursion by a non-residential land use in the Moriminami area (see Figure 6.16c). Yet surprisingly, residents of the 1-cho¯me section were the first to accept the city’s reduced genbu rate of just 2.5 percent made in May 1996. After a standoff of several months, the residents of Moriminami 1-cho¯me petitioned Kobe’s administration to form their own machizukuri committee, independent of the rest of the area. They felt that having “escaped” from any large-scale solution, they would be able to negotiate with the city by themselves and to sort out their own rebuilding strategy separate from the other two cho¯me. Indeed, the eastern 1-cho¯me section decided to renew negotiations with Kobe’s planners soon after the Moriminami 1-cho ¯ me

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Figure 6.19  Moriminami compromise plans, 1997-99.  Source: Courtesy of Urban Redevelopment Division, Urban Planning Bureau, City of Kobe

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machizukuri kyo¯gikai became independent in December 1996. This was done in order to obtain the best deal that they could – in terms of genbu, compensation for land taken, and city-sponsored infrastructure rebuilding (“Agree” 1996). In June 1997 the new 1-cho¯me machizukuri committee approved a revised city plan for its own area (see Figure 6.19a); this one would entail a new road alignment, a reduction in width from 17 to 13 metres, and partial deletion of the station’s open plaza (hiroba) (see also Table 6.6). At the same time, in the far western part of the neighbourhood (2-cho¯me), the city began discussions to purchase the land required for road widening. A Moriminami 2-cho¯me machizukuri kyo¯gikai was formed in January 1997, which reopened negotiations with the city (see Table 6.6). This group negotiated to shift the east-west road farther north alongside the JR line in order to avoid dividing the neighbourhood. A second compromise plan for the Moriminami district was prepared by the city (see Figure 6.19b) with a realigned and widened east-west road in the northwest of the district. This was approved in November 1997. This change, though, was vehemently opposed by the residents of Moriminami 3-cho¯me (the central part of the district) on the grounds that the revised plan would still lead to more traffic flowing through their neighbourhood, effectively dividing it in two (see Figure 6.19b). Talks with the residents of Moriminami 3-cho¯me broke off with the city thereafter and throughout 1998. After a standoff of nearly nearly two years, a third compromise plan was offered by the city, which entailed a new road widening in the north of the district. This project would channel east-west traffic through the central portion of Moriminami around the existing park, with the least possible impact on local residents. Based on this modification, the city reached an agreement with 3-cho¯me area in 1999, four years after the first land readjustment projects were released by Kobe city (Hara interview). A third and final compromise plan for the Moriminami district as a whole was published by the city in October 1999, after further negotiations with and agreement among all three groups of residents. This included a new east-west road (see Figure 6.19c), which would take about 1 metre off adjoining properties. After a survey of the affected residents, the plan was accepted by the 1-cho¯me section; it included a 9-metre road in the northwest part of Moriminami and the rebuilding of existing 6-metre roads with flared corners on street blocks.15 Also, instead of a large station hiroba, the city and local residents agreed that there should be more “pocket parks,” containing water pumps to be used in the event of a future disaster, scattered throughout the neighbourhoods (see Figure 6.20). To summarize, the final plan for road widening and open space for all three parts of Moriminami amounted to a major retreat by the city from its

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Figure 6.20  A “pocket park” in Moriminami, 2005.  Source: Photographs by D.W. Edgington

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original plans. At the time of the final agreement, city planners thought it would take a further three to four years to finish the replotting project (“Last Disaster” 1999a, b). The compromise, however, had been won at the cost of major delays in restoring Kobe after the earthquake. The chronology of Moriminami’s reconstruction (see Table 6.6) indicates that by 1997 (when Shin-Nagata residents had already hammered out their own compromise plan with Kobe city), only one area of Moriminami (the 1-cho¯me district) had accepted the city’s revised plans, its residents having negotiated to reduce their own landholdings by genbu in return for road widening and infrastructure upgrading. As it happened, Moriminami was the last of the twenty-four priority land readjustment areas in the city to achieve successful negotiations with all local stakeholders (“Four” 1999). Moriminami was thus distinctive within the post-disaster reconstruction period in Kobe; in particular, its 2-cho¯me district was one where a local land readjustment plan could not be finalized for a long time owing to the resistance of local residents. This was so even though the initial arrangement of land ownership had been much simpler than in Shin-Nagata. By the tenth anniversary of the Hanshin earthquake, the rebuilding of the Moriminami area had almost been completed. Yet the new JR station was still saddled with only a single (northern) access road and hiroba (examples of the treatment of Moriminami streets are shown in Figure 6.21). The southern access road had been built but not yet opened, and in early 2005 it would require further landscaping and utilities (Hara interview; field work). Indeed, Moriminami took the longest of all kukakuseiri priority areas to complete owing to the resistance of the white-collar residents and the lack of a neighbourhood-wide consensus within a machizukuri framework. No doubt members of the local community suffered anxiety over this long delay in finalizing the repairs to local infrastructure and reaching a clear definition of individual property rights. At the same time, the city planners felt that they had lost out in the negotiations with the local community; they believed that the new JR station was an important asset for development in this area of Kobe and that it would bring prosperity (as with most ekimae redevelopment or “local station area” upgradings). Without any increase in accessibility by wider roads or hiroba, the station was likely a wasted opportunity. Evaluation An evaluation of the three neighbourhood case studies raises many questions about post-earthquake land use planning in Kobe. To what degree did the city’s pre-quake situation affect reconstruction outcomes? To what degree did Kobe’s city planners exploit the opportunities opened by the quake in these areas? And to what degree did the geography of crisis affect

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Figure 6.21  Street upgradings in Moriminami, 2005.  Source: Photographs by D.W. Edgington

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this process? These case studies suggest that all factors from the study framework shown in Figure 2.2 operated during post-disaster Kobe. Pre-existing attitudes toward planning mechanisms were perhaps the most important determinant. Essentially, the city planners implemented conventional land readjustment and urban renewal schemes under existing national legislation in order to maximize government subsidies (estimated at more than ¥760 billion for the twenty-four priority projects, or roughly US$7.5 billion; see Table 4.2). Also, because Kobe had prior experience with machizukuri committees, it utilized those committees in the priority districts in order to assuage the residents’ anger following the initial protest meetings of March 1995. However, use of this strategy on such a large scale – including the hiring of many architects and planners – had not been tried before, which meant that opportunities perceived by the city for speedy solutions to problems were lost. Indeed, the resulting standoffs had uniquely Japanese characteristics, and resolution was hampered by obstinacy and a desire by both sides not to lose face. Furthermore, the process required considerable resources from the local and national governments. Community attitudes toward this approach to reconstruction varied considerably, and the case studies have revealed a number of differences in implementation between Shin-Nagata’s plans and those of Moriminami. In Shin-Nagata the city-appointed consultants appeared to work well with the people and helped provide leadership in the local community, especially as the various committees’ members were elderly blue-collar workers. “As long as their pride was not upset we could eventually persuade them to agree to a consensus plan” (Takada interview). In North Shin-Nagata, however, much time had to be spent achieving this consensus before any replotting or reconstruction could take place. Large amounts of public resources were channelled into this area; even so, there were delays in arriving at a plan owing to the complexities of land rights and the mixture of land uses involved. These were the very factors that had precluded earlier attempts at neighbourhood improvement in the late 1940s and 1950s.16 In South Shin-Nagata, reconstruction planning proceeded on a much larger scale, and the experience of the sho¯tengai (local shopping arcade) council facilitated the return of local retailers. Also, Shin-Nagata was affected more extensively by the devastating fires, and most of the original wooden housing stock and shopping arcades had been completely destroyed, making it imperative to proceed quickly. However, reconstruction planning was faced with the challenge of persuading elderly landowners to accept a high-rise redevelopment scheme, and this issue required time to negotiate and resolve. By contrast, in Moriminami the need to compromise over the new railway station and road redevelopment was not accepted well by the local people, who were angry about having to give up their existing land entitlements. Also, this predominantly white-collar community was more confident in its

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dealings with the city as well as with the consultant the city provided. They dug in their heels for many years, which blocked rebuilding of the area until a compromise could be engineered by the city’s officials – a compromise that in the end seemed to please no one. What lessons can be learned from these case studies of Kobe’s reconstruction and community building? The give and take of the planning process eventually healed some of the residents’ raw opposition, in part thanks to the skill of intermediaries – the consultant architects and the urban planners hired by the city to work with local machizukuri organizations. Neighbourhoods fought initially over the plans, but in due course viable compromises were reached, after rounds of negotiation that worked as well as could be expected, considering the dilemmas and challenges involved. A major issue in Kobe was the speed of reconstruction and the recovery of population and housing. Until land uses could be clarified, reconstruction was stymied. Community participation was necessary as part of disaster mitigation and reconstruction, but as noted by Evans (2002), by the time workable plans were realized for many of Kobe’s priority areas, some elderly residents had died and many others had given up on returning to their old neighbourhoods and had started new lives in suburban public housing. Paradoxically, areas of Kobe outside the priority districts had been largely rebuilt by 1997, about two years after the earthquake. In other words, land readjustment projects and large-scale urban redevelopment actually stalled recovery, in part because of the heavy-handed way in which the city took its initial steps, in part because of the complexities of inner-city property rights when land readjustment programs were being implemented, and in part because of lack of cooperation among local residents (especially in the case of Moriminami). It was an unforeseen irony that even five years after the quake, most of the twenty-four neighbourhood projects designated as priority districts (the “black” and “grey” zones) remained stuck at their midway point, while nearly all districts outside (in the “white zones”) had been largely rebuilt, albeit with little improvement in terms of disaster mitigation through new roads and open spaces (Yajima interview). By the end of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan, only four of the eight “black zones” earmarked for either land readjustment or redevelopment had been fully completed (Rokko¯-michi, Matsumoto, Misuga East, and Takatori East; see Table 4.4).17 As will be demonstrated in the following chapter, had the Shin-Nagata district been rebuilt more speedily and regained its population levels within the first two or three years, this could have made a significant difference to local small businesses, job opportunities, and individual household incomes. This in turn calls into question the broader issue of the effectiveness of machizukuri-type planning in post-disaster reconstruction.18 Traditional land readjustment worked reasonably well in the post-disaster reconstruction

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elsewhere in Hyo¯go prefecture outside of Kobe – for example, in Nishinomiya city and on Awaji Island (interview with Tanigawa Toshihiko, Director, Urban Renewal Division, Urban Development and Housing Bureau, Hyo¯go Prefecture, November 2003). But in Kobe there were very tough negotiations over the amount of land to be taken for new roads and open space owing to the much higher urban densities found there. Compared with kukakuseiri (land readjustment), the saikaihatsu approach to negotiating the compulsory purchase of land by the city government is often perceived as a stronger and sometimes more “brutal” intervention, one that undermines traditional approaches to property rights (Watanabe 1997). Nonetheless, this procedure might have been justified in more of the priority districts in order to speed up reconstruction, had more funds been available from the national government. In hindsight, greater use of comprehensive redevelopment procedures might have been a more efficient solution to post-disaster reconstruction, especially when so many properties were involved and when each property owner or lessee had such strong bargaining power to disrupt a successful rebuilding project. A final issue relates to the vast parts of Kobe left outside the twenty-four priority areas in the original plans of March 1995 (i.e., the “white zones”). This chapter has focused on certain priority project areas and the opportunities and constraints addressed during their reconstruction. But it is worth remembering that the total area of the twenty-four designated districts (see Figure 4.6) together with others in Hyo¯go prefecture accounted for only about 10 percent of the total damaged area in the Hanshin region. In the reconstruction plan, vast “blank areas” (i.e., the “white zones”) were left unfunded by public resources even though many were damaged severely. Indeed, some “white” areas had suffered even heavier damage than some of the “black” areas as designated by the city (see Table 4.4; Takada 1996). Outside the twenty-four priority districts, reconstruction costs had to be borne by the landowners themselves, without any government subsidies except for demolition and debris clearance. Hence, very few block improvements (e.g., widened roads) were carried out unless a powerful developer took an interest; but in the context of declining land values and a poor local economy, this rarely happened in post-disaster Kobe (Yazaki interview). Essentially, local residents outside the few priority areas had to rebuild their own lives, and their capacity to do so was severely hindered by economic conditions and by extremely complex landholdings and landlord-tenant relations.19

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7 Symbolic Projects and the Local Economy

I worked here for nearly 40 years. But the factory I worked at burned down. My unemployment insurance will expire this month.

— 58-year-old woman from Suma Ward

Besides neighbourhood improvements, another type of “opportunity” was taken by Kobe’s city planners in the rebuilding period following the Hanshin earthquake. This revolved around the city’s grasp for extra government resources in order to fund megaprojects. These projects were a significant feature of the 1995 Reconstruction Plan, which raises many questions as to whether they actually assisted Kobe’s recovery. This chapter examines the planning and implementation of the city’s “symbolic projects” in the context of the city’s struggle to regain economic vigour and against the background of the many pressing needs facing the quake’s survivors. Labour Ministry statistics indicate that in the year following the quake, more than 11,600 people lost their jobs and could not find new ones. Living conditions for many quake victims worsened as unemployment insurance expired and personal savings dwindled (“Condo” 1995). From the urban planners’ perspective, the seventeen “symbolic projects” (see Table 5.3) were written into the 1995 Reconstruction Plan so that Kobe might emerge from the disaster as a more viable city with a stronger economy, relative to other urban centres in Japan and to competing cities and ports in East Asia. As part of its post-quake reconstruction planning, in February 1995, just weeks after the earthquake, Kobe’s administration held an industrial reconstruction conference. Participants included the city, the prefecture, and the national government, as well as universities and local industries. The conference’s purpose was to discuss various proposals and to arrange for them to be submitted to the national government for funding. That meeting, and an industrial reconstruction committee established soon

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after, set the overall strategy. At the end of June 1995, detailed projects were prepared, which would be folded into the Hyo¯go Phoenix Plan, released the same month. The city of Kobe’s own Reconstruction Plan was published around the same time; it would offer similar ideas for economic restoration. It contained many promotional projects, such as an enterprise zone, an international multimedia and entertainment city project (KIMEC), a large convention centre, and a proposal for a trade import plaza. Among the key objectives of this dimension of the reconstruction plan were to introduce high-technology sectors to Kobe’s existing industries, to establish incentives for new investment, and to rebuild the city in a way that would attract highwage service jobs (e.g., those associated with research and development). The city also considered it important to encourage trade between Kobe and the Asian mainland, especially China and the dynamic Shanghai region. This chapter reviews a number of thorny issues that emerged regarding the “symbolic projects” during the ten-year reconstruction period. These include the national government’s willingness to provide funding, the effectiveness of the projects in terms of revitalizing existing firms and industries (especially the small- to medium-scale business sector), and the financial implications of the reconstruction plan for the city. Underpinning all of this was the need for the Hanshin region (and all Japanese industrial regions) to restructure following the collapse of the nation’s asset price bubble at the end of 1989 and the disappointing economic performance of the 1990s (Sakaiya 2001). 7.1 Funding for the Symbolic Projects As discussed in Chapter 5, the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee initially only committed the national government to funding a limited number of symbolic projects. Moreover, this undertaking was for just the first five years after the quake. Even so, local government planners sensed that Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture should do their utmost to secure extra resources for all the reconstruction projects contained in the 1995 Reconstruction Plan. The 1990s were years of slow economic growth in Japan. Hence, it was imperative that the Hanshin region secure as many scarce national government resources as possible for new facilities in order to attract private investment (interview with Inoue Ichiro¯, Director, Planning and Coordination Division, Hanshin-Awaji Economic Revitalization Organization [HERO], November 2003).1 Generally, Japanese cities are not allowed to entice inward private investment by selling land or directly subsidizing businesses (though loans are permissible). One result has been that infrastructure development has often been the only way for cities to vie for new private investment. This has often meant initiating megaprojects such as building highways and airports to increase accessibility and reclaiming land for development.

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Kobe was therefore eager to obtain as much national government money as possible for new projects that might assist its economic recovery. The city also wanted to draw more tourists to Kobe, and many of the proposed symbolic projects (e.g., memorial museums) were considered vital to efforts to attract them. To this end, the “Phoenix” imagery of the city rising boldly from its ashes (adopted first by Hyo ¯ go prefecture) was very important. Indeed, Mayor Sasayama of Kobe emphasized this in his introduction to the Kobe Reconstruction Plan. The key symbolic projects were seen therefore as necessary albeit second-best solutions to Kobe’s economic problems following the quake. Of the fifteen symbolic projects, Kobe’s proposal for a special “enterprise zone” was perhaps the most innovative (at least for Japan during the mid1990s), for its objective was to provide various tax incentives to promote domestic and foreign investment and to encourage start-up ventures (Maki 1996; HERO 1996b; “Governor” 1996; “Kobe Attracts” 1997). The city designed this scheme in order to provide a key advantage for the city by reducing national and local taxes and other restrictions on corporate activity, especially until other aspects of the restoration program were well under way. At its conception in 1995, the planners envisaged this zone as a key feature of Port Island’s Second Stage development, one that would require a subsidy of around ¥17 trillion (US$170 billion) to compensate both the city and the national government for the loss of tax revenue. Kobe city argued that a radical exemption from national and local taxes would be necessary in order to attract new investment and jobs to the region. Nonetheless, it was especially difficult for the city to persuade the Ministry of Finance to operate a “one country two systems” approach to national tax regimes and to give a special dispensation to Kobe. The end result was that in 1996, in response to the city’s petition, the government in Tokyo rejected the idea on the grounds that it could not be seen giving such a radical advantage to Kobe when other regional centres, such as Sapporo and Fukuoka, were also being harmed by Japan’s sluggish economy (“Kobe Unable” 1996; “Kansai” 1996). In the face of this rebuttal, Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture came up with their own package of financial support, which included waiving local taxes on incoming businesses in the enterprise zone. The city also established special subsidies for firms leasing office space and conducting marketing studies. The national government would offer no further tax exceptions; however, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI) encouraged the overall concept and helped increase the size of subsidies and loans available to any incoming firms (ibid.).2 Kobe continued to lobby the government for special assistance so that the city could move its recovering economy toward a new industrial structure based on high technology, trade, tourism, and fashion. Accordingly, before disbanding in February 1996, the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee

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encouraged the national government to designate the following as national priorities: (1) a Shanghai-Yangtze Trade Promotion Project; (2) a major medical care and medical-industry development project; (3) schemes that would contribute to the region’s industrial upgrading; and (4) projects commemorating the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (National Land Agency 2000). The following year (1997) the national government observed that the city’s economy was recovering more slowly than expected, even after two years of reconstruction (HERO 1998a). Accordingly, the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Headquarters (led directly by the prime minister and cabinet) was convinced that the government would have to contribute further to assist Kobe’s economic revival. A number of major projects were approved by the national government in 1997 and categorized as Special Revitalization Inducement Projects (HERO 1998a). These included the Kobe Eastern (HAT) development along the harbour and a large convention centre on Port Island, Second Stage. The government also underwrote a new multimedia graduate school at Kobe University. In principle, the national government agreed to support larger projects, including a cluster of twentieth-century museums, an earthquake memorial park and museum, a JICA ( Japan International Cooperation Agency) Hyo¯go International Centre for overseas trainees, and a Hyo¯go Foreign Student Hall (City of Kobe 2005a). The aim was to have all of these projects up and running within the Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan framework. National funding was also extended to Kobe Luminarie, a special annual winter “light-up” project in the downtown area designed by the city for the winter following the quake in order to boost the morale of local residents and to attract tourists (see Figure 7.1). In 1998 the Reconstruction Headquarters approved still more projects, including a World Pearl Centre and a Kobe New Industries Research Organization (NIRO). Though it did not initially promise funds, in 1996 the Ministry of Transport gave Kobe the goahead to plan a domestic airport (HERO 1997). Taken together, Kobe city received support and funding for nearly all of the “hard” infrastructure projects and symbolic projects it was planning. Supplementary projects were approved by the Reconstruction Headquarters in February 2000, with at least partial funding by the national government to assist aspects of economic recovery. These encompassed a “Shoe-Town Nagata” industrial promotion project, an International Business Support Centre on Port Island, Second Stage, and the core institutions of a Kobe Medical Industrial Development Project (City of Kobe 2005c).3 Later still, in 2002, the prefecture and the city formulated a “Final Threeyear Program of the Hyo¯go Phoenix Reconstruction Plan” to ensure the success of Kobe and the Hanshin region up to the end of the ten-year reconstruction period in 2005. This time, local government funds were found for twenty-three additional projects and programs identified by the prefecture

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Figure 7.1  “Luminarie” illuminations project, Kobe, December 2004.  Source: Photograph courtesy of the City of Kobe

and city governments. Instead of large “symbolic” projects, these incorporated welfare services, such as special care for the elderly, revitalization of local neighbourhoods, and socio-economic programs aimed at improving residents’ lives. It is significant that this later phase of reconstruction planning shifted away from “hard” infrastructure and housing programs toward what were termed “remaining issues,” which included support for volunteer groups and registered NPOs as well as redevelopment assistance for urban areas outside the priority reconstruction districts designated in March 1995. For this array of projects, the locally generated Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Reconstruction Fund was utilized rather than national government resources (“Great Hanshin” 2003).4 By the end of the ten-year reconstruction period, most of the city’s symbolic projects had been completed, including the HAT Kobe project and the initial development of Port Island, Second Stage. Also, the Kobe airport had almost been completed (see Appendix A). Of these three major projects, perhaps the most pioneering was HAT Kobe (also called the Eastern Water Redevelopment Project), which covered about 120 hectares in Chu ¯o¯-ku and Nada-ku (see Figures 7.2 and 7.3). The closing of large plants and other industrial facilities in the waterfront area in the years preceding the quake had opened up around 75 hectares of land, which after the quake were

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Figure 7.2  Land use plan of HAT Kobe.  Source: Adapted from material provided by the City of Kobe

consolidated through land readjustment and thus were available as a symbolic project for revitalizing the urban area of Kobe. By 2001 this area accommodated municipal housing for around 30,000 earthquake victims and other residents. HAT Kobe also had capacity for local schools, the Hyo¯go Prefectural Museum of Art, a memorial earthquake museum, and various other cultural and educational facilities, as well as international and research facilities such as the WHO Kobe Center and the Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution. The new city centre was designed to provide about 40,000 jobs. Today, among other amenities, the waterfront area has a 2.4-kilometre harbour walk, which has made this area popular among citizens and tourists. The 4.4-hectare Nagisa Park, also in this complex, serves as a disaster mitigation centre for the harbour area, in that it provides space for rescue materials distribution and evacuation in case of emergency (Port of Kobe 2002). Other symbolic projects from the 1995 Reconstruction Plan, such as the Kobe Medical Industry Development Project and KIMEC, were not completely finalized after ten years, but all had commenced and all had secured a portion of their funding from the national government, including the

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Figure 7.3  Housing units in HAT Kobe, 2005.  Source: Photograph by D.W. Edgington

controversial Kobe airport (see below). Less certain was the recovery of Kobe’s much vaunted local and small-scale industries, such as pearl processing, chemical shoemaking, and the production of sake ( Japanese rice wine). In the ten years between the earthquake and 2005, three major issues arose in implementing these large-scale megaprojects, especially regarding their impact on the local economy and the city’s long-term competitiveness. The

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first concerned the uneven restoration of firms and the special problems faced by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); the second was the difficulties involved in attracting firms to Kobe; and the third was the worsening city debt following the earthquake. 7.2 Kobe’s Economy and the Plight of Small Firms The disaster paralyzed the economy of Kobe in ways that had not been anticipated. For instance, even though the Port of Kobe had been reconstructed and greatly improved, the earthquake had dealt it a body blow from which it never fully recovered because its shipping trade had been displaced to competing port cities in South Korea and China.5 Also, a major regional bank in Kobe – the Hyo¯go Bank – failed in 1995. The Kobe earthquake had driven many of the Hyo¯go Bank’s borrowers into bankruptcy and pushed down local land values, worsening the bank’s bad-loan problem (“Condo” 1995). After the quake, planners and local businesses came to realize that the many megaprojects approved as part of reconstruction were doing little to help Kobe’s SMEs (interview with Furuta Nagao, Chief Economist, Hyo¯go Economic Research Institute [HERI], Kobe, November 26, 2003). At the time of the quake, Kobe’s economy had a dual structure (common in Japan). A handful of large firms belonged to Japan’s keiretsu (conglomerate enterprise) networks, which had deep pockets and so could recover quickly from the disaster; in the city these included Kobe Steel, Kawasaki Steel, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a shipbuilder. These firms swiftly took stock of their losses and mapped out their own repair and rebuilding plans. At the same time, there was an array of small- and medium-sized manufacturing and service firms involved in shoe production, sake making, and (on nearby Awaji Island) the manufacture of traditional roof tiles. These were severely affected by the quake and could not fully recover (Maejima 1995; Sumiya 1995). Making the situation worse, a number of major companies moved out of Kobe, generating fears that the regional economy might be hollowing out. Sumitomo Rubber Industries, for example, closed its Kobe factory, first established in 1909, and transferred its production facilities (for motorcycle tires and golf balls), along with around 840 employees, to factories in Aichi and Fukushima prefectures (Ashitani 1995). Local retail and tourist industries were also badly affected owing to the decline in local population and the consequent loss of consumer spending power, together with the widespread disruption the disaster caused. Table 7.1 illustrates the damage to small- and medium-sized manufacturers and to retail and tourist firms in the first full year after the quake. For instance, chemical shoe production had dropped by 56.8 percent, and sake ( Japanese rice wine) production by 8.7 percent, and sales in Kobe’s department stores had fallen 45.6 percent.6 By the end of 1995 only 76.2 percent

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Table 7.1 Damage to Kobe’s economy in 1995 Chemical (synthetic leather) shoes   (amount of production) Sake (rice wine)   (amount of production) Sales amount from five major   department stores

1994

1995

% growth

¥66.0 billion

¥28.5 billion

(-56.8%)

390,000 kilolitres

357,000 kilolitres

(-8.7%)

¥255.9 billion

¥139.0 billion

(-45.6%)

Reopening rate of damaged shopping – 76.2%   districts in 1995    (2,281 stores not open) Number of tourists Net occupancy rate of hotel rooms

244.0 million visitors

107.4 million visitors

63%

50%

(-56.0%)

Source: Takagi (1996)

of shopping districts had reopened; put another way, more than 2,000 shops still had not reopened. The number of tourists visiting Kobe had fallen by more than half, and the net occupancy of hotel rooms was around 50 percent, despite quake survivors’ need for accommodation (in 1994, net occupancy had been 63 percent) (see Table 7.1). From this low point, the recovery rate strengthened, though the degree varied across the stricken region. Kobe’s overall share of national GDP had returned to pre-disaster levels by 1998, mainly owing to the stimulus provided by local construction projects (Chang 2001). Indeed, it seems that the economy of the stricken area had more or less recovered to pre-earthquake levels by 1997. After that, however, the local economy failed to grow, in large part due to the continuing economic recession in Japan. The region’s gross product would record year-on-year increases only in 2000 and 2002 (“Kobe: 10 Years” 2005).7 As noted by Chang (2001), one of the most interesting patterns related to differences in economic recovery across districts affected by the quake. For instance, a 1998 study found that Kobe’s outer suburban wards and surrounding cities recovered rather strongly – at rates above the national growth – in terms of corporate registrations, retail sales, and employment (see HERO 1998b). By comparison, the central Chu ¯o¯ and Nagata wards were stagnant, even though these had been the economic heartland of the area affected by the earthquake, accounting at the time for about 26 percent of local companies, 37 percent of annual sales, and 30 percent of employees (these figures are exclusive of large corporations and reflect smaller and locally oriented

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Figure 7.4  The temporary market “Paraar,” Kunizuka district south of JR Shin-Nagata station, 1998.  Source: Photographs by D.W. Edgington

businesses). Such differences reflect the relative recovery in building and population, which favoured the eastern and northern wards of Kobe. Other surveys found that small- to medium-sized manufacturers, small firms, and family-owned businesses, as well as the local retail industry, were especially hard hit by the quake. For instance, a 1996 study by the Kobe Chamber of Commerce discovered that about one-third of Kobe’s shopping arcades and half the local marketplaces had been destroyed in the disaster. During the first year or two afterwards, many small businesses and shops resumed business, some in tents or in temporary and prefabricated structures (see Figure 7.4). Others suffered ongoing financial problems, failed to make a smooth recovery, and were forced to close (“Retailers Shake” 1997; HERO 1998c). Another setback was that many of Kobe’s small firms were largely left out of the city’s substantial rebuilding of infrastructure during the first two years after the quake, including the port reconstruction and large-scale project development. For instance, Nagamatsu (2005) reports that a large portion of reconstruction demand spilled over into other regions of Japan, especially Tokyo, the headquarters of many construction companies. His analysis

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indicated that within the first five years following the earthquake, about 90 percent of the construction demand had leaked from the disaster area – an indication that megaprojects had limited capacity to spur economic recovery in Kobe. Local building firms in Kobe, some of them organized by the Japanese yakuza (criminal groups), were able to take advantage of small-scale demolition contracts but were shut out from major projects, which were given to larger-scale Tokyo-based contractors (Iwamoto 1995; Suga 1995c; Kristof 1995). The Hyo¯go prefecture government estimated that about 46 percent of public repairs and construction was supplied by the local building industry between 1994 and 1998. But if private investment is factored in, about 90 percent of total reconstruction funds were diverted from the Hanshin area (Hyo¯go Prefecture 2005b). To alleviate local unemployment, a portion of public-sector reconstruction was set aside for people thrown out of work by the quake. This required construction contractors to hire at least 40 percent of their work team from a pool of local unskilled workers; but in fact, jobs for local labour were extremely limited since contractors required skilled workers, even for dismantling collapsed buildings and houses (Ashitani 1995). During 1997 the demand for restoration work declined as the reconstruction of infrastructure was completed, including railways, utilities, highways, and the Port of Kobe. In the third year of the recovery effort, business failures were epidemic. These collapses worsened as the infusion of money flowing into Kobe during debris removal and infrastructure repairs ebbed with the retreat of the giant contractors to their Tokyo headquarters, cash in hand. Subsequently, city planners asked businesses in Kobe where the municipal government should focus its efforts. These firms requested more assistance for SMEs rather than for traditional forms of urban development funded under the Reconstruction Plan and based on large-scale building projects, such as the extension of Port Island and the building of the planned airport (“Unofficial” 1999). Yet the “business as usual” approach to reconstruction continued, with the city putting most of its economic development efforts into reclaiming land and attracting new companies to Kobe. Five years after the quake the city administration concluded that the local economy had recovered to only about 80 percent of its pre-disaster capacity (“Five” 2000). Commenting on the city’s economic plight, Mayor Sasayama stated: “Our task now is to rebuild the remaining 20 per cent by bringing in new corporations and industries to create jobs and to pump up the city’s economy” (in ibid.). By the end of the ten-year reconstruction period, small firms in particular had not fully recovered, and 69 percent of respondents to a 2004 survey had yet to see sales or profits return to pre-quake levels (“Kobe: 10 Years” 2005).

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Figure 7.5  Trends in the recovery of chemical shoes, Awaji roof tiles, sake factories, and pearl industry exports for Kobe and surrounding areas, 1995-2004 (1994 levels = 100).  Source: Data provided by HERO

Kobe city responded to the plight of its SMEs by developing support systems, including special non-interest loans as well as subsidies for the construction of temporary stores and factories. But there were not enough funds available to help all the small businesses that needed assistance, and this led to many bankruptcies (Horwich 2000). As noted earlier, the national government consistently rejected requests for public compensation in the form of grants and subsidies to individuals. Instead it made local governments in the disaster area abide by measures that were based on more conventional loan systems for SMEs. These funds were welcomed by local businesses and in many cases were necessary for recovery; but they meant that those who had already lost their assets and property were burdened by additional debt. Indeed, at the end of the ten-year reconstruction period, the burden of loan repayments remained a crucial issue, and many firms in Kobe went bankrupt (Yajima interview).

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The slow revival of small firms over this period was tracked by Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture. Figure 7.5 shows the post-earthquake business outlook for chemical shoemakers in Nagata ward, Japanese sake breweries in Nada ward and adjoining Nishinomiya city, and makers of Awaji roof tiles (made on nearby Awaji Island), as well as for Kobe’s natural pearl exporters. The analysis indicates that production levels failed to return to pre-temblor levels after 1995. The exports of Kobe’s pearl-processing firms managed to grow up until 2001; but that small-firm industry then faltered as well. The years 2004 and 2005 saw an upturn in the Japanese economy; this was reflected in overall production figures for the Hanshin region. Thus, according to Hyo¯go prefecture, the manufacturing industry stood at an index level of 111.6 in July 2005, relative to 100 for 1995 as a whole. Still, certain industries were unable to take full advantage of this national recovery. According to Japan’s Chemical Shoes Industry Association, production volume (as of November 2005) was just 73 percent of production in the same month of 1994. Regarding sake breweries, according to the Nada Brewers Association, output levels (as of September 2005) were only 49.7 percent of what they had been in the same month in 1994. Retail sales recovered as population levels increased, but this benefited larger department stores rather than local shopping centres. As stated by the Hyo¯go Prefecture Department Store Association, the sales figures for department stores in downtown Kobe (as of September 2005) were 91.5 percent of levels for the same month in 1994. For markets and shopping malls in Kobe, the raw number of stores was 81.8 percent of June 2004 levels. The number of employees was 88.9 percent of levels a year earlier, and yearly sales figures were just 67.3 percent of previous levels (City of Kobe 2005a). Regarding tourism, the city’s image had suffered badly from the quake (Shinmura 1995c). Eventually, though, tourism would fare better; during the recovery years, visitors would be attracted to Kobe by new events such as Kobe Luminarie (illuminations held in winter) and to see exactly what had happened in the post-disaster city. There were 28.1 million visitors to Kobe in 2003 – an estimated 15.2 percent increase over 1994 levels (City of Kobe 2005a). 7.3 The Chemical Shoe Industry The chemical shoe industry of Nagata ward is a useful illustration of the difficulties encountered by Kobe’s industries.8 At more than ¥3 billion (US$30 million) in annual output, the production of chemical shoes was one of the city’s largest industries. Centred in Nagata ward, in 1994 it had about 450 full-scale manufacturers; about 1,600 other companies were engaged in subsidiary processing and parts and material supply; also, the industry employed households for in-home piecework. At the time of the quake, the industry employed about 30,000 workers: 10,000 in manufacturing jobs, others in materials supply and associated wholesaling (Futaba 1996). Some

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firms were run by elderly couples. Factories were located in semi-industrial districts throughout Nagata ward, which enjoyed good access to trained labour. Before the quake the industry depended on the proximate location of many small factories as well as nearby households supplying labour. For example, women in Nagata played a significant role cutting out leather and rubber shoe pieces; chains of family factories made shoe bottoms; and other factories finished the shoes. All told, the chemical shoe industry had the characteristics of a small-scale, labour-intensive manufacturing cluster based on a complex division of labour among companies (as described more generically in the industrial geography literature by Marshall 1920). The industry faced competition from Asian countries that had lower labour costs, but it could stave off imports by resorting to flexible production and by having factories in close proximity to the labour force. Nonetheless, just before the quake, sales had fallen to 31 million pairs in 1994 from around 104 million in 1969, which was the peak production year. Even before the temblor, few young people were interested in entering this business or in taking over family-owned factories. Indeed, many commentators saw the earthquake as the final blow for this industry, for which damages were estimated at ¥200 to ¥300 billion (US$2 to 3 billion). This included damage from the post-quake fires, which had destroyed most of the industrial premises in Nagata ward (Sumiya 1995). To its credit, Kobe city in its economic recovery strategy did more than endorse symbolic projects; it incorporated the chemical shoe industry into its Reconstruction Plan. Its objective was to rebuild the industry and to develop competitive strengths by promoting innovative products that would do well in the domestic market (Furuta interview). The detailed plan for this industry’s recovery evolved after 1995. To begin with, the city provided loans from the Hanshin-Awaji Restoration Fund to both manufacturers and wholesalers to enable them to recover and where possible to invest in low-cost second-hand machinery. The city then built temporary factories on reclaimed land in Nagata ward and on city-operated industrial parks in the suburbs. According to Japan’s Chemical Shoes Association, about 80 percent of its 212 members had sustained damage but around 97 percent had resumed business by the end of 1995. Even so, production levels fell well short of pre-quake levels (“Synthetic” 1997). Thus, as indicated in Figure 7.5, the industry was only around 60 percent back to pre-quake production levels by 1997, and recovery had reached only 75 percent of pre-quake levels around ten years after the quake. Part of the industry’s hardship involved the moratorium on new building around Shin-Nagata until the completion of land readjustment projects and the large urban renewal scheme (see Chapter 6). Many of the 450 or so factories that made chemical shoes and associated parts could not be rebuilt in their original locations – at least, not in any permanent way – until the

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projects and plans were finalized. In 1996 and even later, shoemaking companies were still operating from prefab buildings far from their traditional sources of labour in Nagata. Moreover, many firms were simply not interested in borrowing public money to improve their situation because of the uncertainties of the city’s planning schemes. Paradoxically, then, delays in land readjustment and urban renewal projects in Nagata ward led to a glut in potential funding. Until decisions were taken on urban planning, the industry could not start rebuilding (Fukuda 1996). As also noted in Chapter 6, detailed machizukuri planning in Nagata was frustrated by the discord over this industry’s future. Some residents of Nagata’s land readjustment areas worked in the chemical shoes industry and wanted the factories to be retained in the final redevelopment plans. Other local residents were more concerned about the long-term safety problems and health hazards associated with the industry and wanted the factories to move away. Yet if the industry left Nagata, it would lose an important competitive edge, for it was based on “just-in-time” manufacturing principles and a “social division of labour.” The major alternative location was the city’s own industrial estates in the outer suburban Seishin area, north of the Rokko¯ Mountains in Nishi ward. Rents were low there, but transportation costs were high, for there were no direct tunnels through the mountains. Owing to the complex manufacturing processes involved in producing shoes, parts suppliers who remained in Nagata would have to convey parts by truck to industrial estates in the mountains for eventual assembly. This often took about one hour, with a consequent steep increase in the transaction costs of production (Furuta interview). In this way, the tardy rebuilding in Nagata damaged the industry’s longterm competitiveness, for besides delaying the reopening of factories, it made it even harder for firms to win back business lost to overseas competitors. Immediately after the quake, wholesalers in Kobe began to import shoes to compensate for lost production. Because imported shoes from Asia were often cheaper, consumer demand for local products never recovered (Hirao 1995b). China emerged during the post-disaster reconstruction period as a major producer and exporter of chemical shoes, and price competition from imports grew fierce in the late 1990s. Kobe-based shoe wholesalers increasingly opted for imported products to serve domestic markets in Japan. Instead of pushing shoemakers out of business, the increase in competition from overseas forced them to cut production and trim payrolls. Overall, employment among member companies of the Japan Chemical Shoes Association declined from about 6,500 before the quake to just 4,000 at the end of 1995 and to 3,200 in 2002; in the same period, the value of production slumped from ¥65.9 billion to ¥51.3 billion (US$660 million to US$510 million). This fall in production and employment mainly affected female workers in Nagata, most of whom were in their 50s and 60s (Furuta interview).

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Successful recovery of the chemical shoe industry would require a combination of economic restructuring to ward off foreign competition and sensitive relocation within Kobe to maintain intact the complex social division of labour. It would also require measures to increase productivity, improve designs, and reaffirm Nagata as a suitable location. Thus, Kobe city’s final stage of support for the industry involved a variety of projects, including a special design studio north of the railway station in Shin-Nagata ward, which was also meant to be a tourist draw. The city also supported industry upgrading through design education in conjunction with the Shin-Nagata Industrial Association. For instance, a special Kobe brand and logo, “Nagata Shoe Town,” was established (see Figure 7.6). The overall objective of these measures was to develop greater strength in the local industry and to expand the domestic market by promoting innovation in shoe products (City of Kobe 2005a, 20; “Kobe Plans” 2005). Many of these projects for the chemical shoe industry were included in the replanning of Shin-Nagata, yet they met numerous practical problems in their implementation over the ten-year reconstruction period. For instance, the industry itself had many difficulties achieving consensus because of the plural existence of industry associations and the different perspectives of parent companies and their subsidiaries. This was aggravated in the first few years after the quake by differences among firms in their individual capacity to deal with the aftermath as well as differences in their capacity to recover quickly. Moreover, as noted earlier, some residents of Nagata’s land readjustment areas wanted to keep the chemical shoe factories in the final plans; others, who were also workers, wanted to leave the industry; and still others wanted the industry to leave Nagata entirely. In the event, the local economic system in Nagata, which had depended on a close proximity of workers, owners, and factory buildings, could not be restarted (Takada interview, 2003). 7.4 Attracting New Industries and Firms A second economic issue to emerge during reconstruction was how to attract new industries and firms in order to change the city’s industrial structure. Kobe had already had some success in shifting from port-related heavy industry toward tourism and service-sector employment. After the quake, the city was faced with the problem of how to continue in that direction. The city launched a microeconomic study soon after the disaster to assess the quake’s impact. It found that economic decline resulting from the quake damage contributed only about 20 percent to the city’s economic problems; a staggering 40 percent was due to more general trends in Japan’s economy, especially the slow rate of overall growth during the late 1990s. The city had very little policy leverage to address the latter. The study also found that the remaining 40 percent of the city’s difficulties were due to Kobe’s industrial

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Figure 7.6  The “Shoes Nagata” design showroom, 2005.  Source: Photograph by D.W. Edgington

structure, in that the city continued to rely largely on “old economy” industries such as shipbuilding, steel, and chemical shoes (Furuta interview). These findings led the city to invite new firms, new investors, and especially hightechnology and advanced service industries to set up shop in Kobe. In particular, the city targeted the rapidly growing medical and pharmaceutical

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industries, the robotics industry, and the information technology (IT) industry (“International Economic” 2001). For example, under the reconstruction program, both Governor Kaihara and Mayor Sasayama aimed to establish R&D institutes in health, welfare, and environmental fields; they also aimed to nurture affiliated types of industries (e.g., health care products and pharmaceuticals). All of these were relatively new to Hyo¯go prefecture. To support these growth sectors a separate organization was established in late 1995, called the Hanshin-Awaji Economic Revitalization Organization (HERO). Its purpose was to promote industrial reconstruction and new enterprise start-ups and to attract firms from outside. All three programs were supported by the national government and Hyo¯go prefecture. Incentive programs were developed, which took the form of soft loans and subsidies provided by the Hanshin-Awaji Restoration Fund. HERO’s mandate was to attract foreign companies and encourage new ventures, as well as to upgrade existing industries by working with entrepreneurs and organizing training sessions for key staff (HERO 1996c). In 1996 the Hyo¯go prefecture government itself began to invest directly in local venture firms, which made it the first local government in Japan to adopt this approach. For its part, Kobe city provided initial inexpensive office space for start-up companies. Both approaches seemed to have some success, for the rate at which new companies located in Hyo¯go prefecture in year 2003 was above the national average (Inoue interview). Kobe’s plans for a special cluster of medical-based companies focused on attracting firms to the city’s Port Island, Second Stage. It was thought that the public and private sectors could work with the academic community on the research and development of cutting-edge medical technology and the creation of new drugs and pharmaceuticals. This medical zone was designed to build on Kobe’s existing cluster of pharmaceutical companies (the city was already home to the Japanese headquarters of the US firm Procter and Gamble) and to support these with facilities for clinical testing, business training and support, and public-sector research institutes for new drugs and medical equipment. Collins (2008) has reported that a number of biotechrelated venture companies were attracted to the new Port Island, Second Stage project after it opened in 2003, mainly because of the generous subsidies provided by the city and the prefecture. To achieve this goal, a number of public-sector research facilities were established on the newly reclaimed land, including an Institute of Biomedical Research and Innovation (NIRO 2003; “Kobe to Create” 2004; City of Kobe 2005c). The core buildings in the new complex are shown in Figure 7.7. With these in place, the municipal government aimed to attract or generate more than one hundred companies within twenty years, creating jobs for more than 40,000 with an annual output totalling around ¥850 billion (US$8 billion). It was hoped that there

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Figure 7.7  Kobe Medical Industry Development Project on Port Island, Second Stage, 2005.  Source: Photograph by D.W. Edgington

would be spinoff benefits for the many SMEs in the Kobe region that were suffering from a bleak business outlook in their traditional markets. All of these ideas and programs for restructuring and creating new industries for Kobe reflected long-term objectives. The planners soon realized it would take many years for venture businesses to create jobs in meaningful numbers. Accordingly, the city also pursued established companies in Japan, offering them financial incentives to relocate to the Hanshin region (Kajiki and Segawa 2000). To this end, the city and prefecture governments established tax incentives and rent subsidies to lure major entrepreneurs into the Kobe area. A second opportunity to found an enterprise zone (the first having failed) presented itself in 2001, when the government of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro¯ (appointed by the LDP in May 2001) proposed a nationwide enterprise zone system to promote urban economic revival throughout Japan. Not surprisingly, Hyo ¯ go prefecture and Kobe city immediately took advantage of this national scheme. The new proposal was very different in intent from the “tax break zone” first advanced under the 1995 Phoenix Reconstruction Plan. The thrust of the Koizumi enterprise zone system (“Special Zones for Structural Reform”) was that it would deal mainly with relaxing specific

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regulations, would respond to local initiatives, and would provide no national government tax breaks at all (Prime Minister and Cabinet 2003). In response to this scheme, Hyo¯go prefecture and Kobe city proposed specific reductions or abolitions of existing government regulations based on their support for strategic new industries in the medical and IT sectors. These plans were designed to allow foreign researchers to come to Kobe without onerous visa regulations; this would facilitate a fast-track invitation system for potential foreign investors. Kobe city requested a loosening of regulations to encourage foreign firms to participate in its targeted industries; it also supported an “advanced medical special zone” and an “international port economic special zone” as well as a more general “international economic zone” to facilitate the rapid entry of foreign researchers and business people (Kobe City Government 2003). In 2003, two of Kobe’s proposals were approved by the national government. The first, an “Advanced Medical Industry Special Zone,” covered both stages of Port Island as well as Kobe University. This special zone would further the city’s plans for an advanced medical-tech R&D centre, to be created in collaboration with industry and academe (see Figure 7.7). The Kobe Medical Industry Development Project would allow faculty of Kobe University to work on private business projects with nearby drug companies; it would also allow private firms to use national testing and research facilities with reduced red tape (Collins 2008). Moreover, when overseas researchers were accepted to research institutes, their residence in Japan could be extended from a one- or three-year visa to five years. In addition, the scope of their activities in Japan could be expanded (e.g., to establishing venture companies), and the Japanese Immigration Bureau would place a higher priority on their immigration and residence applications. A second type of special zone was established relating to the International Port Economic Zone. This one focused on Port Island, Rokko¯ Island, the Sannomiya business centre, and the HAT Kobe harbour area. The purpose of this district was to accelerate revitalization of the port and the surrounding city by attracting harbour logistics firms and foreign-affiliated companies to Kobe. The city believed that a revival of the port was necessary if Kobe was to make a full economic recovery. To increase the port’s competitiveness, its national customs office would extend its working hours and reduce overtime charges to port users. The zone would also promote the inward movement of overseas researchers to Kobe and extend them privileges similar to those offered by the Advanced Medical Industry Special Zone (Kobe City Government 2003). Through these incentives the city achieved some success in attracting new firms and investments. By the end of the ten-year reconstruction period about sixty venture firms had come to the city, including forty or so new foreign firms (Furuta interview). New entrants to the city’s Port Island, Second

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Stage (opened in 2004), accounted for 285 specified businesses and six public facilities, including the Kobe International Business Centre, the Kobe KIMEC Centre Building, the Riken Center for Developmental Biology, the Advanced Medical Center, and the Kobe Incubation Office (HERO 2004). Some of the new private entrants, however, were not the start-up companies that the planners of the enterprise zone had expected; rather, they were existing firms that were coming to Port Island, Second Stage, from other parts of the Hanshin region, attracted by the preferential measures and lower municipal taxes offered by Kobe city (Furuta interview). Collins (2008) reported that the city’s goal of attracting one hundred medical-related firms was achieved by 2007, and that as a result it became the largest biotech/medical instruments cluster in Japan. It is unclear, though, whether this momentum can be sustained, especially now that public subsidies for the land and business operations have been reduced (since 2005). 7.5 The Kobe Airport and the City’s Debt The final issue addressed in this chapter relates to the difficulties Kobe encountered maintaining high spending levels over the ten years following the earthquake as a consequence of the Reconstruction Plan. The city had secured 40 to 50 percent subsidies for most infrastructure repair, land readjustment, and urban redevelopment schemes, as well as for its major symbolic projects. Even so, it was faced with an estimated ¥30 billion (US$300 million) shortfall in revenues during 2005. Earthquake-related project expenses in Hyo¯go prefecture also represented a considerable financial burden. As a result of redevelopment projects, land readjustment projects, post-disaster increases in welfare costs, and the reconstruction of public facilities, Hyo¯go prefecture incurred expenses equivalent to around 150 percent of its “normal” revenue in the years immediately prior to the quake (CGAEC 2000). Kobe city’s financial problems were compounded by the unexpectedly sluggish national economy throughout the reconstruction years. This meant that about 50 percent of the city’s large-project expenditures, including the artificial islands and the new airport, had to be financed by long-term bonds rather than tax income (see Table 5.2). Owing to the slow-growth economy, all Japanese local governments had gone into debt during the 1990s, but Kobe suffered most from this (Schebath 2006). Indeed, at the end of the ten-year reconstruction period many feared that Kobe city was all but bankrupt, with more than ¥3 trillion (US$30 billion) in municipal bonds outstanding ( Johnston 2005). Certainly, in 2001 it had the highest percentage of municipal income going to bond repayments of the major cities in Japan (at 24.7 percent); the same year, it also recorded the highest outstanding bond debt per resident (see Figure 7.8a). Five years later, in 2006, the city’s position had improved somewhat relative to other large Japanese cities. The

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Figure 7.8  Debt situation of Japanese cities, (a) 2001; (b) 2006.  Source: Based on data supplied by City of Kobe

debt per resident had fallen, and the percentage of income going to bond repayments had been reduced to 22.7 percent, below that of Chiba, Yokohama, and Fukuoka (see Figure 7.8b). As pointed out in Chapter 3, many of Kobe’s financial problems predated the quake and were a result of the particular approach to urban development followed by the city. Because Kobe had developed its own port – which was a key infrastructure in the local economy – it later followed a similar public development model for other infrastructure projects, such as land reclamation for industry and service-sector activities. Many commentators have

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suggested that over time the city began to focus too much on its “Kobe Inc.” approach to public development, which largely involved generating revenues by selling lands it had reclaimed using borrowed money (Miyamoto 1996a, b). It was argued that this method was only sustainable as long as the demand for land and office space continued growing, land prices kept rising, and dependence on foreign loans could be controlled against the risks of foreign currency swings. Moreover, this method often relied on joint public-private sector operations, referred to in Japan as “third sector” arrangements (see Kanaya and Ikuta 2003). During times of rapid economic growth, when real estate speculation yielded continued profits, such arrangements allowed local governments like Kobe’s to team with private-sector interests in jointly developing various infrastructure projects. In the 1990s, however, these favourable conditions no longer existed in Japan (Katz 1998). Nonetheless, following the earthquake the city rushed ahead with projects such as the Kobe airport and the completion of Port Island, Second Stage. These were built even as citizens and many outside experts elsewhere in the Kansai region and Tokyo warned that such developments were a waste of resources ( Johnston 1999a, b). For example, the city faced a substantial challenge in recovering its investment in Port Island. Only 30 percent of the Second Stage reclaimed land had been sold by 2005, at a time when premium space was still available in other parts of Kobe. Some new firms had entered subsidized accommodation provided by the city; generally, though, this project failed to attract the number of investors expected because of its inconvenient location and the sluggish national and regional economy (ibid.). Many commentators suggested that the Reconstruction Plan reflected an outmoded approach to economic development, one that called for highprofile megaprojects with an insignificant impact on the local economy and that placed severe pressure on municipal finances. These megaprojects also gave the impression that municipal administrators and political leaders had failed to reflect on past mistakes. “Kobe city and business officials are still locked into this ‘bubble-era’ mentality of building things. But the city, which has the worst debt per resident of any major city in Japan, is nearly bankrupt. We cannot afford to keep building in the unrealistic hope that things will work out” (Awahara Tomio, Kobe City Council Assemblyman, in “Kobe Airport Too” 1999). Indeed, the debt issue and a critical shortage of resources was forcing the city to cut services in other areas. For instance, the number of caregivers hired to look after the elderly in public housing and elsewhere declined in 1999, as did the number of counsellors giving housing advice to individuals (Watanabe 2001). In early 2004 it was reported that the city intended to further downsize its daily visiting services to the elderly in public housing projects in order to save money. As a result, the number of people who

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Figure 7.9  Kobe’s airport, opened in 2006.  Source: Photograph courtesy of the City of Kobe

received this service was reduced in fiscal year 2004-5; between 1,800 and 2,000 of the elderly would be expected to rely on volunteer and welfare workers in local non-profit organizations (“Kobe to Cut” 2004). Still, despite the debt issue and a critical shortage of financial resources, Mayor Sasayama pushed forward with the construction of an airport for Kobe (see Figure 7.9). The city government and local business saw the airport as the final project in the process of rebuilding the economy following the disaster (City of Kobe 2003b). This plan in particular faced heavy criticism from citizens, from business leaders within and outside Kobe, and from local consular officials of foreign governments. It was even criticized by officials within the national government ( Johnston 2001). Many doubted that the airport would be viable, especially as Osaka’s domestic airport (Itami airport) and Kansai International Airport – both about 45 minutes from Kobe by air – were largely underutilized. At the time of its inclusion in the Reconstruction Plan, Kobe’s airport was expected to cost at least ¥314 billion (US$3 billion); further expenditures would be required to extend the local rail line from the existing Port Island to the airport. To finance this project, about ¥210 billion (US$2 billion) was to be raised by issuing municipal bonds; national government funds were projected at ¥302 billion (US$3 billion) (ibid.).

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With this external funding in hand, Kobe’s mayor and the city administration made a strong case to local citizens that no local tax money or private investment would be required for the airport. In addition, the city projected that a further ¥68 billion (US$650 million) from land sales to private firms would be used to help finance the project once the reclaimed airport site was completed. This estimate was deemed utterly unrealistic by some analysts, based on Kobe’s experience with land reclamation projects ( Johnston 1999b). Local media polls taken after 1995 showed that 70 to 80 percent of Kobe’s residents either had serious doubts about the new airport or opposed it outright. Some citizens’ groups claimed that 90 percent of Kobe’s residents opposed the project, citing it as a waste of taxpayers’ money at a time when the city’s scarce fiscal resources should be used to assist Kobe’s disaster victims and small-business owners (Nakamura 1997). When the airport was first mentioned in the Reconstruction Plan, concerns were also raised about its possible adverse environmental impacts, including noise and water pollution – issues that had been voiced even before the quake (ibid.). Kobe’s municipal officials, however, continued to regard the airport as vital to economic revitalization; they also argued that it was necessary for future disaster planning and mitigation (City of Kobe 2003b). In addition, some larger-scale companies in Kobe supported the proposal for a new airport. But in 1997 the Ministry of Transport and the Environment Agency approved the commencement of detailed planning and construction of a city-operated domestic airport (“Environment” 1997). In 1998 about 310,000 citizens – roughly 30 percent of voters – signed a petition demanding a formal referendum on the airport construction. This was dismissed by the city without discussion by either the mayor or the municipal assembly (“Kobe Airport Too” 1999). The protesters only stepped up their efforts, and in 2000 a group began a formal campaign to recall the mayor over this issue (“Protesters” 2000). However, unlike the 1998 referendum proposal, this new petition did not secure the signatures of one-third of eligible voters – the number required to force a new election ( Johnston 2000b; “Airport Enemies” 2000). In the event, Mayor Sasayama would not seek re-election in 2001. His deputy, Yada Tatsuo, won the ensuing vote after securing the backing of the municipal assembly’s ruling parties (“Kobe Mayor” 2001). Land reclamation for the airport commenced the same year. At the end of the ten-year reconstruction period it was announced that Kobe’s airport would open in February 2006 (“Kobe Airport to” 2005). The photograph in Figure 7.10 was taken in 2007. Kobe city also announced that it would be cutting its 2005-6 budget for reconstruction projects related to the earthquake by 24.1 percent from the previous year, to ¥42.2 billion (US$425 million), in recognition that most of the city’s urban redevelopment projects had by then been completed

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Figure 7.10  Regional air carrier Sky Mark Airlines at Kobe airport, 2007.  Source: Photograph by D.W. Edgington

(“Quake Reconstruction” 2005). Yet the airport continued to be controversial. In particular, the prospect that the city might raise funds by offering even more bonds was not welcomed by Kobe’s many SMEs, which feared that local taxes would have to increase to pay for the additional debt (Furuta interview). Evaluation The earthquake dealt a body blow to Kobe’s economy, which was already faltering in the mid-1990s due to the challenges of industrial restructuring. While the city made extra efforts to lure national government funds for a number of megaprojects and to attract footloose industries, most indicators suggest that its economy had not fully recovered even a decade after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. In 2005 the city maintained that economic recovery was still only around 80 percent of the city’s potential (Yajima interview). This was due in part to a long period of little or no growth in Japan as a whole. Businesses that remained reliant on local markets seemed

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Figure 7.11  Aspects of recovery in Hyo¯go prefecture, 1994-2005.  Source: Hyo¯go Prefecture (2005a, 2006)

the least equipped to return to normal. The chemical shoemakers of Kobe’s Nagata ward, the Japanese sake breweries in the Nada district, and the makers of local Awaji roof tiles remained beset by a sluggish economy, price competition with Chinese imports, and changes in market demand (Saito¯ 2005).9 The impact of these conditions can be traced through the local labour market data shown in Figure 7.11 and Table 7.2. All told, these indicate a favourable recovery for the stricken area and Hyo¯go prefecture (e.g., including Awaji Island and areas outside Hyo¯go such as Nishinomiya and Ashiya

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Table 7.2 Unemployment rate in Kobe and other major Japanese cities

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

Kobe

3.9

5.0

3.9

4.4

6.4

4.5

Japan

2.9

2.6

2.1

3.2

4.7

3.7

Sapporo

–

–

–

–

5.7

4.3

Sendai

–

–

–

–

5.2

4.3

Chiba

–

–

–

–

4.5

3.3

Tokyo (23-ward area)

–

–

–

–

4.8

3.5

Kawasaki

–

–

–

–

5.0

3.6

Yokohama

–

–

–

–

4.7

3.3

Nagoya

–

–

–

–

4.6

3.5

Kyoto

–

–

–

–

5.1

3.9

Osaka

–

–

–

–

9.1

7.2

Hiroshima

–

–

–

–

4.3

3.2

Kitakyu¯ shu ¯

–

–

–

–

6.1

4.4

Fukuoka

–

–

–

–

5.6

4.3

Source: City of Kobe (2005a, 2005b, 2006)

cities; see Figure 4.1). Thus, the population for the earthquake-stricken area and for Hyo¯go prefecture as a whole had recovered by 2005 to pre-quake levels (Figure 7.11a). Industrial production in Hyo¯go also seems to have recovered by 2003 so that it at least mirrored national rates of growth (Figure 7.11b). The labour market for the earthquake-stricken area and Hyo¯go prefecture also had improved, the ratio of active job openings to job demand having moved from a low point in 1998 to rising indicators in 2004 – a sign of job growth across the region as a whole (Figure 7.11c). But a different picture emerges when we focus on Kobe city. At the time of the quake, unemployment in Kobe had been well above the national average for a quarter-century (Table 7.2). This reflected job losses in Kobe’s port and traditional industries – losses that could not be offset by any rise in tourism or by new high-tech industries (Furuta interview). Immediately after the earthquake, Kobe’s unemployment was estimated by city officials to be around 6.9 percent at a time when the national average was 4.3 percent (not shown in Table 7.2). By 2000, unemployment stood at 6.4 percent in Kobe compared to the national level of 4.7 percent; by 2005 the city’s unemployment rate was 4.5 percent, compared to 3.7 percent for Japan as a whole (Table 7.2). Unemployment fell between 2000 and 2005 throughout Japan as the national economy rebounded from the “lost decade” (Table 7.2). A comparison of Kobe’s unemployment with that of other major

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Japanese cities in 2000 and 2005 indicates that unemployment in Kobe was the second highest, behind neighbouring Osaka (Table 7.2). These figures, taken as a whole, suggest that the local economy was slowly returning to health and that all was well and back to normal. However, many quake survivors still required welfare services at a time when the city was nearly bankrupt (Uchihashi 2005). The city government and private business in Kobe agreed that structural reforms and new industries were important if the economy was to fully recover and develop – hence the emphasis on the new airport, deregulation zones, and the medical research cluster. Yet at the same time, other cities in Japan were working hard to attract similar “new economy” industries. Indeed, one analysis has pointed out that a focus on rebuilding after the earthquake perhaps put Kobe even further behind competitive restructuring programs of the sort being carried out by Sapporo, Sendai, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka – all of them regional cities similar to Kobe in population (“Homeless” 2003).

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8 Conclusions

Looking back over the events of 2004, it is striking how many of the year’s disasters could have been avoided with better information and communication. For tens of thousands of people, disaster arrived suddenly, unannounced. — Markku Niskala, Secretary General, International    Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

The region stricken by the Great Hanshin Earthquake is morally obliged to pass on to succeeding generations the experience and lessons learned in the process of reconstruction, and to put this knowledge to good use in mitigating the effects of, and recovery from, large-scale disasters in the future. — Hyo ¯ go Prefecture Government, Office of the 10th    Year Restoration Committee, Report of the 10-Year    Reconstruction

January 17, 2005, was marked in Kobe as the tenth anniversary of the worst earthquake in postwar Japanese history, one that made this port city in western Japan a showcase of reconstruction efforts (World Conference on Disaster Reduction 2005).1 Yet when I visited the city at the time of the anniversary it was hard to find visible scars of the quake, and many parts of the city flaunted new apartments and office towers. Overall population levels in Kobe, and more widely in the disaster area, had finally recovered to prequake levels. The relatively swift reconstruction of roads, buildings, and port facilities had in some instances transformed the cityscape. This apparent comeback attests to what Vale and Campanella (2005) call the “resilience of cities.” Urban resilience had brought back Tokyo after the carpet firebombing and Hiroshima after the atomic bomb attack in 1945. Even though

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Figure 8.1  Location of residence of Kobe’s citizens (existing residents and newcomers) before the earthquake (as of November 2004).  Source: Makino, Ito¯, and Katoh (2006)

Kobe would continue to be vulnerable to earthquakes in the future, no one had seriously proposed abandoning the city. In 2005 it appeared that memories of the quake were also fading, even in the hardest hit areas of Kobe, such as Nagata ward. After ten years it was becoming difficult to identify the relationship between the current state of Kobe and the earthquake disaster. The effects of Japan’s economic recession together with changes in the socio-economic situation, such as the aging of the population and industrial restructuring, were more important. Indeed, in a study released by the Hyo¯go prefecture government in 2004, 80 percent of 1,203 respondents in fourteen of the prefecture’s municipalities affected by the earthquake said they no longer felt like disaster victims ( Johnston 2005). Another report found that 25 percent of Kobe’s residents surveyed in 2004 had had no direct experience of the 1995 quake; they had been living elsewhere or had not yet been born (see Figure 8.1). In particular, the survey recorded that in the eastern wards (e.g., Higashi-Nada and Nada), many people had moved in from outside the city and consequently knew little of the deprivation in Kobe in the days and weeks following the quake. However, most respondents in Kobe’s western Nagata and Suma wards in 2004 had lived in these neighbourhoods before the quake, had survived it, and had stayed on (see Figure 8.1). The residents’ profiles in Figure 8.1 are highly revealing. The Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture governments often refer to the full repopulation of the disaster area by 2005 as evidence of full recovery. But population increase

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does not in itself mean that those who were evacuated were able to return. As the 2004 survey recorded, many residents of Kobe were newcomers. There has been little research on how many of those who evacuated outside of Kobe in 1995 have returned or even could return. Watanabe (2001) suggests that only about 60 percent of survivors were able to rebuild houses in the stricken areas after 1995, and that in the areas devastated by the fire it was only 30 percent; the rest of the survivors were living elsewhere, often far away in new public housing. Much new building had taken place by 2005, but by other measures the revival of Kobe was still incomplete. This led some commentators to talk about an “80 per cent recovery.” As revealed in previous chapters, the city’s port was still shy one-fifth of its former trade volume, and there were scattered neighbourhoods – blue-collar Nagata ward chief among them – that had not regained even close to their former population or commercial densities. Other indicators, too, suggested that full recovery had a long way to go. One survey of two hundred households in Kobe’s new public housing complexes carried out in November and December 2004 found that around 45 percent of tenants wanted to continue receiving aid and various support systems at current levels. Many asked that their rental levels not be increased and that special loans for housing and small business remain in place. The background to these concerns was that many of the public subsidies associated with the Hanshin Earthquake Reconstruction Plan were coming to an end in 2005 (“Most Survivors” 2005). This concluding chapter examines the major implications of the Kobe case study for our understanding of post-disaster reconstruction planning. It also offers recommendations for other Japanese cities. Note at the outset that this study has had little to say about recovery in the “grey zones” and “white zones” – an important limitation, for these accounted for the great majority of the damaged area. But even with this caveat, a number of conclusions about the recovery process in Kobe can be drawn. In addition, suggestions can be given as to whether there are lessons that could apply more widely for disaster-prone regions elsewhere. The chapter begins with a detailed commentary on the successes and failures of the reconstruction effort. 8.1 Was the Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan Successful? The literature review conducted in Chapter 2 noted that earlier discussions of reconstruction dealt mainly with physical rehabilitation and the replacement of capital stocks and population to pre-disaster levels. More contemporary perspectives, however, suggest that recovery is not just about physical outcomes; they stress a more holistic approach that involves social and economic processes and that emphasizes how different groups in the community have fared in post-disaster rebuilding. Accordingly, reconstruction is recast as a developmental process of reducing vulnerability and enhancing

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Figure 8.2  Success rate of Kobe’s Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan.  Source: After Hayashi (2006)

economic capacity. In this context, how did the Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan fare? The Kobe Reconstruction Plan was innovative: it went beyond the traditional approach in Japan, wherein government recovery programs restrict themselves to restoring public facilities and utilities. The broad goals of Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture were physical recovery and the redevelopment of damaged urban areas. Yet they also encompassed providing housing for displaced residents, revitalizing the local economy, and helping disaster victims (see Figure 8.2). Infrastructure and Housing Clearly, physical recovery was fairly successful. Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture had many things to be proud of, such as the relatively quick removal of debris and the restoration of public infrastructure within about two years. All railway lines in the region resumed normal operations by the end of the first year of reconstruction. Kobe’s elevated intercity expressways were replaced within two years, and major roads were fixed almost immediately. Private housing recovery in Kobe was impeded due to the lack of private insurance, which made it necessary for homeowners to take out loans for rebuilding. Despite the rather slow beginning, damaged housing units were replaced by new ones within five years (sometimes there were more of them than before the quake), and land readjustment and redevelopment projects were almost completed by the end of the ten-year reconstruction program. The national and local governments helped with grants, low-interest loans, tax rebates, and so on. The Kobe airport, the “Happy Active Town” project,

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and the Kobe biotechnology cluster are important legacies of the Phoenix Plan. Kobe city made other physical improvements, including greenery programs and the widening of riverbank parks. Early in 2005, many more enhancement projects were being planned, along with schemes to create jobs on newly developed Port Island, Second Stage, in industries such as health, biotech, and environmental technology, all of which were relatively new in Kobe and Hyo¯go prefecture. In evaluating these more successful dimensions of physical reconstruction, I can point to a number of occasions where the city and national governments either “got it right” or were “just plain lucky.” First, there was the requirement that every local government in Japan prepare a Comprehensive Plan for future development and keep that plan updated. Just before the quake, Kobe had finished updating its Long-Term Comprehensive Plan for the city. This updating had involved little consultation with local residents or businesses; even so, it provided a launching pad for the Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan prepared later in 1995. Second, though the national government fumbled the initial recovery process by delaying the full deployment of SDF forces for several days, the cabinet in Tokyo was quick to follow up with significant funds to rebuild Kobe. It also put in place structures that allowed local governments to prepare and implement plans while ensuring national government screening of budget proposals, and it made many legislative changes necessary to facilitate recovery. All of these actions were carried out within weeks of the disaster, and by and large the national government maintained its commitment to Kobe throughout the next ten-year period.2 Third, Kobe city, using national government funds, hired planning and housing specialists to help citizens obtain planning and development permits and to provide specific advice on rebuilding their properties. Fourth, local government budgets and staff were stretched, but both the city and the prefecture had a long history of administering development projects. Their staff included engineers, architects, and managers who could smooth the progress of key infrastructure reconstruction while rebuilding the city’s port facilities. But not all aspects of infrastructure and housing rebuilding went smoothly, and there were many disappointments. For instance, the temporary housing program encountered many administrative problems, especially with regard to providing adequate community services for seniors and the disabled, who had to endure up to five years in this type of accommodation after the quake. Statistically, the number of housing units by the end of reconstruction exceeded what had existed before the earthquake. The fact that a large number of public housing units were provided for reconstruction should be rated highly. Barrier-free and collective housing were widely used in rebuilding programs. However, the commencement of three-year public housing programs for victims was delayed as the city, the prefecture, and the national

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government’s Housing Corporation scrambled to find “green acre” sites on which to place large-scale housing projects on the urban periphery or on newly developed waterfront land. Indeed, a lack of affordable plots in the Kobe “damage strip” severely disrupted and disadvantaged the rehousing of many elderly survivors, many of whom lost the opportunity to return to their inner-city neighbourhoods. Furthermore, owing to particular Japanese approaches to disaster recovery, there was a clear preference for “hard” infrastructure projects over community-based recovery programs, social policies, and adequate income supports for quake survivors. In particular, the national government provided inadequate financial support to those who had lost houses. Public funding focused solely on those evacuees who took a route directly from the emergency shelters to temporary housing, and then finally to permanent public housing. As discussed earlier, people who evacuated to outside the prefecture or who rebuilt houses and condominiums in Kobe’s “white” zone areas received little or no assistance in rebuilding. Moreover, important services for the elderly and handicapped, such as visits to seniors in new suburban public housing projects, were introduced only after the public housing program had commenced; by the end of the ten-year reconstruction period, these programs had been placed in jeopardy by budget cuts and resource shortages.3 Economic and Individual Recovery In terms of economic revitalization and individual recovery, the picture was far more mixed, and it is here that the “80 percent recovery” image was fairly accurate. For example, Kobe’s port had been the busiest in Japan before the earthquake and was rebuilt with national funding better than before and with a higher seismic standard; yet its former level of business never returned. Figure 8.3 indicates that levels of exports and imports fell dramatically after 1994 and only recovered to pre-earthquake yen values in 2003-6, in tandem with Japan’s overall economic revival. However, the general share of the port in Japan’s export and import trade fell several percentage points and has never recovered. The city’s port ranked 6th in the world prior to the earthquake; as of 2006 it ranked 33rd (Chang 2000; American Association of Port Authorities 2007). Both in the port’s rebuilding and in other parts of the city, an overreliance on large-scale projects constructed mainly by Tokyo-based companies left little in the way of funds for local small businesses. The late 1990s were slow-growth years; the Japanese economy was in a prolonged slump and would only recover toward the end of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan. Furthermore, the lack of insurance or government payments meant that businesses and individual households were stymied in their efforts to recover and rebuild. In Kobe, as elsewhere in Japan, there was no general compensation system to allow households to recover after a disaster. Basically, those

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Figure 8.3  Port of Kobe, exports and imports, 1990-2006.  Source: Based on data provided by City of Kobe

residents who lost houses and sources of income were on their own until the belated national Act Concerning Support for Reconstructing Livelihoods of Disaster Victims provided more generous compensation after 1998. Loans and other assistance were granted to small businesses through the Hanshin Reconstruction Fund, but these monies were often insufficient to secure a rapid recovery of this economic sector. The matter of how personal and household recovery was handled and to what degree it succeeded requires further scrutiny. Before the Hanshin earthquake there was no local government reconstruction plan that set either economic recovery or individual and family welfare as its goals. The predominant assumption was that if infrastructure and housing were restored, people could recoup their losses from disasters themselves. Indeed, before the quake it was assumed that personal and family recovery would be achieved by supplying ample amounts of public spending for physical reconstruction in the disaster-affected areas. But as I have pointed out, the quake overturned existing assumptions because of its more devastating impact on the many elderly people affected. Because the socio-economic situation in Japan had changed a good deal since the time (1947) when the Disaster Relief Law was passed, elderly victims and others placed in difficult circumstances found it very hard to put their lives back together. Consequently, after the Kobe earthquake, individual and community recovery became a more explicit goal to be achieved in local government disaster plans throughout Japan, alongside physical and economic restoration. Measuring the long-term effects of the Kobe earthquake on individual victims is difficult. This topic cannot be analyzed merely with statistical indicators and government reports. Further research should focus on the

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Figure 8.4  Restoration of individual lives, 2005 survey results. Notes: (a) Victims of the 1995 earthquake were asked when the following events occurred: “work/school activities are back to normal” (N = 651), “housing issues are completely solved” (N = 759), “earthquake no longer affects household economy” (N = 694), “life is back to normal” (N = 800), “no longer feel like a disaster victim” (N = 709), “earthquake no longer affects the local economy” (N=582). (b) Results have been standardized by percentage responses in the above graph.  Source: Tatsuki (2006)

varied experiences of families and individuals and on how they have (or have not) re-established their homes and jobs. What were the principal coping mechanisms used by families? What individual strategies were followed in trying to manage the losses resulting from the Hanshin disaster? What contributions did NGOs make toward the rehabilitation of stricken neighbourhoods?4 Preliminary attempts to measure the results of recovery in this domain were reported by Kimura and colleagues (2005) and Tatsuki (2006). These scholars conducted random mail surveys in 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2005 within the Hanshin region, in which questions were posed (in each of these years) to more than one thousand quake victims relating to their perceptions of the recovery. Figure 8.4 shows the responses to certain questions asked of earthquake victims in the 2005 survey. About half the respondents reported that work and school activities had returned to normal within 1,000 hours of the quake (sometime in February 1995). Housing and household economy issues had been solved by half the survivors surveyed within about

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10,000 hours of the quake (sometime in December 1996). It was about two years before half the survivors felt that their lives were back to normal; it took ten years before they no longer felt like disaster victims. Among the group surveyed in 2005, it took a full ten years before half the survivors could answer that the earthquake no longer affected the local economy. The results show that over 90 percent of respondents felt their “life was back to normal,” but fully one in five Kobe residents identified themselves as continuing victims of the 1995 disaster. Studies by this research team revealed that respondents’ psychological recovery levels were likely to vary with their life stage and the severity of housing damage. When asked what affected their individual recovery most, roughly 30 percent responded “housing”; in second place was “social ties”; in third place was “community rebuilding” (Tatsuki 2006). The Hyo¯go Verification Report At the time of the ten-year anniversary, local governments did their own formal evaluation of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan. In particular, Hyo¯go prefecture established a “Verification and Recommendation Project” to cull lessons learned from the reconstruction process. This report dealt with a number of themes, including health and welfare, society and culture, industry and employment, disaster reduction, housing, and urban development and community building. Input was obtained from citizens, NPOs, and local industry (Hyo¯go Prefecture Government 2005b). The report argued that the principal achievements in helping citizens restore their lives were those of national institutions and mechanisms that went beyond traditional support systems, such as the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Reconstruction Fund and the national Act Concerning Support for Reconstructing Livelihoods of Disaster Victims (the establishment of a residential stability assistance system). It reported that another positive initiative had been the recognition given to volunteers and the implementation of legislation to support NPOs in 1998.5 The Verification Report (ibid., 1) also found that “many tasks remained to be addressed, not only in the stricken region, but in Japanese society as a whole.” These included special national legislation focusing on reconstruction support and financial security for communities after major disasters. Such law, the report contended, should assign more roles and responsibilities to local governments in the spirit of administrative decentralization. Restoration work should not be required to conform to standards set by the national government; rather, local governments should be granted special institutional and financial security, taking into account the circumstances of the disaster and the features of the locality. The Verification Report stated that highpriority tasks still outstanding after ten years of reconstruction included the following: helping elderly disaster victims live independent lives; revitalizing communities and local shopping arcades in Kobe; assisting the redemption

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of personal and business loans; and reinforcing the earthquake resistance of housing and public facilities. An overreliance on public housing for displaced survivors was also mentioned as an overall negative factor. Another issue was the need for a system of housing allowances able to accommodate the financial requirements of each household. Yet another recommendation reflected the growing numbers of foreign residents in the community; it called for the establishment of a targeted support system and the provision of information for non-Japanese in a timely manner after a disaster. Beyond the issues raised in the Verification Report, many other unresolved matters can be mentioned – for instance, the debt situation of the Kobe city government and the length of time it took to restore the land readjustment neighbourhoods.6 In a number of areas, Kobe and other local governments, in their haste to provide housing for the displaced, overbuilt and over­ borrowed. As a result, some post-quake high-rises had high vacancy rates in 2005. In response, the city and prefecture began in 2005 to privatize public housing built after the quake in order to reduce their debt situation (Yajima interview). Yet another problem was the lack of funds provided to individuals to adequately replace or repair their houses. Throughout the world, private insurance is potentially the fastest and most equitable means of financing reconstruction. There is therefore a strong case to be made for public policies in Japan to encourage the taking out of disaster insurance (Comerio 1998). Is Kobe a Safer City? From the perspective of national and local governments, the Hanshin earthquake was an opportunity to address long-term problems with Kobe’s housing and infrastructure. To a great degree, the remodelled city centre, the HAT waterfront project, and the suburban nodes at Shin-Nagata and Rokko¯-michi, together with the new housing complexes north of the Rokko¯ Mountains, have led to a safer city. Moreover, after the failure of the city’s lifelines and utilities, an improved system of seismic-resistant structures has been implemented throughout Kobe. This has been part of the rebuilding of the city’s road, sewer, electricity, and water systems, together with harbour facilities, railways, and the new airport. In addition, a new system for unloading and securing emergency goods has been executed, and a firefighting transportation network has been developed. At the national level, Japan’s building codes have been upgraded since the earthquake. However, these are only for large structures – there is still no seismic code for private homes. But in Kobe, after the collapse of so many houses, which contributed to the high death toll, earthquake-proof houses and buildings are now being promoted. For instance, the Hyo¯go prefectural government provided subsidies to 39,000 homes after 1996 for seismic retrofitting of private homes. Older homes were given priority to become earthquake resistant. Since 2004, schools are being retrofitted (Office of the 10th Year Restoration Committee 2005). The Hyo¯go

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prefectural government also invested millions of yen in the years following the quake to build earthquake-proof shelters and supplies in public parks (Hyo¯go Prefecture Government 2005b). All of these improvements have been welcomed by the local community. Yet many questions remain as to the effectiveness of urban redevelopment plans for Kobe’s long-term disaster mitigation and overall reduction of economic and social vulnerability (see Chapters 6 and 7). At a national level, reconstruction after the Hanshin earthquake served as an important test for urban policy and planning methods, which in Japan have long been dominated by land readjustment and urban redevelopment models. Where there are few landholders and impediments to recovery, such projects go relatively smoothly, as with HAT Kobe and public housing on municipal land. But where land readjustment is complicated, with many players each with different interests, it takes a considerable time to arrive at solutions. Even ten years after the quake, some areas of western Kobe had housing lots that were unbuilt on. In the absence of any effective insurance program, landowners and their tenants were often unable to rebuild. This exacerbated community problems in the inner western districts, such as problems relating to the decreasing and aging population. In white-collar areas such as Moriminami there was conflict with city-led redevelopment plans. This reflected the very troublesome nature of replotting land in the Japanese context. Outside the priority areas, very little comprehensive planning took place because public funds were lacking. Even just the other side of the road from the South Shin-Nagata Comprehensive Development Area, I observed in 2005 that residential districts had been rebuilt at the same high densities and with the same narrow streets and lane patterns as before (see Figure 8.5). In this regard, it is unclear whether reconstruction has reduced the vulnerability of Kobe’s inner areas. 8.2 What Were the Major Influences on Kobe’s Reconstruction? By and large, the sequencing model of recovery suggested by Kates and Pijawka (1977) foretold accurately that the reconstruction of Kobe would take ten years. That said, a number of findings from the Kobe case study have particular implications for models of reconstruction and theory building. First, the research points to an underlying complexity in Kobe’s reconstruction planning that cannot easily be encompassed by many of the more abstract approaches to post-disaster reconstruction, such as the strictly linear models of reconstruction used in Haas, Trainer, and colleagues (1977). Above all, the pace of reconstruction in Kobe over the ten-year planning period varied considerably, and there were many unforeseen circumstances that could not have been predicted by any generalized model or chronology – for instance, the delays in rebuilding caused by land readjustment procedures. Moreover, detailed post-disaster planning for Kobe’s “damage strip” in early

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Figure 8.5  Narrow street in Shin-Nagata, 2005.  Source: Photograph by D.W. Edgington

1995 preceded any broad-scale strategic planning for the city as a whole. In an attempt to merge the priorities of local planners with the budget schedule of the national government, Kobe city forged ahead quickly – perhaps too quickly – with a number of reconstruction areas, leaving the development of a longer-term (Phoenix) reconstruction plan and revival strategy for the whole city until later in 1995. In more “normal” times this process would

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typically have been reversed, with broad-scale objectives for the whole city discussed and established before individual projects were identified. Furthermore, the planning process was highly contested in Kobe – something that was not envisaged in the Kates and Pijawka model. And as discussed above, certain aspects of the recovery process did not come to an end after ten years and are ongoing at the time of this writing. In sum, the Kobe research supports other empirical studies which show that the recovery process is neither simple, nor linear, nor cyclical (e.g., Neal 1997). A second set of issues relates to the factors that either sped along or constrained the movement of the various communities in the Kobe and the wider Hanshin region through the four stages in the model. In terms of the general literature canvassed in Chapter 2, many of the studies that focus on the difficulties of recovery following an urban disaster fit well with the Kobe reconstruction experience. The present research found that after the Hanshin earthquake, four major factors affected post-earthquake redevelopment outcomes: conditions in Kobe preceding the quake; the intensity and geography of the disaster; government efforts and intergovernmental relations; and acceptance of the reconstruction plan by the local community. Figure 8.6 indicates this framework in simplified form and some of the factors pertaining to Kobe that were covered in this study. Above all else, results from the Kobe case study tend to support the view that disasters reinforce economic trends that were apparent beforehand. Thus, if a community with a declining local economy has a disaster, that trend is likely to be accentuated. In other words, disasters exacerbate existing vulnerabilities. For example, Kobe’s port had been losing business before the earthquake and by the end of the Reconstruction Plan process had regained only about 80 percent of the cargo it handled in 1995. Another example was the failure of Nagata, the city’s western and most heavily damaged ward, to staunch the population loss that had plagued it before the quake and to revive the chemical shoes industry. The Kobe experience shows also that residents have a strong attachment to the way things were and a resistance to the physical changes in their communities – changes that might well have occurred eventually even without the disaster. Some people opposed change and wanted to rebuild in the old patterns, whatever the risks. 8.3 The Geographies of Crisis and Opportunity Geographies of Crisis A focus of this study has been on how spatial relationships contribute to social and economic stress following an earthquake. In Kobe, this was evident in terms of the location of damage, the location of victims, and responses by the public and private sectors in terms of providing shelter, new housing, and new investment. The geographic implications of the crisis following

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Figure 8.6  Dimensions of reconstruction planning in Kobe.

the earthquake were especially important in terms of community recovery. The procedures for disbursing displaced victims to temporary shelters and public housing posed a threat to community bonds and had a negative impact on people’s daily lives. The high percentage of aged people contributed to this problem. The building of housing and local shops in the inner western wards of Nagata and Hyo¯go made very slow progress; in many cases, communities were broken apart as a result. Paradoxically, the designation of priority areas actually delayed rebuilding due to the policy of resetting plot lines and widening roads and providing open space. Until this was done there was little incentive to provide permanent buildings – indeed, only temporary buildings and vacant lots dotted Shin-Nagata’s cityscape for several years after 1995. Still more problematic was that more than two hundred factories that had provided jobs to local workers in Nagata ward could not be rebuilt until the replotting of “priority” districts was finished. This delayed people’s chances of obtaining employment and thus rebuilding their lives.

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I conclude therefore that as a result of the Hanshin earthquake, the inner city’s problems – such as the decline in population, industry, and business – became clearer and indeed became worse than before the earthquake. In support of this argument, Table 8.1 shows a number of socio-economic indicators for Kobe’s wards for the years immediately before the earthquake and just after the end of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan. Overall, the analysis points to how the earthquake has contributed to a widening gap between the western and eastern parts of the city. Thus, in terms of manufacturing output, Kobe’s total stood at 83.3 percent in 2006 compared with manufacturing output levels before the quake in 1993. However, the western wards that had been devastated by the quake and fires (Nagata and Suma) recorded even more severe reductions (48.5 percent and 29.2 percent of 1993 levels, respectively). Tarumi ward also suffered a sharp decline (39.3 percent of 1993 levels) as a major suburban plant closed after the earthquake. By contrast, the eastern Nada ward actually increased its manufacturing output in the same period (to 184.9 percent in 2006), as did the outer suburban wards of Nishi (to 135.8 percent) and Kita (to 275.3 percent). Retail sales had only recovered to 83.3 percent of their 1994 totals by 2006 for Kobe city as a whole, but the western wards Hyo¯go and Nagata (72.2 percent and 48.5 percent) and Chu ¯o¯ ward (34.8 percent) recorded worse than average recovery, associated with the decline in their population levels after 1995. By comparison, the east-side ward Higashi-Nada recorded retail increases (104.7 percent), as did the suburban Tarumi ward (112.5 percent), mirroring their post-1995 population increases. Table 8.1 indicates a similar pattern for changes in the number of establishments and employees. Thus Kobe city recorded 93.0 percent of its 1991 number of establishments (i.e., shops, offices, and factories) by 2006, with the western wards of Hyo¯go (78.8 percent) and Nagata (62.3 percent) having the poorest rates of recovery. Increases were recorded in the eastern ward Higashi-Nada (100.7 percent) and in the suburban wards Nishi (118.1 percent) and Kita (149.9 percent). Kobe had recorded only 84.9 percent of its 1991 employment levels by 2006, with much lower recovery rates in the western Hyo¯go (78.8 percent) and Nagata (62.3 percent) wards. Increases were recorded in the eastern ward Higashi-Nada (104.7 percent) and the suburban wards Tarumi (113.5 percent), Nishi (133.2 percent) and Kita (129.5 percent). As well, an analysis of welfare recipients by each ward and the changes recorded between 1994 and 2006 is revealing (see Table 8.1). As might be expected, the number of welfare recipients for Kobe as a whole increased 1.8 times during this period as a result of earthquake victims losing their jobs and other income supports. Western Nagata ward recorded the largest total in 2006 (7,275 recipients) but had a smaller than average increase (1.3 times); this, however, has to be set against its absolute loss in population

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70.0

78.8

6,490

(c) No. of establishments 1991/2006 (%)

(d) No. of employees 1991/2006 (%)

(e) No. of welfare recipients, 2006 2.2

4,539

92.6

77.9

85.8

29.2

Suma

2.0

2,316

104.0

100.7

104.7

89.8

Higashi-Nada

1.4

2,323

81.8

75.8

85.3

184.9

Nada

East side

1.0

5,568

88.6

90.4

74.4

34.8

Chu ¯o ¯

2.4

4,750

113.5

91.0

112.5

39.3

Tarumi

3.8

3,615

133.2

118.1

99.9

135.8

Nishi

New suburbs

Sources: (a) Manufacturing Census of Japan; (b) Census of Commerce; (c) and (d) Establishment Census of Japan; (e) Kobe City Statistics

1.3

7,275

62.3

42.9

62.8

48.5

Nagata

West side

Note: For ward boundaries, see Figure 3.3.

1.7

79.4

(b) Retail sales 1994/2004 (%)

2006/1994 ratio

72.2

Hyo ¯go

(a) Manufacturing output 1993/ 2006 (%)

Indicator



Socio-economic indicators of Kobe’s wards, 1994-2006

Table 8.1

2.1

3,850

129.5

149.9

95.3

275.3

Kita

1.8

40,282

93.0

84.9

85.8

83.3

Kobe total

Conclusion

225

since 1995. The largest increases were in the suburban Tarumi ward (2.4 times) and Nishi ward (3.8 times), owing largely to the increase in elderly residents in outer-area public housing complexes. The more well-off eastern wards of Kobe, Higashi-Nada, and Nada had the lowest levels of welfare recipients (see Table 8.1). Besides showing the persistence of pre-disaster trends, Kobe’s experience suggests that a neighbourhood’s relative wealth or poverty is a good predictor of its ability to rebound, even when government aid is directed disproportionately to the poor and elderly, as was the case following the earthquake. Thus no area has recovered more impressively than Higashi-Nada, a hard-hit but more affluent ward on Kobe’s eastern side. Meanwhile, working-class Nagata, which also had many elderly residents, has struggled despite public investment. Geographies of Opportunity A geography of opportunity flowed from the crisis and its associated dangers in a manner foretold by the ancient zen proverb. Out of crisis did arise a rare opportunity. The earthquake and fires presented an opening for the city to rezone districts that planners had long been unable to touch, and to remake the city in a Phoenix-like manner. Rarely have urban planners in Japan enjoyed the opportunity to negotiate special funding from the national government for key infrastructure-rebuilding projects. Because Kobe did have this chance, it was able to improve its comparative advantage as a modern port and medical-technology hub. It was able to exploit the window of opportunity to “build better” because of its pre-event planning and the strong leadership shown by Mayor Sasayama (leadership that was not always supported fully by the public). Kobe already had a measure of pre-event planning from which to draw. For instance, the city was preparing a comprehensive plan at the time the earthquake struck. It then needed only reexamine and revise its goals and projects before releasing its Reconstruction Plan in June 1995. The mayor continued to value many of the goals and projects that had been considered before the quake, including the new airport, the development of subcentres in Shin-Nagata and Rokko¯-michi, and the building of suburban new towns north of the Rokko¯ Mountains. It had also already planned to invite the World Health Organization to come to Kobe as a trigger for a new medical-industrial complex. In particular, Kobe was lucky in the sense that it had reserved land in the suburbs behind Mount Rokko¯. This was very important to the reconstruction phase, for it provided space for housing for many displaced victims. Kobe can be seen as a special case in Japan because it controlled so much land that was fairly accessible to the city centre – most other cities do not have this advantage. The challenge now is to provide a bridge between the old city core and the new outer suburbs and to foster good relations between the two.

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Some opportunities to redress existing problems were missed, however, and some opportunities were not taken (e.g., to bury the east-west highway below street level and create a large city park). Certain dimensions of preplanning were clearly absent, including identification of vulnerable groups such as seniors, low-income tenants, and foreign workers. The approach taken when relocating disaster victims to temporary housing by age, and to more permanent accommodation in suburban areas, negatively affected the long-term recovery of these victims. Then again, as intimated in Chapter 2, social planning at the local level has never been Japan’s strong suit. The city government has long taken care of local health, education, and welfare services, but the legislation prescribing and funding these services has mostly been set and administered at the national level. The overall lack of flexibility enjoyed by municipal governments in post-quake rebuilding has been remarked on throughout this study: the Japanense system works against concerted responses to local needs. Japan is slowly shifting toward a more flexible and decentralized system of urban governance. The deliberations over Kobe’s reconstruction have been an important part of that debate. 8.4 Lessons for Japanese Cities There are clear lessons from the Kobe case study for many of Japan’s industrial cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, Kawasaki, and Yokohama. Each of these has older inner areas similar to Kobe’s Nagata ward, and each has vulnerable sectors of the economy at risk should there be an earthquake of similar magnitude. Typically, these inner districts grew and developed haphazardly (like Nagata) in the years following the Second World War. Today they have complicated land use patterns – factories, wholesalers, and traditional narrow shopping streets side by side in high-density residential areas. Districts such as Sumida ward in Tokyo and Higashi Osaka in Kansai Japan are complex residential and industrial mixed-used areas (see Itakura and Takeuchi 1980; Takeuchi 1992; Nagao 2000). Density levels of both population and factories are especially high, and the quality of building construction is often substandard, making these areas highly susceptible to damage in any disaster. In many European cities, such districts were often cleared as part of postwar redevelopment schemes; in Japan the postwar years were when these innercity industrial districts expanded. Little detailed planning and comprehensive upgrading has occurred since (Edgington 2003). The zoning of these areas is mainly “quasi-industrial,” meaning that just about any use or development is allowed; this only reinforces a random mixed-land use pattern at high densities. While the compensation for lost housing has improved, and while earthquake insurance payouts for housing repair and rebuilding, as well as household items such as furniture, has increased, it seems likely that recovery from earthquakes will continue to be slow and dependent upon public support

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in the future. Before further urban disasters occur, some form of intensive pre-planning is now essential in these older mixed-use areas. Planning for reconstruction prior to a disaster is very different from emergency preparedness and response. The notion of pre-disaster planning for post-event recovery and long-term reconstruction is a relatively new and powerful concept (Mileti 1999; ECCAE 1995). The Kobe case study indicates forcibly that the more planning that occurs before a possible disaster, assuming there is some scope for flexible adjustment after an earthquake or other catastrophe, the more likelihood there is to achieve some upgrading of poorer-quality urban districts. The more long-term recovery issues can be thought of and thought through in advance – perhaps by means of disaster scenarios – the greater will be the efficiency and quality of post-impact decision making. As suggested by Markku Niskala in the quote that opens this chapter, it is imperative that governments have good information and communication with local citizens (see International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies [IFRC] 2005). In the Japanese context, building awareness from the bottom-up (machizukuri-style planning) is as valuable as transmitting information from the top down (toshikeikaku-style planning). Yet the former style of planning has been largely neglected by the traditional Japanese urban planning system – a system that is more comfortable with large-scale urban infrastructure projects that lie on the fringes of cities or in waterfront development areas rather than with sensitive revitalization of congested inner-city districts. The Kobe case study strongly demonstrates that in the absence of community involvement, recovery can become politicized and foster conflict. Any plan must be fully discussed, agreed to, and accepted by the community before a disaster occurs. Hence there is a need for city planners to work with the local community long before any disaster occurs in order to build trust, open a dialogue, and plan jointly for the gradual improvement of highly vulnerable areas. The Kobe experience confirms that planning “after the event” may only lead to rushed decisions at odds with the values of the community. What sort of dialogue with the affected communities should take place? Ideally, this would involve not only disaster forecasting and preparedness, but also the various dimensions of post-disaster reconstruction (see Table 8.2). Included are issues such as plans for physical reconstruction and upgrading of the community; individual recovery and income support; the identification of vulnerable populations; locations for temporary and permanent housing; and support for volunteers. The achievements of Kobe’s Mano district and the city’s dialogue with that area’s residents continue to provide an important model of what can and should be done. Nakagawa and Shaw (2004) describe Mano as a successful example of a “grey zone” reconstruction, based mainly on the strength of local leadership and the high level of social interaction in this neighborhood prior to the earthquake (see also

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Conclusion

Table 8.2 Important factors for discussion with disaster-vulnerable communities in Japanese cities 1 What sources of funds for reconstruction will be available? • Public-sector funds • Private-sector funds • Funds for individual recovery 2 Should there be changes in land uses when rebuilding? 3 Should concerted efforts be made to make the city more efficient, attractive, and competitive? 4 How should disaster-produced personal and family problems be handled? • The availability and cost of housing • Employment problems • Community policy decisions 5 Who are the vulnerable in a disaster? 6 Will there be “hidden” disaster victims: those who may not have suffered direct damage, but whose lives, homes, and jobs are seriously disrupted by the reconstruction process? 7 How are volunteers and NGOs to be accommodated? 8 Where can temporary accommodation and public housing be built?

Yasui 2007). Local neighbourhoods such as Mano have a strong “community spirit” and an important ability to draw from local volunteers in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake or similar disaster. City planners in Kobe have recognized this and know they must strengthen this positive element of local communities. Reconstruction plans need to be presented in a clear way in advance of disasters so that everyone involved, from corporations to the most vulnerable residents, can understand the process.7 Among the many details that need to discussed are the possible locations of emergency and temporary housing in the event of a disaster (noting that temporary housing may have to last for several years); the ways in which higher densities and common ownership of new “cooperative” housing and mixed-use buildings might be achieved in order to allow road widening and the provision of open space; what assistance can be expected for tenants as well as for other parties who might have to leave the local area and live in public housing; what amount of financial aid will be given to assist smalland medium-sized enterprises; whether housing loans will be provided; and employment and income supports for disaster victims. Plans must be made

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229

and explained for easing of loan burdens for those whose homes have collapsed, for lightening of taxes on land and buildings, and for procedures for allocating public housing to evacuees. Other critical issues include the role of planning consultants as go-betweens for both the local residents and the city government. The importance of economic recovery must also be explained and integrated into community and citywide land use plans. In the case of densely built neighbourhoods, what type of reconstruction “vision” would the community support? Would it comprise high-rise concrete buildings or low-rise traditional wooden housing? Besides these considerations, “soft” community support is just as important, especially for the elderly, the disabled, and the poor. Consequently, planners need to make special plans for these groups, dealing with issues such as housing and health care. Comprehensive lifestyle support for seniors is required, including a system for tracking displaced populations as they move from temporary to permanent housing to maintain better contact with victims. Reconstruction projects that enhance the urban environment and that serve as memorials to post-quake reconstruction are inevitable and necessary. Reconstruction planners should take advantage of the chances offered by disaster to improve urban design, provide more open space and greenbelts, and if possible improve the provision of social services to disadvantaged communities. Indeed, this was done in Kobe. Furthermore, in mapping out a reconstruction strategy, the planners should not limit their proposals. For instance, they might also think of building underground existing elevated urban expressways and thereby provide an increase in downtown parks (an opportunity that was not attempted fully in Kobe).8 8.5 Are There Lessons for Other Cities? In 2004 there were 719 major disasters, making that year the third-worst of the decade (at the time of writing). Setting aside the ongoing AIDS catastrophe in Africa, Asia remained the continent most often affected by physical disasters. There was a major tsunami in December 2004 after an earthquake under the Indian Ocean near Aceh, Indonesia (IFRC 2005; Tibballs 2005). It is tempting to say that Kobe’s experience has a more general lesson beyond Japan for other parts of the world. Nonetheless, “no two disasters are alike” is a common saying among relief officials – put another way, disasters occur in very different contexts. Thus, Bates and Peacock (1998) argue that because disasters are highly specific to particular times and places, it is difficult to generalize the practices and mechanics of recovery, especially across widely different political cultures. Each city affected by a disaster will start from a different pre-disaster position from Kobe, experience different damage patterns from Kobe, and face different internal social and economic circumstances, as well as different external political and economic circumstances. In a sense, all disasters are indeed “local”; and as charted in this study, the

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Conclusion

Japanese public-policy culture and approach to urban development did much to shape a unique outcome for Kobe. But then again, as Schneider (1995) notes, if natural disasters and recoveries were all unique events, it would be impossible to prepare effectively or to deal systematically with them. Indeed, comparison with Kobe and the Japanese experience may be instructive. For example, the more positive features of the Japanese toshikeikaku (top-down) model – especially the prompt commitment by the national government – may have lessons for elsewhere. In Kobe’s case the national government gave sufficient funds in two special budgets so that debris removal, infrastructure replacement, and temporary housing would be made available in the first few months following the event. This was indeed necessary, for the lack of private insurance meant that private funding and market forces could not sufficiently address the demand for urban reconstruction. Another distinctive feature of Kobe’s rebuilding that may (or may not) be transferable to other jurisdictions was the arrangements negotiated between central and local governments and the role played by the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee, which was set up to screen reconstruction projects and proposals sent to it from Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture. Other features of Kobe’s reconstruction that could be considered in other cases include the use of designated consultants to work with local communities and the use of a post-reconstruction validation process to assess the lessons learned in long-term reconstruction. However, in many situations outside of Japan, the legal requirements for redevelopment will be very different, and it is important to keep this and other points in mind when reviewing the lessons from Kobe.9 Final Words The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake provided a huge wake-up call, alerting Japanese society that urban planning, which had hitherto focused on convenience, efficiency, and economic growth, had neglected safety and security. Indeed, the notion that Japan was a very safe country – until then widespread in society – was severely shaken. Seismological research has shown earthquake-prone Japan to be at particular risk from not only inland earthquakes, but also to repeat incidents of major earthquakes such as the Tokai, Tonankai, and Nankai earthquakes (Rikitake, 1976). In what ways has the reconstruction of Kobe influenced how Japan conducts its disastermanagement programs? Can any shifts in matters of urban governance be identified? To end this book, three examples may be given. First, since the Kobe earthquake the national government has spent more funds on disaster mitigation and response systems, and it has worked alongside municipal governments to improve crisis-management systems and programs in Japan (see Furukawa 2000; Harada 2004). While this will certainly improve the situation of Japan’s major cities, the first large-scale test

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Conclusion

231

of the new systems occurred in rural Japan in October 2004. After a major earthquake in the Chu ¯etsu district of Niigata prefecture, the national government’s emergency response was widely viewed as more successful than it would have been had lessons not been learned from Kobe. In particular, there was a more holistic approach to rebuilding villages struck by the Chu ¯etsu earthquake; and the process showed an awareness of the need to coordinate physical reconstruction with community empowerment and economic revitalization. Maki and Hayashi (2005) have illustrated how this approach was applied to the recovery plan for Ojiya City, one of the communities impacted by the 2004 Niigata Chu ¯etsu Earthquake in northwest rural Japan.10 Second, as intimated earlier, the events in Kobe have informed ongoing debates about government decentralization in Japan and the relative balance of power between the central bureaucracy and civil society. Following the Hanshin earthquake, NPOs were given special legislation to assist with raising funds. Some argue that Japanese civil society started to stand up to bureaucrats more after the Hanshin earthquake. General public perceptions of NGOs also began to change as the mobilization gathered momentum, first in Kobe and then more widely throughout the nation. Civil organizations started to lose their popular image as “the playground of oddball do-gooders strangely possessed with ideas of equal rights and altruism” (“NGOs” 1996). In the field of urban governance, the tension between toshikeikaku and machizukuri is ongoing, and Kobe has done much to fuel that debate. Today there are hundreds more local machizukuri groups dedicated to improving features of their city and neighbourhoods (Sorensen and Funck, 2007). Third, the reconstruction of Kobe has altered government approaches to what to do in the event of a major catastrophe in Tokyo, the nation’s capital. The devastation in Kobe immediately raised alarms about earthquake preparedness for Tokyo, as experts have long predicted that a major quake will visit the capital as it did in 1923 (the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake), when 143,000 died (Kato¯ 1995). The government’s Earthquake Research Committee reported in August 2004 that the probability of a magnitude 7 quake in the southern Kanto¯ (Tokyo-Yokohama) region over the next thirty years is around 70 percent (Nakamura 2005). If a quake on the scale of the Kobe temblor were to strike Tokyo, an estimated 850,000 structures would be destroyed and around 12,000 people would die (“Kobe to Cut” 2004). The complete relocation of government offices in Tokyo had been discussed since the 1960s. In 1990 a special government research panel proposed that Japan establish a new capital less susceptible to devastation from an earthquake or other natural disaster (Cybriwsky, 1998). In recent years, however, there has been growing opposition to such a scheme. It seems that a sea change has occurred and that the government’s intention is not to walk away from

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Conclusion

the challenges of rebuilding Tokyo should the “big one” occur. Rather, it intends to perhaps learn from Kobe and plan the reconstruction of the capital (Watanabe 2006). However, we may not know fully if Kobe has provided Tokyo, or any other Japanese city, with the opportunity to prepare itself for a crisis that will invariably come: That will not be able to be recognized until the next earthquake strikes and that crisis is assessed.

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Appendix A Chronology of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Period in Kobe Following the Hanshin Earthquake (1995-2005)

1995 January 17

edgington.indd 233

5:46 a.m.: A large-scale earthquake strikes the Hanshin-Awaji region, 7.2 on the Richter scale. TV stations immediately flash news of the quake nationwide. 5:50 a.m.: The Defense Agency informs its Director-General, Tamazawa To¯ichiro¯, that the earthquake has occurred. 6:00 a.m.: News of the quake is reported on national television. 6:30 a.m.: Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi learns of the quake from the TV news at his Tokyo residence; units of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) are called up. 7:00 a.m.: Chief Cabinet Secretary Igarashi Ko¯zo¯ and his two deputies, Sonoda Hiroyuki and Ishihara Nobuo, learn of the earthquake, again from the TV news. 7:14 a.m.: Helicopters from the Air SelfDefense Force (ASDF) take off from a base in Yao east of Osaka and begin aerial inspection of damage in Kobe and Awaji Island (concluded by 11:06 a.m.). 7:30 a.m.: The National Police Agency makes the first official report of the disaster by telephone to Murayama’s chief private secretary, Sonoda Genzo¯. On receiving the initial briefing on the quake at 7:30 a.m., Prime Minister Murayama schedules a breakfast meeting with business leaders and a routine Cabinet meeting on economic issues, followed by a meeting on the global environment and a consultation on the reduction of US bases in Okinawa. 7:58 a.m.: Forty-eight SDF members rescue scores of people at Itami Station on the Hankyu ¯ Rail line (by 9:40 a.m.) and arrive in Kobe on the pretext of “fighting a fire nearby.” 8:20 a.m.: 206 SDF personnel rescue victims from a collapsed house behind Nishinomiya Citizens’ Hospital. 8:26 a.m.: Murayama leaves for his office, the Kantei. 8:40 a.m.: Liaison officers are sent to Nishinomiya and Ashiya. 9:10 a.m.: Chief Cabinet Secretary Igarashi arrives at the Kantei, but the staff have not been assembled in any emergency session. 9:18 a.m.: Murayama meets TV and press reporters and says, “Things are pretty serious down there. I am about to send the directorgeneral of the National Land Agency (NLA) to inspect the city.” Around 10 a.m.: The Cabinet meets at the Kantei. It is not an

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234

Appendix A

emergency session, but merely a regular meeting that happens to be scheduled that day. At the meeting, Igarashi proposes that Ozawa Kiyoshi, who heads the National Land Agency, fly immediately to the disaster zone. Ozawa reportedly pulls his engagement diary out of his pocket and says, “Well actually, I have a few appointments today.” At this stage there still has been no communication whatsoever between the Kantei and the Hyo¯go Prefecture Office, Kobe City Hall, or the Hyo¯go Prefectural Police. Meanwhile, Hyo¯go Prefecture Governor Kaihara Toshitami formally requests aid from the Self-Defense Force. 10:04 a.m.: The National Government declares an emergency and sets up an emergency response centre. 10:15 a.m.: 215 SDF members stationed in Himeji, some 40 kilometres west of Kobe, leave for the stricken areas. 11:10 a.m.: Two large SDF helicopters leave Kisarazu, Chiba prefecture, for Yao, Osaka prefecture. 11:15 a.m.: The national government emergency disaster relief headquarters holds its first meeting at the National Land Agency. 12:07 p.m.: At a meeting of leading figures in the government and ruling parties, Igarashi informs Murayama that the National Police Agency is reporting an initial death toll of 203. The shocked prime minister orders his various secretaries to sort out the SDF dispatch, firefighting helicopters, and temporary accommodation for those made homeless. 1:07 p.m.: SDF personnel in Zentsu ¯ji, Kagawa prefecture, head for the disaster area. 1:10 p.m.: SDF personnel begin relief operations. The national government affirms that 1.3 million people are without water, 845,000 households are without gas, 2.6 million households are without electricity, 193,000 households are without a telephone, and major public transportation, roads, highways, and hospitals and clinics are out of use. 4:00 p.m.: Prime Minister Murayama holds an emergency press conference, a full ten hours after the quake, describing the disaster as the worst one to strike an urban area since the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake of 1923. He pledges all-out rescue efforts. The death toll rises hourly, sometimes by more than one hundred. By midnight, casualties are reported at 1,590 dead and 1,017 missing. 18

6:00 a.m.: Fires are under control. 10:30 a.m.: The Health and Welfare Ministry reports a cut-off in water supplies to all or parts of five cities and four towns in the region, affecting 2.28 million people. 10:00 p.m.: The National Police Agency reports the death toll as 2,594, with 881 missing. Cabinet ministers meet to discuss earthquake measures.

19

7:30 a.m.: New fires break out in central Kobe. 9:16 a.m.: A team of twenty-five Swiss rescuers and search dogs arrives at Kansai International Airport. Prime Minister Murayama visits Kobe, saying that the damage is beyond his imagination. 3:25 p.m.: A nine-year-old boy is rescued 57 hours after being trapped under

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Chronology of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Period in Kobe (1995-2005) 235

the debris of a condominium in Nishinomiya. 10:02 p.m.: The government sets up an emergency headquaters led by Prime Minister Murayama. 11:45 p.m.: The National Police Agency reports the death toll at 4,015, with 587 missing, making the quake the worst disaster since the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake. 20

9:30 a.m.: Hyo¯go prefecture announces that 283,000 people have been evacuated to emergency shelters. 10:07 a.m.: Shinkansen train services resume between Kyoto and Shin-Osaka. 11:30 a.m.: 950,000 households in Hyo¯go prefecture are reported to be lacking water supplies and 850,000 are without gas for heating and cooking. 6:00 p.m.: The Meteorlogical Agency revises upward the intensity of the quake for part of Kobe and northern Awaji Island to 7, the maximum on the Japanese scale. It is the first time that a quake has been graded as 7 since the seventh scale was added in 1949. 7:20 p.m.: A huge landslide in Higashi-Nada ward forces the evacuation of 600 residents.

21

3:45 p.m.: A 75-year-old woman is rescued 106 hours after being trapped in a collapsed house in Higashi-Nada ward. She is the last person to be rescued alive. 5:12 p.m.: An aftershock measures 4 on the Japanese scale in Hokudan-cho ¯, Awaji Island, and 3 in Kobe.

22

Before dawn. The Hanshin region has its first rainfall since the quake. 11:37 p.m.: The Meteorological Agency reports more than 1,000 aftershocks since the initial quake, with 105 of them strong enough to be felt.

23



The number of evacuees left homeless by the quake and who are in emergency evacuation accommodation (e.g., schools) peaks at 316,678 in Hyo¯go prefecture. • About 180 of the 440 elementary, junior, and senior high schools in the area reopen. The National Police Agency reports the death toll at 5,002. • Electricity service is restored.

24

•





25

edgington.indd 235

•

SDF opens a temporary bathing facility for evacuees, providing the victims with their first bath since the quake. • The Kansai Architects Volunteer Group is established to diagnose the extent of the damage to housing.

•

The Kanjo¯ (loop) line of the Hanshin Expressway is reopened, restoring one of the key transport arteries in the quake-hit area. • Service is resumed on the JR To ¯kaido¯ line between Ko¯shienguchi and Ashiya stations in the Hanshin region. • A fairly strong aftershock registers 4 on the Japanese scale in Kobe, Nishinomiya, and parts of Osaka. It is the 116th aftershock that can be felt since January 17 and the strongest to affect Kobe.

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Appendix A

26

27

The Hanshin Dentetsu rail line resumes operations between ¯ gi, connecting Osaka and part of Kobe by rail for Ko¯shien and O the first time since the quake. •

The disrupted sections of the Chu¯goku Expressway between Hyo¯go and Osaka prefectures are restored. • The National Coordinating Committee for Earthquake Prediction renews its warning that aftershocks of up to magnitude 6 on the Richter scale could still take place.

28

More than 15,000 rescue workers from the Hyo¯go Prefecture Police and the SDF launch a massive search for the missing among the debris of the quake-ravaged areas, finding six bodies by the evening.

30

•



•

31

•



•





February 1

32

33

edgington.indd 236

JR Sanyo¯ rail line resumes full operations. Municipal kindergartens and elementary and junior high schools in Nishinomiya reopen.

Water service is restored. As the evacuees grapple with cold weather, the Emperor and Empress visit the quake-hit areas to encourage people in emergency shelters. • Governor Kaihara of Hyo ¯go prefecture announces that the local government will provide emergency housing for all people left homeless by the quake. • The death toll reaches 5,101, with 12 still missing, but city officials say the figure could rise further as about 300 deaths have yet to be reported to the police. •

Shuttle service between Sannomiya and Ko¯soku Kobe stations is opened by Hanshin. • For the first time since the January 17 earthquake, the central Sannomiya district in Kobe can be reached by train. • Data from employment security offices in Kobe shows that smalland medium-sized firms in the Kansai region may dismiss some 4,500 employees. Another 1,200 prospective jobs openings could disappear. • •

Quake refugees start moving into temporary housing units. Hyo ¯ go prefecture reports that it suffered ¥9.5 trillion (about US$95 billion) in damages from the earthquake, an amount equivalent to 13 percent of the fiscal 1994 national budget. The death toll from the earthquake rises to 5,243 as 139 people whose bodies were cremated without police inspection are added to the list of victims.

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Chronology of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Period in Kobe (1995-2005) 237



•



•

14

•



•



•

15

2,100 households begin moving into temporary housing in Kobe city.

18

Subway service in Kobe is restored.

20

Waste incineration service is restored.

28

A supplementary budget of the national government for fiscal 1994, including emergency funds to rebuild the quake-hit region, is approved.

March 1

Throughout March, about one million volunteers (more than 65 percent between 15 and 24) arrive from around the nation.

16

•

The Hyo¯go Prefecture Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Reconstruction Headquarters is established. • Hyo ¯go prefecture announces a new urban development plan. • The Kobe Municipal Subway begins running. • Drinking-water service is resumed.

April 1

Train services between Kobe and Osaka resume. The JR Kobe rail line becomes fully functional.

18

The JR Sanyo¯ shinkansen (bullet train) service through Kobe is restored.

10

Industrial water is restored.

11

Gas service is restored.

17

edgington.indd 237

Underlining the difficulties of life for evacuees, twenty-four elderly survivors of the January 17 earthquake have died from pneumonia or other illnesses after staying in evacuee shelters in the city. Doctors say that the deaths apparently stemmed from weakened resistance to illness owing to life in cramped, unheated shelters that lacked sufficient medical services. Kobayashi Kazusuke, professor at the Chiba Institute of Technology, says that the pillars for elevated shinkansen train tracks damaged in the quake may have broken because builders ignored standard practices. The event’s name is changed from the Great Hanshin Earthquake to the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. The entire Kobe Municipal Subway line is reopened. The Hanshin Expressway Kobe Route and Daini Shinmei Road are completely restored.

•

The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Reconstruction Foundation is established.

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Appendix A



•

The JR rail lines, including the Sanyo¯ shinkansen (bullet train) line, are reopened.

19

The number of quake refugees in emergency shelters (e.g., schools) falls below 50,000.

May 15

The Prefecture Reconstruction Forum for Hyo¯go is convened.

31

Sewerage is restored.

June 10

All lines of the Hankyu ¯ Railway, Sanyo¯ Railway, Kobe Electric Railway, and Hanshin Railway are reopened.

11

Local elections that had been delayed by the quake are held in Hyo¯go prefecture and five municipalities. Voter turnout is very low.

21

•

The Fureai Community Centres are established as centres to promote friendship and interaction among quake victims. • The Kokoro no Care Centre is opened, whose purpose is to assist the emotional recovery of quake victims.

22

The Kobe (city) Railway is restored. Municipal bus operations are fully resumed.

26

The Hanshin Electric Railway (private line) resumes full operations.

July 15

•

The Chu ¯goku Expressway and the Meishin Expressway are completely restored. • The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Reconstruction Plan (Hyo ¯ go Phoenix Plan) is formulated.

31 The Port-Island line (access railway to Port Island) is opened. August 20



•

Kobe city announces the closing of emergency shelters (public schools, city halls, community centres, and parks) where 6,672 people have been living in 194 sites. • The entire Rokko ¯ Island line is reopened. All railways have now been repaired. • The Rokko ¯ Liner (access railway to Rokko¯ Island) reopens.

30 The Hyo¯go Bank fails. September The Hanshin Expressway Wangan Route is completely restored. Most roads and highways have been repaired by now (except for the Hanshin Highway Kobe line, completed by September 1996). October

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•

The first applications are accepted for Reconstruction Public (Rental) Housing. (There will be three more application opportunities by September 1997.)

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Chronology of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Period in Kobe (1995-2005) 239





•

The Management and Coordination Agency reports that Kobe’s population fell by 33,000 between January and June. • The JR Ko ¯nanyamate station opens in Higashi-Nada ward.

November 31,000 households (peak) have been accommodated in emergency temporary housing. December

•



•

The Kobe Luminarie is held for the first time. The Hanshin-Awaji Economic Revitalization Organization (HERO) is established as a core support body for the recovery of local business.

1996 January Kobe city forms a committee for a memorial to the lives lost during the earthquake on a site just south of Kobe City Hall in Higashi Park. March

•



Most emergency accommodation and food programs for survivors are discontinued (tokureisochi uchikiri). • The Hyo ¯go Imported Housing Centre opens. • The WHO Kobe Centre temporary office opens.

April

•





A post-quake citizen support services head office is established in Kobe. • Construction commences at the Kobe HAT (Happy Active Town) coastal complex.

July

•



•



•



•



•

August September

The Harbor Highway reopens.



The Hanshin Expressway Kobe Route is completely reopened. (This had been the last closed section between Fukae and Mukogawa.) • The Phoenix Citizens’ Recovery Network is established.

October

•



edgington.indd 239

The Plea for Comprehensive Disaster Recovery Assistance – Citizens Conference – is established. The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Reconstruction Promotion Centre (Phoenix Plaza) is established. A Comprehensive Program for Relocation to Permanent Housing is established, whose purpose is to provide diverse, high-quality housing appropriate to an aging society. Hyo¯go prefecture announces that it will preserve a section of the earthquake fault in Hokudan-cho¯ on Awaji Island, as well as create a museum and memorial park. The Rokko¯ Island Ferry Terminal reopens.

•

The start of iki iki (“let’s live”) classes, a continuing education program for the elderly. • Reconstruction of Naka Pier is completed.

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240

Appendix A



•

The Port of Kobe trade zone, a 6.5-million-square-foot area on Port Island, is delineated in the Shanghai-Yangtze Trade Promotion Project.

November Applications are now being accepted for the Socio-Economic Reconstruction Fund System. December The “Come Back Home to Hyo¯go” Plan is formulated. 1997 January

February



•

Enforcement of the Ordinance on the Promotion of Industrial Recovery Through the Formation of New Industrial Base Districts. • Commencement of the Kobe Enterprise Zone. • The Kobe Socio-Economic Rehabilitation Plan is announced. • Kusuda Shingo wins the Kobe Earthquake Memorial competition with a sculpture titled “Cosmic Elements.” •

The Shanghai-Yangtze Valley Trade Promotion Project commissions its first cargo ship, Fortune River. • “Plea for Comprehensive Disaster Recovery Assistance – Citizens’ Conference” is submitted to the Prime Minister with about 24 million signatures. • The Detailed Support Program for Socio-Economic Reconstruction is established.

March

•



•

April

The Port of Kobe reopens. The New Industry Research Organization (NIRO) is established.

Commencement of Payment of Socio-Economic Rehabilitation Aid as a Disaster Restoration Fund Project.

May Reconstruction Declaration of the Port of Kobe. July August

December

1998 January

edgington.indd 240

•

The Prefectural and Municipal Socio-Economic Support Committee is established. • The extended Sanyo ¯ Expressway is opened. “Life-support” funds begin providing assistance to the elderly (seikatsusaikenshien). •

The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Memorial Research Institute is established. • Applications are being accepted for the Middle-Aged and Elderly Citizens’ Self-Sufficiency Assistance Subsidy.

•

Construction at HAT Kobe is completed.

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Chronology of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Period in Kobe (1995-2005) 241





•

The Earthquake Disaster Mitigation Research Centre is opened. So is the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) at the Kobe HAT Waterfront Centre. • Monetary support for the three-year Industry Reconstruction Plan is expanded. • Kobe’s Socio-Economic Rehabilitation Plan is devised.

February The Socio-Economic Reconstruction Support Program – the “Hop, Step, and Jump” Revitalization Program – is established. March

•



•



•



•



•



•



•

April

•





May

The Kobe New Eastern City Centre (HAT Kobe) is opened in the Nishinomiyahama area and the northern part of the MinamiAshiyahama area. The Priority Three-Year Plans (infrastructure, housing, and industry) are completed. Debris removal is completed. Subsequent measures for the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Reconstruction Plan (Hyo¯go Phoenix Plan) are formulated. Kobe city announces that 81,500 new public housing units have been constructed in the city since the earthquake. Massive earthquakes strike Turkey and Taiwan. Japan donates 12,625 temporary housing units. 134,000 more private housing units begin construction in Kobe.

The Hokudan-cho¯ Earthquake Disaster Reconstruction Memorial Park is opened, including the Nojima Fault Museum. • The Akashi Kaikyo ¯ Bridge connecting Hyo¯go prefecture to Shikoku Island is opened (including a connecting expressway network). • The permanent offices of the WHO Kobe Centre and the Hyo ¯go International Plaza are opened.

•

The national government’s Socio-Economic Rehabilation Aid for Victims Law (hisaisha saiken shien ho¯) is established.

June The Ministry of Transport approves the Kobe city reclamation application for the airport-island. The Kobe airport, with a 2,450-metre runway, will be built on reclaimed land about 3 km south of Port Island at a cost of ¥50,000 million. July

•



•

September

•



•



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The Asian Disaster Reduction Centre opens. Applications are being accepted for the expanded Life Quality Restoration Subsidy (payments started in November 1999).

The Restoration Bazaar is held in Amagasaki City. The second “Come Back Home to Hyo¯go” Plan is formulated. • Commuting Service for the seriously ill and disabled to care facilities is established throughout Kobe, with 24-hour service.

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242

Appendix A

October December

A Kobe Representative Office is established in Wuhan, PRC. •

Kobe city reports that all temporary housing residents in the city have moved into permanent public and private housing. • Hyo ¯go prefecture begins planning the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster Renovation Institute. The museum will hold artifacts from the earthquake as well as a research centre and a scientific library.

1999 March

•



•



April

The Nishi-Harima Base for disaster management is completed. The term ends for the use of temporary housing units (2,700 households remain). • A senile dementia centre opens for the elderly, as well as group home projects for dementia patients.

•

The UN Centre for Regional Development, Disaster Management Planning, opens a Hyo¯go office. • The Global Assessment of Earthquake Countermeasures Conference (five-year post-quake evaluation) is held. • A local program is launched to provide assistance to developmentally challenged persons. Reconstruction is completed of Kobe International House.

May



June

Temporary housing is closed. (700 households remain and have not yet secured permanent housing).

July

•



•

2000 January

The earthquake fund committee is closed. Kobe Minatojima Tunnel (undersea tunnel) opens, linking Port Island with Shinko-Higashi Wharf.

Relocation to permanent housing is completed for families who have been living in temporary housing units.

February

The 2000 Collaborative Socio-Economic Reconstruction Program Development of Towns Where People Want to Continue Living is established.

March

The International Gardening and Landscaping Exhibition “Japan Flora 2000” opens (until September).

July



August

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•

The “See Hanshin-Awaji” Campaign is launched, forwarding information on the reconstruction of Hanshin-Awaji both within and outside Japan (through March 2002). • The “Shoe Plaza” display factory and showroom is opened in Nagata ward. The Hyo¯go Prefecture Disaster Management Centre opens.

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Chronology of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Period in Kobe (1995-2005) 243

November 2001 January

The Latter Five-Year Promotion Programs of the Great HanshinAwaji Earthquake Reconstruction Plan are established.



The 1/17 Hyo¯go Memorial Walk 2001 is held.

February The 2001 Collaborative Socio-Economic Reconstruction Program – Use Available Resources and Work Together initiative is established. July

The Kobe International Business Centre (KIBC) is opened in Stage II of Port Island. • The east-west Kaigan line (subway rail line) opens.

August

•



•

The UN’s Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Relief Office opens in Kobe. • The Tajima Emergency Management Base is completed.

2002 February Commencement of the Kobe 2010 Comprehensive Civic Welfare Plan – Working Together. March The HAT Kobe Festival is held. April

•



•



The Hyo¯go Prefectural Museum of Art opens. The Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Memorial Centre opens in HAT Kobe. • The Memorial Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution is established.

December The Final Three-Year Programs of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Reconstruction Plan are launched. 2003 July An Advanced Medical Industry Special Zone is designed in Port Island, Stage II. 2004 May Global Wings Inc., a Tokyo-based firm that operates small business jets, announces it will operate charter flights between Kobe and Shanghai once Kobe airport is completed. December

The population of Kobe recovers to around 1.5 million, the same level as in January 1995.

2005 January The 10th year Anniversary Evaluation Conference is held. Kobe hosts a UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction. Sources: Interviews; newspaper reports; official records; UNCRD Disaster Management Planning, Hyo¯go Office (2006)

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Appendix B National Government Relief and Recovery Measures, 1995

January 17 Emergency Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters, first meeting in Tokyo. 18 Dispatch of government investigation teams from Tokyo to Kobe. 19 Prime Minister Murayama flies to the quake-hit region. 20

•

Ministry of Construction officials arrive in Kobe to discuss urban reconstruction. • Hokkaido ¯ Okinawa Agencies Director General Ozato Sadatoshi is appointed earthquake minister.

22 The government sets up a rescue headquarters in Kobe. 23 In the Japanese Diet, Prime Minister Murayama says he is confident that the government took the best relief measures it could. 24



•

Declaration of Hanshin earthquake as a National Disaster under the Disaster Relief Law (Ministry of Health and Welfare), allowing special national government funds to be made available for public works and reconstruction projects, loans to small- and mediumsized companies, and special rules for subsidies of public housing for the homeless. • Condolence money commences being paid to more than 2,500 cases; disaster-relief loans are made in more than 10,000 cases.

26 The government convenes the Central Disaster Prevention Council and decides to conduct a sweeping review of its disaster management policy for the first time in 24 years. 27 A government project team meets to review legislative amendments or acts necessary to deal with the earthquake. 28 The national government decides to cover the costs for eliminating the rubble left by quake-destroyed houses.

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National Government Relief and Recovery Measures, 1995 245

29 Prime Minister Murayama asks Finance Minister Takemura Masayoshi to study the feasibility of issuing government bonds to finance the reconstruction of the quake-hit areas. 30 SDF (Self-Defense Force) troops begin removing rubble from the quake-devasted areas. February 4 The government decides to set up a Reconstruction Headquarters and the Hanshin and Awaji Reconstruction Committee. 5 The Ministry of Construction, seeing the damage to subway tunnels that had long been regarded as safe from quakes, begins a full review of antiquake building standards for some underground malls. 6 The Law on Temporary Measures for Leased Land and Houses in Disaster-Stricken Cities is applied to the 10 cities and 11 towns in Hyo¯go prefecture (including Kobe) and to 12 cities in Osaka prefecture so as to protect the rights of tenants of houses and lands affected by the earthquake. 14 Proposals are made by the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee: Reconstruction Plan regarding housing issues and the disposal of debris. 22 The National Diet passes a basic law for reconstruction of the quake-hit areas. 24 Proposals are made by the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee: Economic Recovery, Employment, Kobe Port, and Urban Reconstruction. 28

•

Proposals are made by [same as above] regarding Reconstruction Plan, Housing Reconstruction Plan, and Debris Disposal Measures. • The second supplementary budget for fiscal year 1994, exceeding ¥9 billion, to cover reconstruction work in the quake-devastated Hanshin region, is passed by the Upper and Lower Houses of the Diet.

February/ A number of national laws are applied to the stricken areas grantMarch ing special financial assistance to local governments, reduction in the burden of social insurance subscriptions, and financial assistance to small- and medium-sized enterprises and homeowners whose houses were destroyed by the earthquake. March 10 Further proposals of the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee: health and welfare proposals; urban planning and reconstruction of Kobe port.

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246

Appendix B

23 Further proposals of [same as above] re: economic recovery, employment, and health and welfare. April 11 Tickets for a lottery to finance reconstruction go on sale. 17 The Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee hears reports from the national government, the prefecture, and local governments. 24 [Same committee as above] proposes emergency measures for the reconstruction of housing, the clearing of debris, and the reconstruction of Kobe’s port. 20 A joint meeting of ministers is held regarding earthquake-related tax relief, as well as real-estate legislation and housing measures. 27 SDF (Self-Defense Forces) troops complete their relief work and withdraw from the quake-hit areas. May 17 The first supplementary budget for the fiscal year 1995 – including reconstruction costs for the Great Hanshin Earthquake, emergency disaster measures, countermeasures against the strong yen, emergency criminal measures, and other measures – is passed in the Upper and Lower Houses on May 19, totalling ¥2.7 trillion. 21 Orders are placed for 40,000 temporary housing units. 22



•

Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Headquarters holds its seventh meeting and develops the basic concept for a Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan. • The secondary supplementary budget for disaster relief and recovery is passed, amounting to ¥1.4 trillion. This will be the principal source of funding for the reconstruction of the Hanshin region.

June 9 The Special Act for Earthquake Disaster Management is passed, approving financial support for local government facilities for disaster prevention, such as shelters, emergency roads, and public facilities, up to two-thirds or one-half the cost of each project. 12 The Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Headquarters tables a proposal: Reconstruction of Urban Areas. 19 The [same as above] tables a proposal for a Comprehensive Transportation and Information Communication System. July 10 The [same as above] conducts a hearing for a Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan.

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National Government Relief and Recovery Measures, 1995 247

18 The [same as above] offers an opinion about a Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan. October 30 The government’s Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Advisory Panel holds its final meeting. Sources: Matsuoka (1995); Ogawa and Nagano (1995); Fukunaga (1995); field work

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Appendix C Major Reconstruction Actions Taken by Local Government in 1995

1995 January 20 Kobe city government begins constructing emergency temporary housing from prefabricated units in parks and on parking lots and school playgrounds. 23 A list of Damaged Areas for Priority Reconstruction is drafted by Kobe city. 25 The Kobe Port Reconstruction Promotion Council is founded to rehabilitate port facilities within two years. A section of the harbour quay in damaged Meriken Park (completed in 1987) is kept as a reminder of the earthquake. 26

•

27

•



•

Kobe city forms the Earthquake Reconstruction Headquarters. The Restoration Plan for Kobe urban area is published.

Kobe city starts accepting applications from quake refugees for temporary housing units. • Kobe city designates priority reconstruction areas.

30 The Vice-Governor of Hyo¯go, Cho¯ji Ashio, asks the national government for special legislation to finance the costs of rebuilding the quake-devastated city infrastructure, estimated at ¥8.55 trillion (about US$85 billion). February 1 Six districts in Kobe city are designated as “Building Limitation Areas” under the Building Standards Law, Clause 84 (plus two extra in nearby Nishinomiya City). 35

edgington.indd 248

•

Kobe publishes the “Earthquake Recovery Machizukuri News,” Issue no. 1, on building limitation areas. • Hyo ¯ go prefecture organizes a “Conference on Industrial Rehabilitation.”

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Major Reconstruction Actions Taken by Local Government in 1995 249





•

The Kobe city government begins accepting applications for risai sho¯mei (victim identity) certificates, which are necessary for quake victims when they seek benefits such as condolence money and rent-free or low-cost housing. • Kobe city government reports that a total of 94,109 buildings in the city suffered severe damage in the quake. There are 54,949 completely destroyed buildings; 31,783 others have been partly destroyed.

17 Kobe city establishes a “Reconstruction Planning Committtee.” 18 Kobe compiles its plans for reconstruction ordinances. 11

•



Hyo¯go prefecture sets up the “Great Hanshin Earthquake Reconstruction Headquarters.” • The “First Urban Reconstruction Strategic Committee (Phoenix Committee)” is held under the chairmanship of Ko¯jiro¯ Niino (Professor Emeritus, Kobe University).

16

•



“Kobe City Earthquake Disaster Reconstruction Emergency Ordinance” is published. • The “Kobe Earthquake Reconstruction Emergency Rehabilitation Regulation” is enforced, and reconstruction areas and important reconstruction areas are designated.

17 Kobe city extends the deadline for the designation of “Building Limitation Areas” under the Building Standard Law, Clause 84. 19 Issue no. 2 of “Earthquake Recovery Machizukuri News” is published on the Earthquake Recovery Emergency Rehabilitation Regulation. 23 Issue no. 3 of “Earthquake Recovery Machizukuri News” is published on urban planning for six designated districts. 28



Kobe Urban Reconstruction Plans are exhibited (until March 13).

March 8 Kobe compiles its fiscal 1995 budget, which features ¥910 billion for reconstruction efforts. 11 Hyo¯go prefecture sets up the Great Hanshin Earthquake Reconstruction Headquarters. 14 A Kobe Urban Planning Committee meeting is held at City Hall. The committee approves reconstruction plans amid protests from some local residents. 16 Hyo¯go Prefecture Council for Urban Planning is established and announces a new urban development plan.

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250

Appendix C

17

•

The Kobe Urban Reconstruction Plan is enacted. A Reconstruction Promotion Area is announced, and 24 important reconstruction areas are designated. • Issue no. 4 of “Earthquake Recovery Machizukuri News” is published, discussing 24 important reconstruction areas. • Kobe and Hyo ¯go prefecture announce their intent to draw up a long-term reconstruction plan. The plan for the first three years is to be compiled by the end of March; the plan for the entire ten years will be completed by the end of July. 27 Kobe’s Reconstruction Planning Committee announces Guidelines for Reconstruction. 30 The Hyo¯go Prefecture Phoenix Committee submits “A Vision for Recovery from the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster.” April 15 Machizukuri consultants’ team of 30 people is organized by Kobe city. 29 A Promotional Meeting for Joint Regeneration under Partnership is held jointly with local community development organizations in Kobe. June 30 Kobe publishes its Reconstruction Plan. July 7 The emergency three-year plan for housing reconstruction is established. 12,500 new dwellings are to be constructed, with 8,500 dwellings designated as public housing. August 20

•

Hyo¯go prefecture adopts a ¥17 trillion Reconstruction (Phoenix) Plan. • Kobe city announces the closing of emergency shelters (public schools, city halls, community centres, and parks), where 6,672 people have been living in 194 sites, amid protests from people who are still homeless.

September 30 Nishinomiya City declares all its quake shelters closed. November A priority three-year infrastructure restoration plan is approved. Sources: Ogawa and Nagano (1995); field work

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Notes

Chapter 1: Introduction Epigraph: Government of Japan, Disaster Management in Japan (Tokyo: Director General for Disaster Management, Cabinet Office, 2002), 20. 1 The Richter scale measures the magnitude of an earthquake – in effect, the energy an earthquake releases at its epicentre. The Japanese shindo scale for measuring earthquakes is more commonly used in Japan than the Richter scale. Shindo refers to the intensity of an earthquake at a given location – that is, what people actually feel at a particular place. The Japanese Meteorological Agency announced initially that the Hanshin earthquake was of a magnitude of 6 on the open-ended Japanese seismic scale; it later modified this and assigned those areas most affected in urban Kobe a magnitude of 7, which indicates “severe shock” (see Taniguchi 1995a). The origin of the earthquake (the hypocentre) was roughly 14 kilometres below the surface, near the northern tip of Awaji Island on the Nojima Fault (see Figure 1.1). The Nojima Fault forms part of a group of faults known as the “Rokko¯ Fault,” which extends from Awaji Island through Kobe city to the foot of Mount Rokko¯ (Britton 1995; City of Kobe 1996). 2 The Japan Meteorological Agency officially named the disaster within a few days “the 1995 Southern Hyo¯go Prefecture Earthquake” (Heisei-Shichinen Hyo¯go-ken-Nanbu jishin). However, the news media began to use the rather ambiguous area name “Hanshin” to refer to the disaster. This led to complaints from communities and two town mayors in northern Awaji Island, the location of the earthquake epicentre. Finally, in February 1995, the government officially named the disaster “the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster” (Hanshin-Awaji Dai-shinsai) (“Great Hanshin Earthquake” 2007). 3 The Great Hanshin Earthquake caused the largest economic loss of any natural catastrophe in history. In Japan it was the most devastating earthquake since the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake of 1923 (centred on Yokohama/Tokyo). On February 14, 1995, twenty-seven days after the quake, the Japanese National Land Agency announced the estimated total damage to be ¥9.6 trillion. On April 5, 1995, following this announcement, the Hyo¯go Prefecture Government stated that total costs of the damage within the prefecture amounted to ¥9.9 trillion. Indirect costs of the earthquake included disruption to Japan’s industrial production beyond the disaster zone. For example, large corporations such as Toyota Motor Corporation and Mazda Motor Corporation had long relied on “just-in-time” parts stocking, whereby subcontractors manufactured and shipped auto parts on demand. Some of these suppliers were in the Hanshin region and were forced to close their gates by the earthquake. The quakerelated damage to these subcontractors threatened to interrupt the production facilities of the large car-assembly companies elsewhere in Japan (“Financial” 1995). At the time of writing, ¥10 trillion (about US$100 billion) has been accepted as the damage cost figure, which makes this earthquake history’s worst economic loss through disaster. Owing to heavy property and business losses, this event served as a wake-up call for economic planners and

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252 Notes to pages 12-27



corporate managers around the world to examine more closely their exposure to catastrophes (Nagamatsu 2005). 4 Seismic and engineering studies of the Hanshin earthquake are contained in reports by the Canadian Association for Earthquake Engineering (CAEE) (1995), Holzer (1995), United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD) (1995), and Kohiyama et al. (2003). Research that focuses on aspects of building damage and immediate recovery from the disaster include studies carried out by Menoni (2001), Hashimoto (2000), and Hengjian et al. (2003). Comfort (1995), Beaumann (1998), and Tierney and Goltz (1997) have written reports on the early recovery of the city. For a study that addresses housing issues following the quake, see Hirayama (2000). For inquiries dealing with the economic impacts of the disaster, see Chang (2000, 2001, and 2003) and Horwich (2000). Chang and Nojima (2001), Hein (2001), and Evans (2002) cover aspects of rebuilding transportation systems and various local neighbourhoods in Kobe. Shaw and Goda (2004), Funck (2007), and Yasui (2007) studied the role played by volunteers and community-based non-profit organizations (NPOs). Takeda, Tamura, and Tatsuki (2003) examined the needs of particular types of earthquake survivors. Olshansky, Johnson, and Topping (2006) provide an interesting comparison of Kobe’s reconstruction with that of Northridge, California, following a 1994 earthquake. After the analysis undertaken for this monograph was completed, two special editions of Journal of Disaster Research (2, nos. 5 and 6, 2007) contained useful analysis by Japanese social scientists of the ten-year reconstruction period.

Chapter 2: Earthquakes and Urban Reconstruction Epigraph: J.E. Haas, R.W. Kates, and M.J. Bowden, eds., Reconstruction Following Disaster (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), xv. 1 For reviews of the social and economic aspects of earthquakes, see Alexander (1993), Arnold (1993), Bolin (1994), Earthquake Commission and Centre for Advanced Engineers (ECCAE) (1995), Edie (1996), Maxwell (2002), Tyler, O’Prey, and Kristiansson (2002), and Chen (2005). 2 Chang (2001) has attempted to identify the duration of various phases of reconstruction for the Kobe earthquake using the Kates and Pijawka (1977) model. She found that the emergency period lasted roughly six weeks. After that, the number of persons staying overnight at emergency shelters began to fall rapidly. Also by then, search and rescue activities had been completed and some utilities (such as water) had been restored. The restoration period ended about twenty-two weeks after the quake (much earlier than predicted by Kates and Pijawka’s model) as rail transportation links between Kobe and Osaka were restored. According to Chang the replacement reconstruction period ended in 1998, by which time most of the damaged housing units had been replaced. However, as discussed later in this study, there remained controversial issues beyond 1998 – in particular, adequate replacement housing for seniors who had been evacuated to temporary accommodation. There were also many problems related to communities affected by land readjustment and large-scale urban redevelopment projects. Later chapters assess the extent to which Kobe reached the final stage of the Kates and Pijawka model – “developmental restoration.” 3 The Japanese national statistical agency recognizes that “densely populated urban agglomerations,” such as the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area, cross conventional borders of cities and towns. Accordingly it has set up a special “Densely Inhabited District” category since the 1960 population census. These special districts are usually defined as areas combining two or more municipalities (or parts thereof) that have population densities of 4,000 persons per square kilometre (see Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 2002). 4 Before the Hanshin earthquake, Japanese earthquake reconstruction policy had developed in an incremental way. There are two relevant disaster acts: the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Law, 1961, which requires local governments to have operational plans and a minimal organizational structure for disaster coordination; and the Disaster Relief Law, 1947, which addresses the need for local governments to furnish assistance to disaster victim populations (National Land Agency 1999). The Disaster Relief Law was originally enacted for recovery after typhoons, and that is still its main focus (Relief Division, Social Welfare and War

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Notes to pages 29-38 253





Victim’s Relief Bureau 2004). After the 1995 Hanshin earthquake the national government enacted a third piece of legislation – the Special Measures for Recovery of Disaster Areas Law, 1995. One of the main aims of this law is to restrict immediate rebuilding while communities assess their options for reconstruction and revival. The new legislation also requires disaster-impacted city governments or prefecture governments to develop a reconstruction plan within two months of impact. In essence, it provides a breathing space for decision makers and policy makers to decide what to do (Palm and Carroll 1998; Harada 2004). 5 The traditional role of cities and prefectures in Japan has been to carry out the administrative fiat of policies in powerful central ministries concentrated in the nation’s capital, Tokyo. This has been achieved through a variety of complex transfer payments to local governments for infrastructure projects that accord with national government priorities (Edgington 2004). With regard to post-disaster planning, Palm and Carroll (1998) argue that Japanese approaches remain “top down” in nature, especially when compared to American practices. In effect, while both the United States and Japan have elaborate hierarchies for disaster response, emergency-response agencies in the United States are often allowed greater freedom to make decisions in the field. By comparison, many local decisions in Japan are deferred to higher levels in the hierarchy before action can be taken. Over the past generation or so, debates over decentralization have arisen in Japan (revolving around chiho¯ jidai, or “age of the local”), but these are rather novel, and measures proposed by a recent Decentralization Act, 1997, consigning higher levels of decision making to local governments, are still being worked out (Barrett 2000). 6 The simplest explanation of the nature of land readjustment projects (kukakuseiri) might be that they are mechanisms for sharing development benefits and costs between landowners and local governments. Considering the high price of land in Japan, and the complicated system of land ownership, the land readjustment system preserves the original land ownership profile intact. Also, it is designed to pay for itself (Sorensen 2000). The concept is based on private-public co-operation and negotiation and requires large human resources in terms of both numbers and qualifications. In particular, skilled negotiators and valuers must be available. For property owners, land readjustment projects enhance the value of their plots by providing new urban infrastructure and a rational road pattern. For local governments, land readjustment provides much needed urban plots as well as basic urban infrastructure at minimum cost (e.g., fully made-up roads and open space). In the past, kukakuseiri schemes were used fairly successfully in the recovery of Tokyo and Yokohama from the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake (Koshizawa 1996). So too were urban redevelopment projects (saikaihatsu) and the reallocation of property rights in multilevel construction redevelopment. However, to secure public space for road widening or open space and other communal activities, local landowners involved in both types of readjustment schemes are required typically to offer the city administration part of their own plots free of use – often up to 10 percent of their land. This dedication or contribution of lands without compensation is termed the genbu contribution (Satoh 1986).

Chapter 3: Kobe and the Hanshin Earthquake Epigraph: H. Kaji quoted in H. Kaji et al., A Call to Arms: Report on the 17 January 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake. Discussion Paper no. 95-2 (Nagoya: UN Centre for Regional Development, 1995), 1. 1 Japan’s Hanshin region comprises Osaka prefecture and the southeast portion of Hyo¯go prefecture. The Kansai region consists of Hyo¯go, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Wakayama, Shiga, and Fukui prefectures. For a review of planning history and contemporary developments in Osaka, see Edgington (2000). 2 Hanshin, while predominantly an industrial region, also has an image as high-quality residential area. However, this latter depiction only really applies to the strip of commuter suburbs lying directly between Osaka and Kobe. In the interwar period (1918-39) there emerged in this district gorgeous mansions and high-quality housing inhabited by Japanese merchants and Kobe traders, as depicted in The Makioka Sisters, a well-known novel by Tanizaki Junichiro¯ (1957). In the postwar period these mansions and their building lots were redeveloped into private condominiums.

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254 Notes to pages 44-51













3 In the 1980s the Mano community (population about 7,000 in 1994), located in the southeast part of Nagata ward, set up a local machizukuri council. This was the outgrowth of a long political struggle in the 1960s and early 1970s during which local residents resisted unrestricted factory expansion. Over time the machizukuri council gained the support of Kobe’s mayor; as a consequence of that, Mano district forged its own town planning regulations in 1982. These went far beyond the national urban planning legislation and zoning provisions by providing many restrictions to improve local amenities (see Sorensen 2002). Even though they did not bear the force of law, the Mano regulations resulted in upgraded construction standards for housing and factories; they also addressed the width of roads and the quality of the local environment. The Mano community received city funding to purchase lands vacated by factories for municipal housing and public gardens (City of Kobe 1997). 4 Damage was recorded in Osaka, about 35 km from the quake’s epicentre. Nonetheless, the national government applied the Disaster Relief Law only to Hyo¯go prefecture – specifically, to the ten cities of Kobe, Amagasaki, Akashi, Nishinomiya, Sumoto, Ashiya, Itami, Takarazuka, Miki, and Kawanishi, and to ten smaller towns on Awaji Island (Tsuna-cho¯, Awaji-cho¯, Hokudan-cho¯, Ichinomiya-cho¯, Goshiki-cho¯, Higashiura-cho¯, Midori-cho¯, Seidan-cho¯, Mihara-cho¯, and Nandan-cho¯). Even so, as part of its reconstruction plans, the Hyo¯go Prefecture Government supported reconstruction projects in areas of the prefecture beyond these stricken cities and towns (City of Kobe 1996). 5 In Kobe the major cause of death among the 6,200 fatalities was the collapse of old wooden houses. About 100,000 buildings were completely destroyed and another 100,000 or so buildings were partly destroyed (Table 1.1). Because the earthquake struck before 6 a.m., many people were still asleep and were crushed to death beneath collapsed houses. Damage from old houses collapsing after urban-centred quakes is common throughout the world. In Japan the government adopted a strict national building code in 1981; most of the buildings that collapsed in the Hanshin earthquake predated the code (Comerio 1998). 6 In the immediate recovery period, long-distance east-west transport services normally carried out by freeway and shinkansen train were temporarily replaced by air transport from Osaka’s Itami airport and Kansai International Airport. Road and railway networks were severed with the collapse of bridge girders supporting the Hanshin Expressway, the main artery connecting Osaka and Kobe, as well as those of the JR shinkansen. Harbour facilities were seriously damaged as well, raising the total amount of damage to approximately ¥10 trillion (about US$100 billion) (Hyo¯go Prefecture 1996a). The local Osaka-Kobe passenger rail transport services were temporarily replaced by buses, but because of severe road traffic congestion these were able to serve only about 50 percent of normal service levels (roughly 350,000 out of 650,000 trips per day) (Asano 1995). 7 An estimated 65 hectares of the city burned, destroying nearly 6,000 homes. Most fires were extinguished in the morning of the day following the quake. However, fires that could be attributed to the earthquake were reported in Kobe until January 26, 1995, more than ten days after the quake (Nagano 1995). 8 It was widely agreed that the national government should have mobilized the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) without waiting for a request from the affected municipal and prefecture governments. Legislation controlling Japan’s Self-Defense Forces at the time, however, stressed that permission for their mobilization in times of crisis should be initiated by a prefecture’s governor. Hours passed after the earthquake and still the order from Hyo¯go prefecture did not come. By that time the roads to Kobe were completely jammed. Small numbers of Ground Self-Defense Force troops arrived finally in Kobe at around 1 p.m. on the initial day, where they began relief and rescue operations more than six hours after the quake had struck. Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi, leader of the Socialist Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ), was not prepared to fully mobilize the SDF, for just prior to this period his party had refused to recognize the DSF’s legitimacy under Japan’s postwar constitution. Such an anti-SDF stance had long been viewed by socialists as a form of repentance for Japan’s militaristic past and as a commitment to pacifism. Other factors contributed to the inefficiency of the police force in the immediate aftermath of the quake. For instance, the Hyo¯go Prefectural Police Headquarters was under construction at the time of the quake

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and was located on the stricken Port Island. Compounding this inconvenience, the earthquake brought down the bridge linking the island to the mainland; even worse, it knocked out the telephone switchboard for more than an hour (Soeya 1995; Tierney and Goltz 1997). A number of offers of help were made by governments overseas. For example, on January 17, 1995, the United States offered to dispatch experts in seismology and to supply emergency goods through the US Army stationed in Japan. Japan accepted the seismology experts, blankets, drinking water, tents, waterproof sheets, and simple frame beds. On the same day, Switzerland offered to dispatch rescue teams comprising 50 to 60 personnel as well as 25 search dogs. After some delay, the Japanese government accepted 26 members and 12 search dogs. The Swiss team arrived on January 19, discovered nine bodies, and returned home on January 23. On January 19, France offered to dispatch a special disaster rescue team of 60 personnel along with six tons of emergency supplies. Japan accepted the French disaster rescue team, which arrived on January 21 and found two bodies. It left on January 25. The United Kingdom on January 20 offered to extend an international rescue team (including materials, blankets, tents); it also dispatched a medical team of volunteers and provided needed goods. Japan accepted 18,150 blankets, 35 rolls of vinyl sheets, 496 poly-tanks, 500 sets of plastic tableware, bandages, and gauze, and three tons of sanitary goods (Nishimura and Chiba 1995). A stark example of mistrust between local residents and the city administration concerned the situation of non-Japanese who survived the disaster. For instance, rescue in the western districts of Kobe was hampered by the city’s large Korean community, whose members were reluctant to accept official help. Many refused to allow police or firefighters into their neighbourhoods. Their wariness was understandable, as in 1923 after the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake angry mobs lynched several thousand Koreans and falsely accused them of starting fires and poisoning the water supply (Ryang 2003). Other groups in Kobe spoke little Japanese, including Vietnamese, Indonesians, Chinese, and workers from Brazil and Peru. After the quake these people often lived away from the larger relief centres, preferring to stay with one another in smaller emergency shelters. To further complicate their lives, several foreigners had expired visas and were afraid to come forward to seek assistance for fear of being arrested. In the event, foreigners were assisted by police to leave Japan and were not detained even if they had no valid visa to stay in the country. Still, many lived in local parks during 1995 and 1996 (“Many” 1995; Shibasaki 1995; Suga 1995a; “Evacuees” 1995; Velasquez 1995; and Nakamura 1996). For instance, about 53 percent of those who died in the Hanshin earthquake (as of March 6, 1995) were over sixty years old, and people who were on welfare had a death rate five times greater than people who were not. Yet another indication of this situation is that of the total households affected in some way by the catastrophe, 45 percent had a household head older than sixty; in only 10 percent was the household head younger than forty. Most deaths occurred as a result of building collapse and fire; it was no surprise, then, that 54 percent of the former category were living in wood-construction houses or apartments before the disaster (“Most Kobe-Quake” 1995; Suzuki 1995). Figures on the damage to housing indicate that roughly 60 percent of the old and rundown tenements and cheaply built low-rise apartment houses, many dating from the 1950s, were completely or partly demolished by the tremors or fires (Yano 1998). Kobe city reluctantly closed its emergency shelters in schools during August 1995 so as not to disrupt further the start of the school year – which normally takes place throughout Japan in April, but necessarily was delayed by the earthquake. The city also ended a free meal service to more than 6,600 evacuees left homeless by the quake. Though this decision was made 216 days after the quake, many argued that the administration was ignoring the reality facing evacuees. Indeed, some protested by staying on despite the city’s decision, while others stayed on because they still could not find places to live (“Kobe ‘Closes’” 1995; Hay 1995c). In the event, several commercial banks together with the government-sponsored Housing Loan Corporation offered mortgage repayment moratoriums ranging from one to three years, and also extended loan periods, in the realization that few homeowners carried insurance for earthquakes (“Owners’” 1995).

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14 Following the Hanshin earthquake, Hyo¯go prefecture also proposed a housing relief insurance system for those victims who suffered the burden of huge loans. The powerful Ministry of Finance opposed the plan (“Group” 1996). Eventually, the national Diet passed the Natural Disasters Victims Relief Law, which offered limited government compensation (up to ¥1 million, or about US$7,600) to victims of earthquakes and floods whose houses had been destroyed. This legislation was finally enacted in 1999, more than four years after the tragedy. The bill had been introduced by a national congress of consumer and trade union groups. The national government, especially the Ministry of Finance, continued to argue strongly against the proposal, stating that “as the government had already provided people with temporary houses as well as emergency food, it would cause duplication of the benefit if aid money were to be added”; and added that “even if public money is provided, it is not certain whether it will be used for rehabilitation” (Yoshizawa 1999). Still, following the quake a public outcry erupted over the lack of funding for housing reconstruction. In response the national government passed the legislation. This allowed access to supporting funds following a disaster; however, it was initially limited in its effect to purchases of furniture and other items (Shiozaki and Karasaki 1999; Yoshizawa 1999). The program was upgraded in 2003 to provide support for housing assistance; as much as ¥5 million (about US$50,000) could now be given to families for rebuilding and repairing destroyed or severely damaged homes, and also for financial assistance to victims living in rented accommodation (“Fund” 2003). 15 Commencing in the summer of 1995, temporary housing was offered free of charge to about 240,000 people who had lost their homes and were unable to find housing of their own. These units were built by the prefecture government using national government funds, in accordance with the Disaster Relief Law. This legislation was based on the principle that the government was willing to distribute material goods and services to disaster victims but not to give financial assistance. Contrast this with the similar American policy, which provides federal and state funds directly to disaster victims in the form of monetary compensation as part of reconstruction activity (see Comerio 1998; FEMA 2000). Under the Disaster Relief Law, evacuation camps were supposed to be established within seven days of a major disaster. Temporary housing for victims who had been displaced (generally in prefabricated housing) was supposed to have been established within twenty days (see Britton 1995). Temporary housing could be provided to victims for a maximum of two years. However, unlike previous disasters from typhoons or floods, it was impossible to achieve this timetable in Kobe owing to the severity and extent of the damage (Takagi 1996; Miyamoto 1996b). 16 The problem of solitary deaths of seniors in temporary housing (known as kodokushi) began to surface in June 1995, especially on Rokko¯ Island in Hyo¯go ward and in those complexes constructed in Higashi-Nada ward and in Ashiya city east of Kobe (Kadoya 2005). Some 290 people sixty-five and over living alone were found in this way by the end of September 1995, according to the Hyo¯go Prefectural Police. Over the past decade as many as 560 quake survivors, most of them elderly, have died alone in temporary housing and public housing apartments in Hyo¯go prefecture. Problems encountered by seniors moving into public housing complexes include a lack of collaboration between housing officials and welfare support officials, and the dearth of strong residents’ associations that could watch over seniors and other vulnerable groups (“Quake Survivor” 2005). To address “death in isolation” and related issues, the city later on (in early 1997) developed a special socio-economic rehabilitation plan, involving extra support for the elderly, day-care services, home help and home visits, and special nursing homes and care facilities, as well as support for volunteer activities aimed at seniors and the handicapped. A major goal was to double home help services from 1994 levels to help the elderly and handicapped become increasingly self-sufficient (see Craft 2000). 17 The problems of people living in the temporary housing, sometimes for up to five years, are recorded as “victims’ voices” in the People’s Rehabilitation Plan, reported in the UNCRD Disaster Management Planning Hyo¯go Office (2003). Interviews were conducted with people living in temporary housing regarding their everyday problems. These records highlight the many challenges they endured in terms of the lack of support services, living

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in completely new communities far from jobs, and poor lines of communication with municipal offices. The elderly reported the highest levels of distress and worry about their future. Some of the temporary housing units used after the Hanshin earthquake were moved to the disaster areas of the 1999 Turkey Marmara earthquake and the 1999 Taiwan Jiji earthquake, where they were rebuilt and reused (Maki 2006). Public housing units were constructed by agencies such as the Japan Housing and Urban Development Corporation, which had long been associated with providing high-density urban housing (Waswo 2002). Their involvement increased under the 1996 revision after it became clear that low-income elderly in temporary housing would not find accommodation through their own resources. In addition, rental costs were reduced for those with very low incomes by the Kobe city housing authority. In this case, the city’s new public housing received a larger central government subsidy of 80 percent rather than the usual 60 percent (Beaumann 1998). Further analysis of sheltering decisions, policies, and programs and their effectiveness in rehousing the displaced population is dealt with in Hirayama (2000), who holds that public housing for low-income and elderly victims of the quake functioned to socio-spatially isolate them from their original communities. Some critics have suggested that monetary assistance from the national government immediately following the quake would have been more beneficial for restoring survivors’ lives rather than the material assistance of temporary housing units per se; see Habitat International Coalition (HIC) (1996). Yet it is debatable whether monetary or material assistance in the form of temporary housing units was more beneficial for restoring survivors’ lives, as opposed to the material assistance of temporary housing units. The Japanese government believed that material assistance was fairer than monetary assistance, however inappropriate it might have been for some victims of the quake. Furthermore, had survivors received monetary assistance and then tried to find housing in post-disaster Kobe, the housing market might not have been able to absorb the sudden rise in demand. On balance, a more appropriate strategy would perhaps have been to offer earthquake victims a choice between money and temporary housing. Between 1995 and 2005, areas between Kobe and Osaka recorded population increases owing to new condominium construction. Thus Ashiya city, east of Kobe, recorded a 105.4 percent population increase, Nishinomiya city a 110.8 percent increase, and nearby Takarazuka city a 106.6 percent increase (City of Kobe 2005a).

Chapter 4: The Planning and Reconstruction Response Epigraph: C. Eadie, Kobe Eight Months After: Images of the Interim City, EERI Special Earthquake Report (Oakland: Earthquake Engineering Research Institute), 5. 1 For catastrophic events designated “ordinary disasters” under the 1961 Disaster Relief Law, national government spending on public works projects is limited to 60 to 80 percent of the cost; the rate for “severe disasters” may be increased to 70 to 90 percent. The national government may also bear two-thirds of the cost of rebuilding local public halls, gymnasiums, and educational facilities. It may also contribute three-quarters of the cost of rebuilding publicly run housing complexes, compared with the two-thirds rate applied to ordinary disasters. See Figure 4.1 (“Government Declares” 1995). 2 Under Japanese legislation, the role of the Headquarters for Disaster Management is to organize various departments in either national or local government to administer disaster management and implement reconstruction according to the local disaster plan (Hashimoto 2000). 3 The main purpose of the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction (fukko¯) Committee was to review the local governments’ reconstruction plans and to provide adjustments followed by recommendations for national government funding. These arrangements were an ad hoc approach to the Kobe disaster; a comprehensive independent organization responsible for recovery, such as a new ministry, was not implemented. The merits of this approach were several: the committee was relatively easy to establish and dissolve, and it allowed the involvement of a variety of stakeholders. It also recognized the importance of local government leadership in reconstruction – which was appropriate in light of the (slightly) more

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8

decentralized policy stance adopted for urban planning in Japan during the early 1990s (see Sorensen 2002). However, there were drawbacks as well – for example, an incremental approach could not easily take extraordinary countermeasures. It also meant implementing ideas for reconstruction within the existing laws and procedures. Indeed, one possible interpretation of this decision is that the national government did not intend to take any initiative in suggesting reconstruction projects (Nagamatsu 2005). The decision regarding the clearing of debris was taken in the realization that dealing with the enormous amount of rubble left by the quake – wood, concrete, and bricks – was beyond the financial capacity of individuals or local governments. Indeed, the demolition of buildings damaged by the disaster and the removal of wreckage became a priority as both were dangerous besides being impediments to rapid rebuilding. In the past, private homeowners and small businesses had been responsible for demolishing quake-damaged buildings. Local governments would dispose of the debris by handling it as industrial waste, and the national government would subsidize 50 percent of the disposal costs. In the aftermath of the Hanshin earthquake, the national government set a new precedent by declaring that SDF units would take part in the restoration program. Until the earthquake, the SDF had engaged only in life-saving operations, but because of the extensive damage to buildings caused by the quake, they remained in the Hanshin region until April 1995, where they helped demolish buildings and transport debris (“Government to” 1995). As noted earlier, the single most important economic infrastructure in Kobe was its port, and the earthquake had severely damaged it. For instance, 177 public quays out of 186 were out of action for two years, having either collapsed or subsided by about 3 metres. Before the quake, Kobe had been the busiest port in Japan, and it was considered vital to reviving the city’s economy (Suga 1995b). In the event, Kobe’s port was effectively shut down for two years, and for the remainder of the 1990s it never recovered the shipping trade it had lost as a result of the quake (see Chang 2000). As I will show in Chapter 7, local authorities such as Kobe city and Hyo¯go prefecture also incurred substantial reconstruction expenses, financed in the main by issuing local-construction bonds in Japan’s financial markets. Accordingly, Kobe city’s overall budget in fiscal 1995 increased by 33.3 percent. Because its local tax revenues had fallen sharply (by about 30 percent) because of the disaster, it had to cover expenses by issuing four times more bonds than the previous year and by trimming non-quake-related expenses and capital works. But as I will note later, these cuts to city infrastructure projects excluded the planning of Kobe’s proposed airport. In the first year, the relief and rebuilding portion of the city budget went largely to temporary housing, debris disposal, meals for victims in city shelters, and the rebuilding of the port’s infrastructure. As might be expected, the port was an especially high priority for the city (“Kobe Announces” 1995; Kanemitsu 1995). The emphasis on rebuilding infrastructure required the Ministry of Construction, for example, to assist with the reconstruction of water, electric power, and other utilities, as well as with post-disaster strengthening of utility tunnels for power, telephone, gas, and other service lines. Later, the ministry also funded greenbelts along Kobe’s main rivers as well as public housing (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport 2005). The Transport Ministry was largely responsible for funding port-related reconstruction, which at over ¥250 billion (US$2.5 billion) accounted for about one-quarter of total government restoration funding (Shiozaki 2005a). The national government was also pressured to upgrade its technical requirements, especially for important intercity highways and the shinkansen express rail line, which had failed structurally or collapsed completely in the quake. Accordingly, it yielded to calls for a new set of building standards. These were published in 2000 (Building Centre of Japan 2005). Many families received only around ¥250,000 (about US$2,500) in donations from the Red Cross and other sources, which were administered by local governments. By contrast, typical victims of the previous year’s quake in Hokkaido¯ received ¥4.2 million each (around US$42,000) from public and private sources. Though Kobe received far more in private donations than had previous disaster zones, the huge number of victims made the allotment per person almost negligible (Saeki 1996).

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9 One difficulty for foreign residents in the Hanshin disaster zone was that quake sufferers were asked to present a risai sho¯mei (victim identify certificate) when applying for benefits such as tax concessions, rent-free or low-cost housing, or rescheduled loan repayments. A risai sho¯mei is a document certifying that the holder suffered damages caused by a largescale natural disaster, such as an earthquake. It is issued by the municipal government in the disaster-affected area. Because the document is based on an assessment of damages, processing one takes time. Business owners also required this certificate in order to obtain special bank loans with easier terms (Fujikawa 1995). For a discussion of the problems associated with foreigners and Korean residents during the earthquake recovery period, see Takezawa (2008). 10 A similar fund – though much smaller, at ¥65 billion (about US$650,000) – had been established some years earlier, in 1991, to help victims of the volcanic eruption of Mount Unzen in southwest Japan, which had destroyed hundreds of houses (Suga 1995b).) 11 In addition to the Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Fund, hojokin (private relief) was collected by various newspapers as well as by the Japanese Red Cross and was administered by local governments in the wake of the disaster. Payments ran toward ¥300,000 to ¥400,000 per household (US$3,000 to $4,000). In previous Japanese disasters (e.g., the 1993 earthquake in Okushiri, the 1991 volcanic eruption in Kyu ¯shu), victims had received about ¥10 million (US$100,000) each. Though the national government provided around ¥3.8 trillion (US$3.8 billion) for overall earthquake relief (e.g., emergency recovery and reconstruction of infrastructure), Japanese law prevented it from donating money to individuals (Moffett 1996). 12 Remember that the Japanese government’s approach had long been to create a centralized agency to handle the rebuilding of earthquake-struck cities. For example, after the 1923 Great Kanto¯ Earthquake a special ministry had been established to oversee the rebuilding of both Tokyo and Yokohama (Seidensticker 1990). 13 For Kobe’s central Sannomiya commercial district, the city proposed controls on the construction of long, narrow buildings, which were considered by their design to be susceptible to earthquake damage. Limits were also placed on the minimum area of a building’s base, and a minimum height of 20 metres was stipulated (“Innovative” 1995). 14 The framework for nearly all publicly sponsored comprehensive urban redevelopment in Japan has three stages. First, an area is determined under Clause 84 of the Building Standards Law, 1970, in order to restrict any new building while the land is subject to comprehensive redevelopment. Second, a priority area is fixed. Third, the reconstruction is promoted, through either formal land adjustment techniques or urban reconstruction measures as prescribed under the relevant legislation. Hyo¯go prefecture conducted parallel procedures, starting with restrictions under Clause 84 for Nishinomiya city on February 1 and for Ashiya city, Takarazuka city, and Hokudan-cho¯ on February 9. All of these were made retroactive to the day of the earthquake. Outside Kobe, too, Hyo¯go prefecture designated development projects under Clause 84. These were as follows: Ashiya city: Seibu project (21.2 hectares), Chu ¯o¯ (13.4); Nishinomiya city: Morigu (10.5), the area surrounding Hankyu ¯ Nishinomiyakitaguchi station (34.6); Takarazuka city: the Nigawa station square (1.6), Mefu Shrine station square (0.9), Takarazuka station square (0.9); and Hokudan-cho¯: Toshima (20.5). Together with the five districts in Kobe city, these projects amounted to a total of 13 districts (254.8 hectares) (interview with Tanigawa Toshio, Deputy Director, Urban Renewal Division, Urban Development and Housing Bureau, Hyo¯go prefecture, Kobe, November 25, 2003). 15 For a discussion of the reconstruction process in areas outside Kobe (e.g., Ashiya city, Nishinomiya city, Amagasaki, and Awaji Island), see Kishii (1995) and Kinmokusei International Project (1999).

Chapter 5: Protest, Participation, and the Phoenix Plan Epigraph: Quotes from residents disappointed and angry at a five-hour standoff after their request to observe discussions at a City of Kobe council meeting deliberating over postearthquake reconstruction plans, March 14, 1995. In “Why Cannot the City Wait? We Need to Talk,” Kobe Shimbun, March 15, 1995, 1 (in Japanese).

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1 Public participation in Japanese urban planning is rather restricted under the City Planning Law, 1968, which states that any new zoning plan or redevelopment plan need be publicized and on display for public comment for a mere two weeks. After that, the zoning proposal is discussed by the local city council, at which time a summary of any written comments from the public must be handed in for consideration. However, the city need only accept public comments and use them as reference material; it is not required to act on them (Sorensen 2002). 2 Local government planners in Kobe worried that residents’ disorderly reconstruction activities might wreck what was perceived as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to rebuild a number of congested areas. As things worked out, reconstruction of damaged areas did not proceed as quickly during the first six months as the city and the prefecture had anticipated. This was due mainly to economic factors and the problems that residents and shopkeepers faced in securing rebuilding funds. Indeed, many commentators believed that the rather draconian designation made by the city government, together with rapid use of Clause 84 of the City Planning Law, was not really necessary. This was especially because of the new national legislation, the Special Measures for Recovery of Disaster Areas Law (hisai gaichi fukko¯ tokubetsu shochi ho¯), promulgated on February 26, 1995. The new legislation could have been used to extend control over building reconstruction for a maximum of two years for any area seen as a priority and designated by the city under Clause 84. In practice, though, few residents had the means to make rebuilding efforts in the first six months following the quake. In hindsight it would have been better to wait a few months for the immediate post-disaster chaos to recede, for the lack of information to be restored, and for the general-perception gap to close between the public and the city administration to recede (Kodama 1996). 3 Mayor Sasayama Kazutoshi, before entering politics, had spent his entire working life with the city’s urban planning administration. He had been involved in past reconstruction efforts during the postwar period. He eventually rose to be Director of Urban Planning (interview with Honjo¯ Yu¯ichi, Manager, City Planning Division, City of Kobe, May 2003). 4 One city planner reported to the author that the directors of the Land Readjustment Division of the Ministry of Construction (in Tokyo) visited Kobe City Hall, which was in complete disarray, on January 20,, 1995, soon after the earthquake. Negotiations ensued between the two levels of government for redevelopment funds. The ministry’s basic stance, reflecting a general trend toward local autonomy in Japanese city planning, was to support the restoration efforts according to the city’s requests. It is said that two specific issues were discussed: whether to designate land readjustment areas, and whether to accelerate the reconstruction process through advanced land acquisition. The Construction Ministry officials reminded the city that any schedule for making decisions leading to a priority list of urban reconstruction work would have to commence before a deadline of March 17. This reflected the ministry’s own need to coordinate with the 1996-97 budget-making processes of the national government (Honjo¯ interview). 5 The term “donation” here was a misinterpretation by Kobe landowners concerning the true nature of land readjustment. As noted earlier, this planning mechanism requires the voluntary pooling of land by owners and a set of exchanges of land at equal value; in return, the city upgrades local infrastructure and services. The principle of land readjustment requires land to be reallocated and then returned to the original landowners in a given project; yet each owner will inevitably incur some land reduction. Normally, this process is voluntary and is motivated by the potential increase in land values after the readjustment scheme. However, when the urban reconstruction schemes were first publicized by the Kobe city government in 1995, many residents assumed that part of land would be taken from them (in the form of a “donation”) as the price of mitigation against future disasters (personal communication with Professor Watanabe Shun-ichi, Tokyo, July 1996). 6 Similar protests took place in the neighbouring cities of Nishinomiya, Ashiya, and Takarazuka in Hyo¯go prefecture. In neighbouring Ashiya city a group of citizens threatened to file a lawsuit against the municipal government’s plans for road widening (“Citizens” 1995a, b).

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Notes to pages 111-23 261



















7 It should be underscored that such an approach to supporting local machizukuri groups had never before been attempted in Japan on such a wide scale; thus it represented a clear break from past “top-down” planning approaches and minimal consultation practices. In all, by the summer of 1996 (the peak period) the city had helped to set up around 115 local planning groups (machizukuri kyo¯gikai) and provided them with consultant planners and architects (see Watanabe 1997). 8 Maki (2006) notes that there were more than 350 cases where a local consultant planner made a feasibility study to address neighbourhood reconstruction and the rebuilding of condominiums and that around US$7,500 was spent by the city for each consultancy case. For preparing full design guidelines and a block layout scheme, around US$15,000 was given in funding, and up to US$30,000 was available where consultants prepared detailed plans relating to condominium reconstruction (more than 420 cases). 9 These newsletters had the objective of keeping all one hundred or so redevelopment project teams in touch with one another, even as many local residents themselves still lived in emergency accommodation, and later in temporary housing projects on the city’s reclaimed islands or in suburban areas. An examination of the newsletters shows that they dealt with a wide number of community development issues, including neighbourhood rebuilding, the use of volunteers, planning workshops, collective housing projects, and repairs to condominiums (see “Owners” 1995; Kinmokusei International Project 1999). 10 Despite these conciliatory measures, “bad will” toward the city from residents continued in the first year or so after the quake. Kobe’s vice-mayor at the time of the earthquake, Yamashita Akihiro, was head of the city’s planning council and bore the brunt of the intense hostility. Apart from protests at council meetings, this also took the form of lawsuits in 1995 to stop the city from proceeding with its urban redevelopment plans. Yamashita committed suicide on the first anniversary of the quake, possibly owning to his frustration over the task. Mayor Sasayama, however, rode out the firestorm and two years later was rewarded for the slowly emerging physical recovery with a re-election victory (“Kobe Mayor Sasayama” 1997). 11 For a discussion of the public’s limited input, suggestions made for “promotion of community development,” and “resurrection of Kobe’s charms,” and whether or not these were incorporated into the Reconstruction Plan, see “Building a New Kobe” (1996) and CGAEC (2000). Essentially, while many proposals for more community-related programs were received, few were incorporated into the Phoenix Plan. 12 HAT Kobe, or the New Eastern City on the waterfront, was formerly occupied by factories of the Kawasaki Steel and Kobe Steel companies. These firms vacated this land before the earthquake in the early 1990s, and the city’s original plan was to use the vacant area to attract new industries. After the disaster the priority quickly changed to restructuring the site in order to provide public housing as well as a range of public and private facilities (Honjo¯ interview). 13 Indeed, a major comprehensive plan for Kobe was prepared by the city’s administration at the end of 1994 and had been brought to the Council’s planning committee for review just prior to the quake in early 1995 (Honjo¯ interview). 14 The importance of public works in Kobe’s reconstruction plan can be gauged from a breakdown of the Phoenix reconstruction plan’s budget for Hyo¯go prefecture: ¥8 trillion for public works, including restoration of the port; ¥2.3 trillion for housing; ¥1.5 trillion for industrial restoration; and ¥500 billion for miscellaneous projects (Ikeda 2005). Another estimate, based on analysis of Kobe city’s post-disaster finances, indicates that during the ten-year reconstruction period only around 8 percent of total reconstruction funds was spent to support people’s welfare, while 35 percent was spent on infrastructure restoration (including repairs to Kobe’s port), and 57 percent for redevelopment projects such as land readjustment projects and urban redevelopment, as well as HAT Kobe, public housing, and new roads and parks (Shiozaki 2005a). 15 Kasumigaseki is Japan’s national government district in central Tokyo, equivalent to Whitehall in London or the “Inner Belt” in Washington.

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262 Notes to pages 124-40





16 The general theory of the “second best” in public policy holds that attempts to move toward an optimum solution under conditions of extreme uncertainty may lead to an inferior rather than a superior outcome (see Lipsey and Lancaster 1956). 17 Watanabe (2001) argues that while the cost of demolishing damaged houses and clearing the debris was subsidized by the national government, there was little subsidy or assistance for housing repairs. Consequently, much housing that was in a livable state was demolished unnecessarily.

Chapter 6: Neighbourhood Case Studies Epigraphs: Morisaki Teruyuki, in A. Nakamura, “Resistance Seen Yielding: District Coping with Kobe Rezoning,” Japan Times, December 21, 1995, 3; Official in Kobe’s Urban Planning Department, in T. Shinmura, “Kobe Phoenix Rising, But Ashes Remain,” Nikkei Weekly, July 10, 1995, 16. 1 Under the City Planning Act, 1968, the usual procedure for informing citizens about planning changes has four distinct stages. First, an official plan is prepared in-house by the city administration, showing the intended road widenings and provisions for open space. In the case of Kobe, this plan was prepared in January 1995. It was made open to the public in February 1995; no member of the public was involved until then. Second, the residents have just two weeks to examine the plans and to hear presentations explaining them from city officials. Then, by the end of two weeks the citizens must make their comments. In the final stage the plan is reviewed by the city’s Planning Review Board; after that it is passed to the city’s mayor for final approval without even a vote by council. In Kobe the administration felt it had no option but to follow this strict legislative procedure if it wanted any reconstruction plans “up and running quickly” (interview with Honjo¯ Yu¯ichi, Manager, City Planning Division, City of Kobe, May 2003). The Ministry of Construction approved these land use plans and arranged to provide the city with up to 50 percent of the budget required for land readjustment and redevelopment as provided for under the relevant legislation (e.g., providing new major roads more than 6 metres wide and land for major open spaces and parks). 2 The comments in the following sections dealing with the two districts of Shin-Nagata were provided to me by urban designer Takada Susumu, Associate Professor, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, and Director, Community Planning Institute (ComPlan), Osaka, during interviews conducted in July 1997 and November 2003. Professor Takada was consultant to one of the Shin-Nagata North blocks during 1995-97. Information was also provided by city planners from the Nagata ward office during June 1996. 3 The Meiji and Taisho¯ eras of Japan refer to the period of the Meiji emperor (1867-1912) and the period of the Taisho¯ emperor (1912-26) respectively. 4 After the Second World War, surviving families who had lost their housing in the bombings were allowed to inhabit any existing housing as squatters. Over time the families’ rights to inhabit such housing without payment of rent became protected by the national government, and landlords seeking to redevelop their land had to buy out sitting squatters. Kobe’s central wards were reputed to have housed a significant proportion of squatters by the time of the earthquake (Takada interview, 1997). 5 In Kobe city there was a concentration of buraku in Nagata ward, one of the poorest in the city. They were employed there in leather-dyeing industries and in the synthetic shoe manufacturing sector (Velasquez 1995). For a discussion of burakumin and the discrimination they faced in Japanese society, see Neary (1997). 6 In 1995 the Asian population in Nagata proposed an “Asia Town” concept, based on the participation of Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese businesses and residences along with other non-Japanese in the local synthetic-shoe industry, but building also on the diverse cultures found in North Shin-Nagata (Sakane 1995; Tada 1995; Takezawa 2008). In the event, this imaginative project was scaled down and incorporated into the Nagata Shoes design building, covered in Chapter 7 of this study. 7 The essential characteristic of land readjustment is a system of exchange and sharing of land based on the concept of the genbu contribution (i.e., the dedication of lands without compensation). Advantages include these: urban infrastructure is improved without direct

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8



9



10



11

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public investment; landowners and land leaseholders are returned to the replotted land; and the land conversion is carried out more easily by replotting than it would have been through individual negotiation (Minerbi et al. 1996). In each land readjustment project the taking of private land for road widening and public open space is most problematic. Most reconstruction of infrastructure in the designated priority areas was done with national government subsidies, but a small amount of land was still required to help pay for the project. Land readjustment requires a set of highly complex administrative procedures, such as land price valuation, redesign and reallocation of lots after readjustment, the removal of all buildings, and the purchase of land from those wanting to move out of the area (Sorensen 2002). In detailed negotiations surrounding land readjustment, the city often had to organize “community housing” for those landowners who lost their property as part of the replotting exercise. This type of community housing could be financed by the city using national government subsidies, then administered once built as if it were public housing. But in the case of tenants displaced by the quake and land readjustment, public housing was the only solution that could be provided, often in the suburbs one hour away from Nagata ward, in areas that had far fewer shopping and other facilities. High-rise living in multi-unit structures was especially hard for seniors to accept. Often they had to move into buildings with around twenty units above ground level. Urban design consultant Takada Susumu reported that there were about twenty cases with these features that had to be resolved in North ShinNagata. There were many problematic adjustments in each case that took a long time to resolve. During the peak planning period (1995-97), planning consultant Takada Susumu reported that he was often involved in three or more weekend meetings. In more complex cases, landowners might agree to tenants occupying the new multirise condominium, but perhaps the land lessee or registered tenant disagreed. Then a potential impasse could only be avoided by the landowner buying out the individual leaseholders’ rights. By “paying out” tenants who would not voluntarily agree to the new construction, a land readjustment project at the level of an individual block could proceed. But in other cases, the city administration had to purchase the land and property rights from those owners (or registered tenants) who would not agree to participate in the land readjustment scheme. For some absentee landlords, the continuing falling price of land became an issue. Yet with the prospect of land prices declining even more over the 1990s, property owners in Shin-Nagata become more willing to sell their land to the city as the project proceeded (interview with Takada 2003). Even in urban reconstruction projects it was expected that the city would negotiate with landowners and registered tenants over the acquisition of their interests in land. In practice, the city could only use compulsory purchase provisions to take local residents’ land if, say, 90 percent of local landowners in any project agreed to sell and if there were just a few holdouts (Hein 2001). Hein (2001) argues that the large-scale nature of Kobe city’s intervention in this project inhibited the level of resident participation in the final design. However, the city showed some flexibility in response to the citizens’ objections to the original height of one of the high-rise towers (originally proposed at twenty-nine storeys). This led to a compromise lowering of the building to thirteen storeys, and for another block to be built with only five storeys (interview with Yajima Toshihisa, Assistant Manager, Urban Redevelopment Division, Urban Planning Bureau, City of Kobe, Kobe, March 2005). Note that contracts between the city and NPOs to provide services to seniors in new housing units were only permissible after special national legislation was passed in 1998 (Law to Promote Specified Nonprofit Activities, often called the NPO law) (Yamaoka 2005). However, the first use of “collective space” in public housing was attempted in Kobe, as the first wave of housing projects got under way in Shin-Nagata during 2000. Other innovative aspects, geared to avoid the problems that arose in the temporary housing projects, included the facilitation of group applications; thus, between two and ten residents from temporary housing could jointly apply to live in adjoining apartments. The intention here was to allow quake victims to take advantage of the sense of community fostered in the three years or so of living in temporary housing. Also offered were units where quake victims could

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12



13



14



15



16



17



18

live with their pets. These were equipped with deodorizing mechanisms and other devices (“Variety” 1997a; Arita 2003). Information for this section on Moriminami was gained during interviews held with two city planners and the local architect Ito¯ Akio (interview with Ito¯ Akio, a partner in Ito¯ Architectural Design and local activist, Moriminami, June 1996; interview with Muranushi Kiyotatsu, Subsection Chief of Moriminami District, Section of East Kobe, Restoration and Land Readjustment, Office of City Planning, City of Kobe, Kobe, June 1997; interview with Yajima Toshihisa, Assistant Manager, Urban Redevelopment Division, Urban Planning Bureau, City of Kobe, Kobe, March 2005; see also Ito¯ (1996). Each major neighborhood in Japanese cities is divided into cho¯me, which usually consist of a dozen or more blocks (“House Addresses in Japan” 2005). Other details of the citizens’ plan included the creation of a number of smaller parks instead of just one open hiroba surrounded by fences. Also, the plan proposed the construction of local sheds to store tools that would be needed at the time of future disasters; the removal of access for through traffic; the implementation of controls on car speeds; the linking of local parks by wooden roads; the change of walls into hedges to make room between the streets and individual buildings; and the provision of spaces for traditional events, such as bon odori (traditional mid-summer dances) and shrine festivals, in order to foster associations among neighbours (see the “Basic Plan of Moriminami,” discussed in Kaga 1996). Later, in 2002, residents of the Moriminami 1-cho¯me district negotiated their own set of local design guidelines and land use regulations with the city, similar to what had existed in the Mano district of Kobe since the 1980s (see City of Kobe 2002). The problem of land-title complexity underscores the problems of owners’ rights in built-up areas – problems that make it extremely difficult in Japan to achieve substantial changes in existing built-up areas. A new law was enacted in May 1997 aimed at accelerating the removal of old wooden houses and other buildings likely to contribute to the spread of fire. Even so, there is still no effective procedure for upgrading areas with large numbers of old wooden houses and substandard streets apart from land readjustment and urban reconstruction programs (Takada interview, 2003). One example of a priority “black zone” that was rebuilt rather quickly was the Takatori district in Suma ward, which quickly achieved reconstruction. Takatori area was distinctive in that its residents had seized the initiative in improving their neighbourhood even before the earthquake (Nakamura 1995b). The Takatori east district completed its plan in November 1995, completed its initial designation of land exchange under readjustment procedures in December 1999, and conducted final replotting in February 2001 (see Table 4.4). By contrast, substantial conflict occurred in the redevelopment project at Rokko¯-michi, a major regional hub and ekimae project in eastern Kobe. Here, as in Shin-Nagata, the urban redevelopment plan proposed higher densities than before the quake in order to provide more commercial and residential space and to encourage speedy implementation. However, the height of the thirty-storey condominium towers proposed for the area was of concern to local residents. Besides reducing the proposed height of buildings, the city planners had to change the orientation of public-sector housing projects from north-south to east-west. Also, a large open space planned for the Rokko¯-michi subcentre was changed in size and shape to make it more accessible to people from outside the redevelopment project and to make it more agreeable to local residents. Takada (interview, 2003) has argued that there was even more conflict here than in Shin-Nagata, mainly because the local people and community leaders were white-collar workers (such as bankers and architects) and thus were more confident when expressing their opinions to both the local machizukuri consultants and the city administration. See also Evans (2002) and Funck (2007) on the role of local professionals and proactive machizukuri organizations in the Rokko¯-michi district of Kobe. Here there appear to be a variety of opinions. Watanabe (1997), for instance, argues that the two-stage model of kukakuseiri, together with machizukuri groups led by appointed consultants, was effective in that it was accepted by the local community, albeit after fairly long deliberations. This may be true even in the case of Moriminami 3-cho¯me, where the local community attempted to work with a machizukuri-kai. Yet there was no active recovery

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plan until 1999, four years after the earthquake. Watanabe goes on to note that despite these setbacks the conventional local-government leaders (councilors and assemblypersons) and existing neighbourhood associations (jichikai or cho¯naikai) were not truly capable of playing the necessary facilitation roles and dealing with the complex technical programs of kukakuseiri and saikaihatsu. He contends that the role of hired consultants was crucial and that without the efforts of a large number of private-sector architects and planners – who were recruited for this purpose between 1995 and 1997 – and without the countless weekend meetings that took place with the local communities, progress would have been even slower. Hein (2001) observes that in the case of the comprehensive redevelopment (saikaihatsu) projects at Nagata (and also at Rokko¯-michi), the built environment was completely transformed into multirises, which severely disrupted (even destroyed) social networks. Moreover, true citizen participation proved difficult, as many people came into this project from other areas. But by comparison, land readjustment (kukakuseiri) proved less disruptive, as former inhabitants could stay in their neighbourhood. To some extent this helped preserve existing communities, even though a large number of tenants had to leave the inner city. Evans (2002, 462) is more pessimistic regarding the use of machizukuri in Kobe, holding that the groups largely failed the local citizens and that they had been established by the city to “appropriate residents’ associations/citizen groups to further their own goals and agendas.” I believe this to be true. Apart from Moriminami, the groups acted largely to manage conflict and absorb the opposition of residents to the city’s administration. In fact, they assisted the more traditional “top-down” (toshikeikaku) style of planning and enabled the reconstruction projects to proceed as quickly and smoothly as possible. Yet the machizukuri councils can also be viewed as forums where residents had at least some say, especially with regard to the detailed positioning of common buildings, the internal arrangements of common apartments, and the landscaping of parks and other open spaces. Joint or collaborative rebuilding was an effective way to overcome the problems of reconstructing buildings in the inner city on very narrow and small sites, or where access to public streets was difficult. Machizukuri arrangements allowed people to reconstruct by pooling and adjusting their individual properties or property rights. 19 Many areas in the “white zones” also struggled to implement reconstruction plans owing to continuing conflicts that impeded actual rebuilding. For example, there were conflicts over property rights, too-small housing lots, and lack of adequate road access. These might be complicated by inheritance conditions (e.g., if the householder had died in the quake), as well as by financial problems and/or dissatisfaction with the alternative locations that landlords were offering tenants. Protections granted to tenants by national property legislation (the Ground Lease Law, 1921; the Building Lease Law, 1921) increased the transaction costs involved in rebuilding Kobe. Because of the large number of stakeholders in residential areas, the law gave every party that had some interest in a piece of land (e.g., tenants, subtenants, and landlords) certain rights that could be bargained with. Thus, to start rebuilding, a developer had to obtain permission from each of these stakeholders. Yet many of them wanted to hold out for more favourable terms. Under Japanese law, even reconstruction of a partly destroyed condominium complex required the consent of at least four-fifths of the owners. And once that was achieved, the majority still faced the task of buying out any owners who had refused to go along with a rebuilding plan. Consequently, while rebuilding in the white zones was substantially completed in about two-and-a-half years, the urban area was dotted with housing sites remaining as vacant lots (“Condo” 1995; Hirao 1995c; Oakes 1998). Funck (2007) has examined voluntary machizukuri organizations operating in “white zone” areas in Suma and Higashi-Nada wards, a number of which were in operation before the quake. It seemed that some had been formed mainly to protest against post-earthquake road building and the intrusion of apartment buildings into quiet neighbourhoods. Others were concerned about local landscaping projects.

Chapter 7: Symbolic Projects and the Local Economy Epigraph: Comments by a 58-year-old woman from Suma ward, in S. Hirao, “Great Quake Still Altering the Landscape.” Japan Times, December 19, 1995, 3.

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1 The slow-growth years of the 1990s were known as Japan’s “lost decade” (see Masuzoe 2000). 2 Since 2001, Japan’s MITI has been called METI (Ministry of the Economy, Trade, and Industry). 3 These core facilities included an Institute of Biomedical Research and Innovation and a Medical Business Support Centre (City of Kobe, International Division, 2005). 4 It is interesting to compare Kobe’s high reliance on public funding with the case of San Francisco after its earthquake and fires in the early 1900s. Kates and Pijawka (1977, 6) note that “the new San Francisco was basically self-financed. About 50 per cent of the funds came from fire insurance, one per cent from relief funds from public subscription, and the remainder from private capital. The governmental contribution was at most one per cent.” 5 Restoration work on the Port of Kobe was more or less finished in 1997, but total shipping tonnage stalled at around 80 percent of pre-quake levels and never recovered. In October 1998, for instance, exports from the Port of Kobe to Asian countries declined by 24.3 percent from the previous year. One factor was the earthquake damage to Hyo¯go prefecture’s economy and regional exports. Another was that many container cargoes that had once come to Kobe had been shifted after the quake to other ports owing to the severe damage the facilities had sustained, along with the delays in restoring their operations and rebuilding Hanshin’s regional expressways. Kobe remained Japan’s biggest port, serving as the gateway for about 30 percent of container shipping and more than 20 percent of all overseas trade. Yet its relative trade declined significantly as a result of competition with Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan’s Kaohsiung, and the South Korean port of Pusan (Mitsuada 1995). For a fuller account of the impact of the earthquake on the Port of Kobe, see Hirao (1995d); “Harbor” (1995); “Japan’s” (1996); “Kobe Harboring” (1996); and Chang (2000). ¯ , and Daimaru, were greatly affected 6 Major department stores in Kobe, such as Sogo, Hankyu by the quake. Sogo had to rebuild completely its flagship Kobe store in Sannomiya, and Daimaru’s central store was forced to close temporarily, as was the Hankyu ¯ department store. The Daiei Inc. supermarket chain suffered its first ever deficit in 1995, coming close to bankruptcy, and was restructured in the years following the earthquake (see Shiratori 1995). 7 Paradoxically, while Japan’s weak economy throughout the 1990s had taken its toll on some Kobe businesses, other firms continued to thrive. Thus a 1999 survey revealed that 64.2 percent of local firms reported poorer sales than before the quake. Yet 22.7 percent said that their business results were better than before the quake, mainly because their markets were not limited to Kobe and they had adopted new business techniques quickly. In fact, the city found that there were two types of small- and medium-sized businesses that had been affected by the earthquake. First, those which produced for national or export markets did rather better. They had certainly suffered damage to their factories and transportation connections (e.g., through the port), but in terms of their ongoing markets they were not so severely affected. Second, those whose markets were confined to the Hanshin region suffered greatly from the loss of consumer and industrial demand, and some of these ceased operation altogether. The main problem was how to secure demand in the post-1995 economy. So, part of the disturbing decline in economic activity in Kobe was attributed to the damage inflicted on the city by the quake, the reduction in local demand as a result of the absolute fall in population, and the slow recovery of that population to pre-quake levels. But Kobe’s problems were also a result of the general economic slowdown in Japan in the late 1990s (“Kobe’s Recovery” 2000; “Five” 2000). 8 The chemical shoe industry has its roots in Kobe’s rubber industry. Before and during the Second World War, Kobe served as a major port of entry for crude rubber. As a result, Nagata ward was home to small factories producing rubber shoes, tires, and other rubber products for military use. For several years after the war, shoe manufacturers in the area produced cloth shoes, but they later developed a new synthetic shoe material, which led to the “chemical shoe” (kemikaru shu ¯ zu) factories. The shoe industry grew rapidly during the days of strong economic growth in the late 1960s, mainly because of a sharp increase in shoe exports to the United States. However, the 1973 oil crisis dealt a serious blow to the industry in Nagata ward. Today, the selling advantage of the chemical shoes lies in their pricing when compared to leather shoes. Also, they can be made in a wide variety of colours and

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Notes to pages 205-16 267



designs that cannot be produced so easily, if at all, when leather is used. They are more expensive than those imported from China and South Korea, but Japanese consumers consider them superior in terms of comfort and the preservation of shape (“Synthetic” 1997). 9 The production of sake in Japan had been falling throughout the 1990s owing to increasing competition from beer, whisky, and sho¯chu ¯ – a clear liquid distilled from sweet potatoes, rice, and buckwheat (Shimizu 1997). Similarly, exports of pearls and production of black roofing tiles had lost market share to various substitute products over the previous ten years (correspondence with Mizukami Jun, Economist, Hanshin Economic Research Institute [HERI], January 2005).

Chapter 8: Conclusions Epigraphs: Markku Niskala, Secretary General, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, in World Disasters Report 1996 (Bloomfield: Kumarian, 2005); Hyo¯go Prefecture Government, Office of the 10th Year Restoration Committee, Report of the 10-Year Reconstruction: Overall Verification and Recommendations: Summary Edition. http://www. reliefweb.int/rw/RWFiles2006.nsf/FilesByRWDocUNIDFileName/RMOI-6LK4HChyogo-jpn-31jan.pdf/$File/hyogo-jpn-31jan.pdf. 1 Ironically, the UN-sponsored meetings at the ten-year anniversary of the Hanshin earthquake in Kobe were overshadowed by discussion of a much more serious disaster, the Southeast Asian tsunami of December 2004 (Ueba and Ihara 2005). 2 One negative outcome of traditional approaches in Japan to urban planning is that local governments have been in charge of reconstruction planning, yet they can only respond in a relatively “ad hoc” manner by taking advantage of opportunities as they arise. This is due mainly to the inflexibility of Japanese planning arrangements, a lack of true autonomy for local governments, and the rigid subsidy system for large-scale “hardware” projects applied by national government ministries. Moreover, the national government has been “niggardly” with assistance to individuals, taking the view that “self reliance” is the best approach. Nevertheless, the government stretched this traditional principle of self-reliance in reconstruction to the fullest extent by supporting the Hanshin-Awaji Restoration Fund. Also, special consideration was given to certain landowners in the case of land readjustment and urban renewal projects to ensure their completion (e.g., the reduction to just 2.5 percent for land taken through the genbu procedure in Moriminami). Still, there were limits even to national government largesse. The initial proposal for a special enterprise zone for the city was vetoed; many of the survivors were not given adequate welfare services; and only about 4 percent of the total damaged area was designated as legitimate urban redevelopment and land readjustment districts that could be replanned using public funds. 3 The plight of many seniors living alone in public housing projects is also a legacy of the disaster. It is estimated that between 30 and 40 percent of all public housing tenants in Kobe are elderly. The calamity of seniors’ solitary deaths (kodokushi) and suicides continued to be reported by the media during the tenth anniversary. Matsuhara Ichiro¯, a professor of sociology at Kansai University, concluded in a study that there were three main problems with the high levels of seniors living in public housing; lax management and security, a lack of collaboration between housing and welfare officials, and a glaring need to launch a strong residents’ association in public housing for earthquake survivors (“Quake Survivor” 2005). 4 Indeed, more research is required to examine how the city organized disaster mitigation and prevention policies with the local community outside the redeveloped and readjusted districts (the “grey zones” and “white zones”), and also to examine the role played by NPOs and volunteers in these areas. Many survivors were saved in 1995 from collapsed houses by neighbours, communities, and NPOs committed to people’s needs. The crucial role of these groups in long-term recovery is not well understood. Examination is also required of how the reconstruction efforts in Kobe have affected people’s daily lives. Many who moved out of temporary housing in the late 1990s had not restored their livelihoods by 2005 because they did not have jobs. They also had difficulty building relations with new neighbours ( Johnston 2005).

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5 The Verification Report noted with approval that national taxation relief had been given to victims. Also, local government finances had been extended to allow greater eligibility for emergency housing and rent reductions in public housing for low-income victims. At the local level, an “elder watch” system for seniors and a system of collective housing had been started, allowing elderly residents to live together. In other domains, the report commented favourably on the proposal for an enterprise zone in Kobe; later, it singled out for special mention the designation of districts under the special zones for structural reform, including the advanced medical industry special zone. The report also drew attention to the progressive “two-step” local planning and land readjustment system, with the first stage consisting of broad-scale frameworks for road widening and major open spaces, and the second stage concerning the layout of local roads and parks. In terms of new projects, it was noted that the Kobe Luminarie “light-up” program had become firmly established as one of the tourist highlights of Kobe’s winter calendar. This event did much to lift community morale after the disaster (Hyo¯go Prefecture Government, 2005b). 6 A number of published citizens’ reports were critical of the official five- and ten-year public assessments made by the Hyo¯go prefecture and the City of Kobe. These citizens’ assessments focused on housing problems and also on the lack of funding for individual livelihoods of survivors, compared to the budgets for public works. See Assessment Report Announcement Committee (2001) and Shiozaki, Nishikawa, and Deguchi (2005). 7 French (1995) notes that the greatest difficulty in planning for reconstruction before an earthquake is that it is so hard to predict the damage. Even with sophisticated modelling of earthquake impacts, there seems to be a large random element in damage patterns; thus the exact distribution of damage will vary with the size and location of the specific earthquake. Kobe’s experience, besides showing the persistence of pre-disaster demographic trends, suggests that a neighbourhood’s relative wealth or poverty is a good predictor of its ability to rebound, even when government aid is directed disproportionately to the poor and the elderly, as was the case following the Hanshin earthquake. 8 After the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake of 1923, Yokohama city took the rubble from its streets and made Yamashita Park, where more than eighty years later citizens can stroll and watch ships set out to sea. Goto¯ Shinpei, the official who was in charge of reconstruction after the Kanto¯ quake, was said to have prepared bold plans for reconstruction in just one day. He called on the Imperial government to buy up vast tracts of rubble to rebuild the capital along European lines. In the end, a much less ambitious plan went ahead, but Goto¯’s vision is preserved in parks and tree-lined roads, which during the 1920s were an exotic foreign touch in Tokyo (Koshizawa 1995, 1996). 9 On the other hand, certain aspects of the Japanese model may not be so suitable in other countries. For instance, one negative outcome of traditional Japanese approaches applied after the Hanshin earthquake (and mentioned throughout this study) was that local governments were placed in charge of reconstruction planning yet could only respond in a relatively ad hoc manner by exploiting opportunities as they arose. The city was empowered to hammer out its own planning vision; however, the inflexibility of Japanese planning procedures severely constrained reconstruction options. These constraints included a lack of true autonomy for local governments and the rigid subsidy system for large-scale “hardware” projects applied by national government ministries. Moreover, certain solutions applied in Kobe would probably not fit North American or European conditions – for instance, the decision taken in Kobe to bulldoze existing neighbourhood parks in order to site temporary housing for earthquake victims. Also, Japan does not yet have an adequate private insurance system that covers earthquake hazards. In the event of a major earthquake in Japan, the government still has no provision in place for providing direct financial assistance to the affected populace, and getting it back on track is not expected to proceed without difficulty. 10 Many studies have shown that despite the enormity of the disaster in Kobe, earthquake preparedness in Japan remains a patchwork. According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, about 30 percent of the nation’s 44 million houses do not meet the current quake-resistant standard (Nakamura 2005).



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Index

Note: All entries refer to Kobe and environs or to Japan unless otherwise noted. “(f)” after a page reference denotes a figure (map, chart, or photograph); “(t)” denotes a table Act Concerning Support for Reconstructing Livelihoods of Disaster Victims (post-1998), 215, 217 Advanced Medical Industry Special Zone, 198 Airport Island: criticism pre- and postearthquake, 120, 201-4; funding, 182, 184; legacy of Phoenix Plan, 213; opposition pre-earthquake, 120; plans for building, 42, 43(f), 117-18, 118(t); progress in construction (by 2005), 183; strong support of Mayor Sasayama, 117, 202-3, 225 Alexander, D., 22 Ashiya City: damage in earthquake, 49; destruction in WWII, 39; house rebuilding, 73; mainly residential, 38; population change (1990-2005), 73; recovery after earthquake, 205-6 Asuta shopping centre, 155, 156(f), 158 Aum Shinrikyo¯ cult, 123 Awaji Island: deaths and damage, 7, 9(f); epicentre of Hanshin Earthquake, xi, 1, 2(f); roof-tile industry, 186, 190(f), 191, 205 Awotona, A., 26 Barrett, B.F.D., 30 Basic Policy for Recovery from the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (national government), 78 Bates, F.L., 229 “black” zones: citizens’ planning for rebuilding individual blocks, 111, 114; citizens’ protest, 107-10, 127-28; controls over private rebuilding, 92-93, 95,

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106, 260n2; eight major districts, 97(t); land readjustment, 91-92, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 112; machizukuri kyo¯gikai (local planning associations), 112, 128; public consultation after citizens’ protests, 110, 112, 261n9; public consultation initially poor, 106-10, 127-28; publicly funded reconstruction, 96, 98-99, 100(f), 102, 103; shift to high-rise housing, 107; slower reconstruction due to complex property rights, 176, 222, 264n16; “twostage” approach to local reconstruction, 128. See also Moriminami land readjustment project; Shin-Nagata Station North land readjustment project; Shin-Nagata Station South urban redevelopment project Bowden, M.J., 17, 20 Building Standards Law (1970), 64, 92-93 Campanella, T.J., 209 case studies. See Moriminami land readjustment project; Shin-Nagata Station North land readjustment project; ShinNagata Station South urban redevelopment project Chang, S.E., 73, 75, 187 chemical shoe factories/industry: city plan to revive industry, 106, 192; description, 37-38, 129, 191-92; discord over industry’s future, 193; employment, 146, 193; poor recovery after earthquake, 186, 187(t), 190(f), 191, 192-93, 205, 266n8; relocation to surburban sites, 146, 193 Chu ¯ etsu earthquake, 231

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Chu ¯ o¯ ward: maps, xii; new housing starts (1993-2005), 65-66, 68(f); population, labour, and housing characteristics (1990), 47(t); population increases after earthquake, 74(t), 75; reorganization of business area (1960s), 40; socio-economic indicators (1994-2006), 223, 224(t); stagnant economic recovery, 187; temporary housing in, 61(t). See also ward statistics citizen participation: concept more accepted in Japan, 29; importance in relocation of evacuees, 25-26; need to recognize public’s role in rebuilding, 25; often pro forma in planning, 30, 260n1; promoted by Kobe (Kobe system or formula), 44. See also machizukuri kyo¯gikai (local planning associations) City Planning Law, 1968, 128, 262n1 civil society: balance of power with government shifting, 231; opposition of residents to proposals re. Moriminami, 163-65, 175-76; protest in priority “black zone” reconstruction areas, 107-10, 12728; protests in Shin-Nagata North project, 140-41; protests to Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan lacking after July 1995, 120; public consultation after citizens’ protests, 110, 112, 261n9 Cochrane, H., 25 Collins, S., 196, 199 communication: citizen participation and two-way communication needed, 25-26; city’s efforts in priority reconstruction areas, 93, 94(f), 105-6, 107, 112; essential element in planning, 227-28 communities: adverse reactions to planning process and outcomes, 11-12; desire to return to pre-disaster city layout, 19; established communities broken up with temporary housing, 57, 62; importance of citizen participation and twoway communication in relocation of evacuees, 25-26; Kobe citizens’ attachment to their communities, 70; need to recognize public’s role in rebuilding, 25; relationship with governments a factor in post-disaster reconstruction, 21, 22(f), 24-26, 33; social homogeneity in Japan a feature in community recovery, 30. See also citizen participation community consultation. See machizukuri planning (local consultation process) community housing (kyo¯yo¯ken), 141-42, 143(f), 263n8 compensation money, 82 condolence money (mimaikin), 82, 86

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crisis. See geography of crisis Darwin, Australia, 19 Day of Catastrophe (marking Great Kanto ¯ Earthquake), 28 deaths: in earthquake, xi, 2(f), 4, 5(t), 234, 235, 236, 254n5; by gender and age, 7, 9(f); resulting from slow assistance from governments, 52 demolition of destroyed buildings: called for by Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee, 78; publicly funded, 86, 124, 258n4, 262n17 “designated cities,” 38-39 Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters (Kobe), 88 Disaster Countermeasures Law, Relief Law (1961), 77-78 disaster planning: citizens’ low expectations of governments, 29-30; decentralization of decision making to local government, 29, 88-89, 90(f), 91, 253n5; factors for discussion, 227-29; flooding and landslides the main concern, 39-41, 48; generalizing Kobe experience to other cities, 229-30; individual and community recovery a goal after experience of Kobe earthquake, 215-16; inflexibility of governments, 12; Kobe, pre-1995, 39-41, 44-45; lack of planning for earthquakes, 50-51; lessons for Japanese cities from Kobe earthquake, 226-29; mitigation and prevention the focus of disaster prevention legislation, 27; pre-disaster planning essential, 226-27; preparation and recovery now more explicit in city planning studies, 29; social homogeneity a feature in community recovery, 30; vulnerability of Japan to disasters, 26. See also disaster response; reconstruction planning; urban planning Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution, 184 Disaster Relief Law: benefits “in kind,” 56; condolence money, 86; designated local governments, 79, 82(f); free temporary housing for victims of disasters, 57, 256n5; services extended to earthquake victims under this law, 85-86 disaster response: government support for recovery, relief, and shelter for victims, not reconstruction, 26-27, 33; inadequate emergency response by governments to earthquake, 50-51, 254n8; Kobe city assistance in building new accommodation, 72; overly bureaucratic process in

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Index

responding to disaster, 51-52, 254n8; phases: disaster mitigation, 17; disaster preparedness, 17; disaster response, 17; post-disaster recovery, 17; temporary public housing, 55-57, 58(f), 59(f), 60-64, 256n5. See also public housing, permanent; public housing, temporary; reconstruction planning doken kokka (“the state as builder”), 28-29 Eadie, C., 77 Earthquake Disaster Restoration Promotion Region, 95 eastern Kobe: economic recovery, 187-88, 223, 224(t), 225; house rebuilding, 65-67, 73; land readjustment (1960s), 40; machizukuri committees (in Moriminami district), 165, 167-68, 169-71; mainly residential and wealthier than western Kobe, 38, 253n2; patterns of damage and recovery, 100, 101(f), 102; population change (1990-2005), 74(t), 75, 210; priority areas and classification, 96, 97(t), 98, 100; profile of population, labour, and housing characteristics (1990), 47(t); public housing, 70, 71(t); socioeconomic indicators (1994-2006), 223, 224(t), 225; speed of rebuilding after earthquake, 100, 101(f), 102; victims and damage to structures, 8(t), 9(f). See also Chu ¯ o¯ ward; HAT (Happy Active Town) Kobe Project; Higashi-Nada ward; Mori­minami land readjustment project; Nada ward; Rokko¯ -michi Station Eastern Water Redevelopment Project. See HAT (Happy Active Town) Kobe Project economy of Kobe after the earthquake: 80 percent of pre-disaster capacity (2000), 189; Awaji roof-tile industry, 186, 190(f), 191, 205; cut in services to elderly (1999, 2004), 201-2, 214; debt situation (2001, 2006), 14, 199-201, 218; efforts to attract new industries and firms, 194-99; estimate for repairing earthquake damage, 10, 11(t); Hanshin-Awaji Economic Revitalization Organization (HERO), 196; impact of earthquake, 7, 10, 11(t), 49, 119, 186-87, 204-7, 251n3; medical and pharmaceutical industries targeted, 195-97, 225; pearl export business, 190(f), 191; previous reliance on “old economy” industries, 194-95; recovery uneven across affected areas, 187-88; revenue shortfall (2005), 199; sake industry, 186, 187(t), 190(f), 191, 205,

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289

267n9; socio-economic indicators, by ward (1994-2006), 222-25, 224(t), 225; success rate for economic and individual recovery, 214-17; success rate for infrastructure and housing reconstruction, 212-13; unemployment rate in Japanese cities (1980-2005), 206-7. See also chemical shoe factories/industry; retail trade economy of Kobe before the earthquake: description, 35, 37, 41-43, 187(t); dual structure (large vs. small- and mediumsized firms), 186; financial situation, 42-43, 75-76, 200-1; “Kobe Inc.” (largescale projects), 41-43, 201; population, labour, and housing characteristics, by ward (1990), 47(t); reliance on “old economy” industries, 194-95 Edgington, D.W., xi elderly: cut in services (1999, 2004), 2012, 214; death toll, 7, 9(f), 237; “greying” of inner city, 46, 47(t), 52, 129, 133; housing amendments in Shin-Nagata Station South, 155, 157-58; loneliness in remote temporary/permanent housing, 62, 70, 125, 214, 222, 256n16, 267n3; in older housing in inner-city wards, 7, 30, 53; programs for elderly in reconstruction plan (2002), 86-87; public assistance in “white” zones, 56, 72, 102-3; temporary housing after earthquake, 57, 60, 63; vulnerability in disasters, 7, 30, 52, 53; welfare programs and services nonpriority in Kobe Reconstruction Plan, 119-20, 261n14 electrical power, 5(t), 7, 11(t), 54 employment: decrease in inner-city areas, 46; employment recovery by 2006, 223, 224(t); item for discussion in disaster planning, 228(t); recovery across districts, 187; shift to service-sector employment, 194; unemployment benefits, 85(t), 86; unemployment rate in Japanese cities (1980-2005), 206-7; by ward (1994-2006), 223-25, 224(t) enterprise zone system (Koizumi system) (2001), 197-98, 212 enterprise zones (1995), 117, 118(t), 180, 181-82 Environment Agency, 203 evacuees: emergency refuges after the earthquake, 53-55; importance of citizen participation in relocation, 25-26; number, 54-55, 235; by ward, 8(t). See also public housing, permanent; public housing, temporary

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290

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fast food restaurants, 155 FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency, US), 24 “Final Three-year Program of the Hyo¯go Phoenix Reconstruction Plan,” 182-83 firefighters’ efforts post-earthquake, 40, 45, 50 fires and firestorms in older neighbourhoods, 1, 3(f), 4-5, 4(f), 49-50 foreign residents: affected by earthquake, 49; documents needed when applying for benefits, 259n9; ethnic mix in Nagata ward, 46, 139-40, 262n6; lack of disaster planning for, 226; recommendation of Hyo¯ go Verification Report, 21718; temporary housing on a case-by-case basis, 86-87 Funck, C., 31 Furukawa, S., 27 Geipel, R., 19, 22-23, 25, 76 geography of crisis: breakdown in transportation, 50; damage from disaster, 23, 49, 221; description, 14; description of earthquake and fires, 49-50; dimensions of crisis and geographically uneven outcomes, 11-12, 14; emergency assistance from government inadequate, 50-52; location of damage, victims, and reconstruction, 221-25; population distribution, 7, 30, 45-46; population loss and revival, 72-75; replacement reconstruction and geography of public housing, 65-75, 76; temporary public housing, 55-57, 58(f), 59(f), 60-64, 76; transportation arteries affected by earthquake, 50; uneven distribution of victims, 52-55, 76, 222 geography of opportunity: description, 14; need to upgrade resistance to future disasters, 19; opportunities missed, 226; opportunities taken by city, 225; opportunity to upgrade, 91-92, 106-7, 124; in priority reconstruction areas, 91-92 Godschalk, D.R., 24 Goto¯, Shimpei, 27-28 government, local: division of responsibilities between national and local governments, 88-89, 90(f), 91; Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Fund, 87, 125; in­ adequate emergency response to earthquake, 51; Kobe as “designated city,” 38-39; local governments designated under Disaster Relief Law, 79, 82(f); low-interest housing loan program, 56, 256n14; major reconstruction actions,

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248-50; need to make strategic choices to reduce uncertainty, 23-24; need to provide morale-boosting symbolic milestones in recovery, 23-24; recovery efforts a factor in success of reconstruction, 21, 22(f), 23-24, 33; relationship with national government factor in recovery, 24; response to post-disaster problems factor in success of recon­ struction, 25; ward system, 38. See also reconstruction planning, local government government, national: budgets (supplementary) for 1994-95 and 1995-96 to deal with earthquake, 79, 82, 83(t), 84, 230; cross-boundary decision making and coordination difficult, 89, 91; decentralization debates post-earthquake, 231, 253n5; decentralization of decision making to local government, 29, 88-89, 90(f), 91, 253n5; division of responsibilities between national and local governments, 88-89, 90(f), 91; financial assistance to local governments, business, and homeowners, 12, 79; funding for demolition of destroyed buildings, 86, 124, 258n4, 262n17; greater attention to crisis-management systems after Kobe earthquake, 230-31; inadequate emergency response to earthquake, 50-52, 254n8; infrastructure the main priority in reconstruction, 84, 86, 102, 214, 258n7; legislation (1995) to deal with earthquake, 79, 80(t)-81(t), 95; miscalculation about the scale of the disaster, 51, 254n8; need to provide morale-boosting symbolic milestones in recovery, 23-24; recovery efforts a factor in success of reconstruction, 21, 22(f), 23-24, 33; relationship with local government factor in recovery, 24; relief and recovery measures, 244-50; role in reconstruction and funding for damaged infrastructure, 12, 214; self-reconstruction areas (no public assistance) for housing for all but seniors and low-income individuals, 56, 72, 102-3, 214; services extended to earthquake victims under Disaster Relief Law, 85-86; support for recovery, not reconstruction, post-disaster, 26-27; waning support for Kobe’s reconstruction (latter part of 1995), 123, 125. See also reconstruction planning, national government Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. See Hanshin earthquake

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Index

Great Kanto¯ Earthquake (1923), 7, 27-28, 231 greenbelts, 40, 77, 117, 168, 229 “grey” zones: citizen cooperation critical, 100; machizukuri kyo¯gikai (local planning associations), 112, 128; slower reconstruction due to property right and cooperation issues, 176, 222; some public support for reconstruction, 99-100, 102 Haas, J.E.: on problems fully exploiting reconstruction opportunities, 20; on reconstruction, 17, 219 Hankyu¯ and Hanshin railways, 124 Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Memorial Park, 117, 118(t) Hanshin-Awaji Economic Revitalization Organization (HERO), 196 Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee: division of responsibilities between national and local governments, 88, 89, 90(f); funding for symbolic projects, 121, 180, 181-82; mandate to establish action plan for assistance, 78-79, 257n3; review of reconstruction projects and proposals, 120-23, 230, 257n3 Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Fund (Hyo¯go prefecture and Kobe): guarantees to Japanese banks, 87; importance in restoring citizens’ lives, 217; loans to chemical shoes industry, 192; loans for housing and small-business construction, 125, 214; loans to incentive programs to attract new industries, 196; welfare and socio-economic programs in reconstruction plan (2002), 183 Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Head­ quarters (Earthquake Recovery Measures Headquarters): additional funding for Kobe’s symbolic projects (1997), 182; division of responsibilities between national and local governments, 89, 90(f); formed by national government, 78, 88; funding for supplementary projects (2000), 182 Hanshin earthquake: characteristics of disaster a factor in success of reconstruction, 21, 22(f), 23, 33; chronological description, 233-34; damage in Kobe and environs, xi, 1, 2(f), 3(f), 4, 5(t), 6(t), 49-50; economic impact, 7, 10, 11(t), 49, 119, 186-87, 204-7, 251n3; inadequate emergency response by governments, 50-52. See also geography of crisis Hanshin Earthquake Recovery Fund, 56

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291

Hanshin Expressway, 2(f), 50, 125 Hanshin Industrial Area, xii Hanshin region, 7, 9(f), 39, 48, 73 Harborland, 42, 43(f), 48 HAT (Happy Active Town) Kobe Project: completion by 2005, 183; description (2005), 183-84; funding by national government (1997), 182; an intensive reconstruction zone, 96; International Port Economic Zone, 198; Kobe Earthquake Memorial Museum, 121, 122(f); legacy of Phoenix Plan, 212-13; project in Phoenix Plan, 117, 118(t); public housing area, 72, 145 Hayashi, H., 20, 84, 231 hazards research, 19 Hein, C., 157 Higashi-Nada ward: damage to structures, 7, 8(t); fires caused by earthquake, 50; first rebuilding after the earthquake, 102; maps, xii; narrow streets in­ adequate for fire trucks, 50; new housing starts (1993-2005), 65-66, 68(f); population, labour, and housing characteristics (1990), 47(t); population change (19902005), 73, 74(t), 75; reorganization of business area (1960s), 40; socioeconomic indicators (1994-2006), 223, 224(t), 225; temporary housing in, 61(t) high-rises: accommodation for elderly, 155, 157-58, 175; city plans for reconstruction, 107-8, 128; community housing (kyo¯yo¯ken), 141-42, 143(f), 263n8; in HAT project, 117; overbuilding after earthquake, 218; public housing, 69(f); in Shin-Nagata North project, 145; in Shin-Nagata South project, 148, 150, 151-53, 155, 159, 175 highways. See roads and highways Hirayama, Y., 43, 53, 70, 72, 73 Hogg, S.J., 19 Honjo¯, Yo¯ ichi: on Kobe’s master plan (preearthquake), 45; on Kobe’s upgrading health and welfare services, 72; on land adjustment, 112; on priority reconstruction areas, 92, 95, 99, 106-7; on problems of individuals’ rebuilding homes, 56; problems renovating inner-city areas, 48; on Shin-Nagata area, 133 hospitals and clinics, damage from earthquake, 7 housing: building codes upgraded after earthquake, 218; destruction in earthquake, 53-54, 71(t); destruction by ward and by age of building, 7, 8(t), 10(f); elderly living in older housing, 7, 30, 53;

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292

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individuals responsible for their own housing recovery, 56, 72, 214, 215-16, 218; Kobe city’s assistance in building new accommodation, 72; lack of projects post-WWII to replace older housing in inner wards, 40, 45; low-interest housing loan program of Kobe, 56; older wooden housing vulnerable in disasters, 40, 53, 254n5; overbuilding of high-rises post-earthquake, 218; success rate of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan, 212-14; wooden houses’ destruction in earthquake, xi, 4, 5(t), 6(f), 7. See also public housing, permanent; public housing, temporary Hurricane Katrina, xiii, 23 Hutton, T., xi Hyo¯go Bank, 186 Hyo¯go Prefectural Museum of Art, 184 Hyo¯go prefecture: economic impact of earthquake, 119; evacuees ( Jan. to Aug. 1995), 54(f); financial burden of reconstruction, 199; Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Fund, 87, 125, 196; Hyo¯go Verification Report, 217-18; investments in local venture firms, 196; Kobe as centre of prefecture, 38; major reconstruction actions, 248-50; map showing epicentre of earthquake, 2(f); population recovery (by 2005), 73; Reconstruction Headquarters, 88; responsibility for managing day-to-day recovery efforts, 12; survey of evacuees in temporary public housing (1996), 63-64; urbanrenewal programs (summer 1995), 12. See also economy of Kobe after the earthquake; government, local; Phoenix Plan; reconstruction planning, local government Hyo¯go Prefecture Department Store Association, 191 Hyo¯go Verification Report, 217-18 Hyo¯go ward: elderly living in ward, 47(t), 52; failure of land readjustment (1960s) due to lack of cooperation, 40; maps, xii; narrow streets, 40, 45, 46(f); older wooden buildings vulnerable to disaster, 40, 45, 53, 254n5; opportunity after earthquake to redevelop area, 106; permanent public housing in, 68, 69(f); population, labour, and housing characteristics (1990), 47(t), 52; population decline (after earthquake), 74(t), 75; population decline (before earthquake), 46, 47(t); socio-economic indicators (1994-2006), 223, 224(t); temporary

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housing in, 61(t). See also ward statistics infrastructure: government support for recovery post-disaster, 27, 213-14; government’s focus on “state as builder,” 28-29; Phoenix Plan’s emphasis on infrastructure and public works, 114-15; priority of government in reconstruction planning, 84, 86, 102, 214, 258n7; success rate of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan, 212-14 injuries in earthquake, 4, 5(t) inner-city areas: destruction by ward and by age of building, 7, 8(t), 10(f); employment opportunities reduced, 46, 146, 193; fire trucks’ inability to manoeuvre in narrow streets, 40, 45, 50; Harborland development, 42, 43(f), 48; houses’ destruction in earthquake, xi, 4, 5(t), 6(f), 7; impact of earthquake and fires, 49-50; lack of projects post-WWII to replace older housing, 40, 45; narrow streets, 40, 45, 46(f), 50; older wooden housing vulnerable in disasters, 40, 45, 53, 254n5; population change (1990-2005), 73, 74(t), 75, 210, 223; problems difficult to address, 48; temporary housing in, 60-62. See Chu ¯ o¯ ward; Hyo¯go ward; Nagata ward; ward statistics inner-city areas, reconstruction: controls over private rebuilding in six areas, 9293, 95; land readjustment procedures, 91-92; opportunity for redevelopment after earthquake, 91-92 inner-city population: elderly living in older housing, 7, 30, 53; income compared with suburban areas, 53; percentage of elderly, 30, 47(t), 52, 129, 133; permanent public housing in suburban areas, 67-70; temporary housing in suburban areas, 60-62 Institute of Biomedical Research and Innovation, 196 insurance, 10, 27, 56, 214-15, 219 Intensive Restoration Zones. See priority reconstruction areas International Port Economic Zone, 198 Ito¯, Akio, 165 Ito¯, K., 73 Japan: economic problems (1989 and 1990s), 180, 206-7; economic upturn (2004, 2005), 191; unemployment (1980-2005), 206-7; vulnerability to disasters, 26. See also government, national

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Japan Chemical Shoes Industry Association, 191, 192, 193 JICA Hyo¯go International Centre, 182 Kaihara, Toshitami, 39, 114, 196 Kaji, Hideki, 35, 48 Kansai region, xii, 37, 253n1 Kanto¯ Earthquake (1923), 7, 27-28, 231 Kasumigaseki, 121, 123 Kates, R.W.: factors influencing success of post-disaster reconstruction, 21; on need for local government to make strategic choices, 24; on problems fully exploiting reconstruction opportunities, 20; on reconstruction, 17; reconstruction periods post-disaster, 18-19, 49, 55, 65, 219-21 Katoh, Y., 73 Kimura, R., 216-17 Kita ward: maps, xii; permanent public housing in, 68, 69(f); population, labour, and housing characteristics (1990), 47(t); population change (19902005), 74(t), 75; socio-economic indicators (1994-2006), 223, 224(t); temporary housing in, 61(t). See also ward statistics Kobe: citizen participation emphasized (Kobe system), 44; city assistance in building new accommodation, 72; city planning studies, 29; cosmopolitan air and natural setting, 35, 36(f), 36; “designated city” and largest city in Hyo¯go prefecture, 38-39; disaster planning pre-1995, 39-41, 44-45; economy (see economy of Kobe after the earthquake; economy of Kobe before the earthquake); flooding and landslides the main concern, not earthquakes, 39-41, 48; geography of city, 37-38, 41; issue of long-term municipal debt, 14, 199-201, 218; major reconstruction actions (1995), 248-50; maps, xii; parallels with Vancouver, xv-xvi; population, labour, and housing characteristics, by ward (1990), 47(t); pre-existing situation and success of reconstruction, 21-23, 33, 37-49, 75; reconstruction after WWII, 39-40; responsibility for managing recovery on day-to-day basis, 12; urban-renewal programs (summer 1995), 12. See also government, local; reconstruction planning, local government; Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan Kobe City Hall: citizens’ opposition to plans for Moriminami, 163; citizens’ protest over reconstruction planning, 108, 109(f). See also government, local

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Kobe Council. See government, local Kobe earthquake. See Hanshin earthquake Kobe Earthquake Disaster Reconstruction Emergency Ordinance (1995), 95 Kobe Earthquake Memorial Museum, 121, 122(f) “Kobe Inc.”, 41-43, 201 Kobe Incubation Office, 199 Kobe International Business Centre, 182, 199 Kobe Luminarie, 182, 183(f), 191 Kobe Medical Industry Development Project, 182, 184, 197(f), 198 Kobe Phoenix Plaza, 121 Kobe Reconstruction Plan: citizens’ protests lacking after July 1995, 120; failure to identify priorities, 118; land reclamation program, 120; objectives, 114, 115(f), 116; opportunity to obtain funding for large-scale projects, 119, 121, 123, 261n14; preparation using standard process for local planning, 118-19; review by, and recommendations of, national government, 120-23; “thief at a fire” metaphor, 119-20; welfare programs and services non-priority, 119-20, 261n14. See also Phoenix Plan (Hyo ¯ go prefecture); symbolic projects; Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan Kobe University, 182, 198 Koizumi, Junichiro¯, 197 Koizumi enterprise zone system, 197-98 Ko¯nanyamate Station, 161, 162(f) Konishi, Yasuo, 123 kukakuseiri. See land readjustment projects (kukakuseiri) Kyoto, 206(t) kyo¯yo¯ken (community housing), 141-42, 143(f), 263n8 land readjustment projects (kukakuseiri): dominant model in urban planning, 219; essential characteristics, 32-33, 253n6, 260n5, 262n7; intensive reconstruction areas (black zones) after earthquake, 91-92, 96, 97(t), 99, 100(f), 102, 103, 107; Kobe’s reconstruction after WWII, 39-40; land “donated” by owners (genbu-ritsu), 107, 110, 112, 140-141, 260n5; negotiation and consensus preferred over expropriation, 31-32; protests in Shin-Nagata North project, 140-41; replotting of property boundaries, 125; slower than urban-redevelopment projects, 177; “two-stage” approach, 112. See also Shin-Nagata Station North land

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readjustment project; Moriminami land readjustment project landowners, 31-32. See also land readjustment projects (kukakuseiri) Leaf, M., xi Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), 86 machizukuri kyo¯gikai (local planning associations): in “black” zones, 111-12, 128; citizens’ planning for rebuilding individual blocks, 112; consultant planners and architects provided by city, 112, 128, 230; effectiveness of this type of planning questioned, 176-77, 264n18; emergence of three associations in Moriminami, 169-71; establishment in most areas after citizens’ protests, 110, 128; in “grey” zones, 111-12, 128; groups in Kobe before and after earthquake, 110-11; important in city’s approach to reconstruction, 44, 75; increase in number after earthquake, 231; key issues, 128; in Moriminami district, 165, 167-68, 169-71; promoted by Kobe (Kobe system or formula), 44; review of street-widening and open-space plans, 128; in some of the priority reconstruction areas pre-earthquake, 95-96 machizukuri newsletters, 93, 94(f), 112, 113(f) machizukuri planning (local consultation process): bottom-up urban planning vs. top-down (toshikeikaku), 30-31, 227, 231; consultant planners and architects provided by city, 112, 128, 213, 230; necessary to regain community’s trust, xv, 13 Maki, N., 231 Makino, M., 73 Mano district, 44, 95-96, 110, 227-28, 254n3 manufacturing. See chemical shoe factories/industry; small- and mediumsized businesses Matsumoto district, 92-93, 95, 96, 97(t) medical facilities/industries: Advanced Medical Industry Special Zone, 198; damage to hospitals and clinics from earthquake, 7; Institute of Biomedical Research and Innovation, 196; Kobe Medical Industry Development Project, 182, 184, 197(f), 198; medical and pharmaceutical industries targeted in economic recovery, 195-97, 225 megaprojects: “Kobe Inc.”, 41-43, 201. See also symbolic projects

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Meiji era (Shin-Nagata era), 129, 130(f) memorials of earthquake: Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Memorial Park, 117, 118(t); Kobe Earthquake Memorial Museum, 121, 122(f); Kobe Phoenix Plaza, 121; Meriken Park, 121, 122(f); need to take advantage of desire to build, 229 Meriken Park, 121, 122(f) Miles, S.B., 73, 75 Mileti, D., 20 Ministry of Construction, 99 Ministry of Finance, 78 Ministry of Health and Welfare, 78 Ministry of International Trade and Industry, 78, 181 Ministry of Transport, 203 Misuga district, 92-93, 95, 96, 97(t) Miyamoto, Kenichi, 120 Miyazaki, Tatsuo, 42 Moriminami land readjustment project: “black zone,” 96, 97(t), 161; chronology of reconstruction, 166(t)-67(t), 173; compromise plans with the three cho¯mes, 168-73; controls over private rebuilding after earthquake, 92-93, 95; land taken from each landowner (genbu), 162, 168-69; machizukuri kyo¯gikai (local planning association), 165, 167-68, 16971; opposition to city’s proposals, 16365, 175-76; parks and open spaces, 165, 169, 171, 172(f); photograph before and after earthquake, 160(f); plan of residents for the area, 165, 167-68, 264n14; plans of city for road and station upgrades, 161-63, 168-69, 171, 173; road network rationalized before earthquake, 161, 163; road and station upgrades, 171, 173, 174(f); summary of project, 164(t) Morisaki, Teruyuki, 127, 157 Murakami, Haruki, xi, 27 Murayama, Tomiichi, 51, 78, 123, 233-34 Nada Brewers Association, 191 Nada ward: first rebuilding after the earthquake, 102; map, xii; new housing starts (1993-2005), 65-66, 68(f); population, labour, and housing characteristics (1990), 47(t); population increases after earthquake, 74(t), 75; reorganization of business area (1960s), 40; socio-economic indicators (1994-2006), 223-25, 224(t); temporary housing in, 61(t). See also ward statistics Nagamatsu, S., 188-89 Nagata ward: chemical shoe factories, 3738, 106, 129, 146; damage to structures,

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Index

7, 8(t), 10(f); earthquake insurance minimal, 134; elderly population, 47(t), 52, 129, 133; ethnic mix in Nagata ward, 139-40, 262n6; failure of land readjustment (1960s) due to lack of cooperation, 40, 129; fires caused by earthquake, 50; land readjustment project Shin-Nagata South (1980s to 1995), 133; maps, xii; narrow streets a problem for emergency vehicles, 40, 45, 46(f), 50, 133, 134(f); older wooden buildings, 40, 45, 53, 254n5; open space lacking, 133; opportunity after earthquake to redevelop area, 106; population, labour, and housing characteristics (1990), 47(t), 52; population decline (after earthquake), 74(t), 75, 211, 223; population decline (before earthquake), 46, 47(t), 75, 129, 133; public housing in, 61(t), 68, 69(f), 70; reconstruction rate, 73, 75; socioeconomic indicators (1994-2006), 223, 224(t), 225; stagnant economic recovery, 187. See also chemical shoe factories/ industry; ward statistics; entries beginning with Shin-Nagata Nagisa Park (in HAT project), 184 Nakagawa, Y., 227 Nankin-machi Chinatown district, xiii, xiv(f) Nargis cyclone, xiii Narita airport, 31-32 natural gas, 7, 11(t), 54, 124 Neal, D.M., 19 New Orleans, 23 Nishi ward: maps, xii; population, labour, and housing characteristics (1990), 47(t); population change (19902005), 74(t), 75; public housing in, 61(t), 68, 69(f); socio-economic indicators (1994-2006), 223, 224(t). See also ward statistics Nishinomiya City, 39, 73 Nishiyama, Yasuo, 98 Niskala, Markku, 209, 227 North Shin-Nagata Station. See ShinNagata Station North land readjustment project not-for-profit organizations (NPOs): legislation to assist with raising funds after earthquake, 217, 231; recovery efforts in reconstruction, 21, 22(f), 23-24; services for elderly, 158, 263n11 Olshansky, R., xi, xv, 25 opportunity. See geography of opportunity Osaka

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Peacock, W.G., 229 Phoenix Plan (Hyo¯go prefecture): criticism of top-down (toshikeikaku) planning, 115-16; criticism re. mixing of short-, medium-, and long-term plans, 117; economic goals embedded in reconstruction plan, 115, 119; emphasis on infrastructure and public works, 11415; financial measures, 114-15; goals, 114, 115(f), 116; opportunity for urban development post-earthquake, xv; preparation using standard process for local planning, 118-19; review by, and recommendations of, national government, 120-23. See also symbolic projects; Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan Pijawka, D.: on need for local government to make strategic choices, 24; reconstruction periods post-disaster, 18-19, 49, 55, 65, 219-21 population: density of population and vulnerability to urban disasters, 26, 75; distribution, 7, 30, 45-46; distribution of population loss and revival, 72-75, 76, 221; of elderly, 46, 47(t), 52, 129, 133; location of residence post-earthquake, 210-11; percentage in areas most affected by earthquake, 49-50; population, labour, and housing characteristics by ward (1990), 47(t), 52; recovery after earthquake, xiii, 206, 209, 211, 221; vulnerable population affected most by post-disaster recovery, 22 Port Island: damage from earthquake, 5(t), 50; development, 42-43; International Port Economic Zone, 198; maps, xii; temporary housing on, 60, 61(t). See also Port of Kobe Port Island, Second Stage: convention centre on, 182; initial development completed (by 2005), 183; International Business Support Centre, 182, 199; International Port Economic Zone, 198; investment difficult to recover, 201; medical-based complex, 196-97; new businesses after earthquake, 198-99, 213; proposed enterprise zone on (1995), 181. See also Port of Kobe Port of Kobe: damage in earthquake, 2(f), 5(t), 254n6, 258n5; estimate for repairing damage, 11(t); imports and exports (1990-2006), 215(f); loss of shipping trade post-earthquake, 186, 214, 221, 266n5; major contributor to city’s economy, 35, 37; priority funding for repair, 102; supplementary

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budget allocations for restoration, 79, 84 “Portopia” exposition (1981), 42 post-disaster reconstruction. See reconstruction, post-disaster priority reconstruction areas: “black” zones (see “black” zones); city’s communication with residents, 93, 94(f), 105-6, 107, 112; city’s need to conform to national guidelines, 107; consultant planners and architects, 100, 112, 128, 213, 230; controls over private rebuilding, 92-93, 95; designation of twenty-four areas, 91-92, 105, 124; “grey” zones (see “grey” zones); opportunity to upgrade, 91-92, 106-7, 124; patterns of damage and recovery (19952000), 100, 101(f), 102; public consultation initially poor, 106-7, 127-28; replotting of property boundaries, 125; similarity with areas in pre-earthquake “fourth master plan,” 106-7, 225; “twostage” approach to local reconstruction, 128; “white” zones (see “white” zones). See also land readjustment projects (kukakuseiri); machizukuri planning (local consultation process); urbanredevelopment projects (saikaihatsu) property rights: characteristics of land readjustment projects (kukakuseiri), 3233, 253n6, 260n5, 262n7; complex land ownership and tenure rights in North Shin-Nagata district, 138-39; impact on reconstruction in priority areas, 176, 222, 264n16; principles of urbanredevelopment projects, 151, 153(f), 263n9; property boundaries redrawn in priority reconstruction areas, 125. See also land readjustment projects (kukakuseiri); urban-redevelopment projects (saikaihatsu) public buildings: cost estimate for repairing earthquake damage, 11(t); destruction in earthquake, 5(t) public housing, permanent: allocationby-lottery system, 64; distribution and replacement rate, by ward (1998), 71(t); geographical distribution of public housing, 68, 69(f), 70, 71(t), 72; housing reconstruction strategy for Kobe, 70, 72; mismatch between location of public housing and evacuees’ desired locations, 67-70; new housing starts, by ward and type (1993-2005), 65-67, 67(f), 68(f); private-sector involvement, 65-66, 66(t); three-year emergency housing plan

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(1995-97), 65-66, 66(t), 213-14; transition from temporary public housing, 64, 65(f), 257n19 public housing, temporary: allocationby-lottery system, consequences, 57, 59; complexity of relocation process, 25-26; “culture shock” for elderly evacuees, 57, 60, 221; design unsuitable for long-term living, 57, 59(f); distribution uneven across Kobe, 58(f), 60-62, 61(t); emergency and restoration phases, 55-56; feelings of isolation, loneliness, and hopelessness, 62, 87, 256n16; free under Disaster Relief Law, 57, 256n5; housing reconstruction strategy for Kobe, 70, 72; individuals responsible for rebuilding homes, 56, 72, 214-15, 218; mismatch between location of housing and evacuees’ desired locations, 60-62, 221; number of elderly, 57, 60, 63(t); problems encountered, 57; in remote/suburban areas, 57, 60-62, 145; survey of evacuees (1996), 63-64; transition to permanent public housing, 64, 65(f), 257n19 Quarantelli, E.L., 20 railways: cost estimate for repairing earthquake damage, 11(t); damage due to earthquake, 2(f), 5(t), 50, 254n6; Hankyu¯ and Hanshin railways restored by June 1995, 124; success rate of the Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan, 212 Reconstruction Headquarters (Hyo¯go prefecture), 88 Reconstruction Headquarters (Kobe), 78 reconstruction planning, local government: chronology of Kobe’s reconstruction planning, 248-50; controls over private rebuilding, 92-95; designating areas for upgrading and road widening, 95-98; designating priority reconstruction areas, 91-92; disappointing aspects, 213-14; division of responsibilities between national and local governments, 88-89, 90(f), 91, 213; effectiveness of machizukuri-type planning questioned, 176-77, 264n18; lessons for Japanese cities from Kobe earthquake, 226-29; major reconstruction actions, 248-50; ordinances and laws to control rebuilding, 95; phases of disaster responses, 17; pre-planning before disaster strikes, xvi, 26; priority areas similar to priority areas in pre-earthquake “fourth master plan,” 106-7, 225; processes complex,

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controversial, and geographically uneven, 11-12; recommendations of Hyo¯go Verification Report, 217-18; Reconstruction Headquarters (Hyo¯go prefecture), 88; Reconstruction Headquarters (Kobe), 78; Reconstruction Planning Council (Kobe), 78; responsible managing recovery on day-to-day basis, 12; rigidity of government regarding income support for earthquake victims, 86-87; speed of reconstruction dependent on clarification of land use, 176; successful aspects, 212-13. See also economy of Kobe after the earthquake; priority reconstruction areas; Phoenix Plan (Hyo¯go prefecture); Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan reconstruction planning, national government: budgets inadequate for amount needed for reconstruction, 84; commitments to Kobe largely maintained, 213; division of responsibilities between national and local governments, 88-89, 90(f), 91, 213; government-approved services extended to earthquake victims under Disaster Relief Law, 85-86; HanshinAwaji Reconstruction Headquarters (Earthquake Recovery Measures Headquarters), 78, 88, 89, 90(f), 182; income replacement programs non-existent, 86; legislation (1995) to deal with earthquake, 79, 80(t)-81(t), 95, 102; measures taken by national government soon after earthquake, 77-79; national supplementary budgets for 1994-95 and 199596 to deal with earthquake, 79, 82, 83(t), 84, 230; priorities, mainly infrastructure, 84, 86, 102, 214, 258n7; rigidity of government regarding income support for earthquake victims, 86-87, 267n2; support for Kobe’s reconstruction waning (latter part of 1995), 123, 125. See also Hanshin-Awaji Reconstruction Committee Reconstruction Planning Council (Kobe), 78 reconstruction, post-disaster: 80 percent recovery by 2005, 209-11; author’s research strategy, 12-13; chronology of ten-year reconstruction period, 233-43; communities’ desire to return to predisaster city, 19; dimensions of disasters, 17; failure to fully exploit redevelopment opportunities, 19-20; four distinct periods to recovery/reconstruction, 1819, 219-21; four factors influencing reconstruction, 21-26, 33, 175, 221;

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influence of community attitudes and relationships with government, 21, 22(f), 24-26, 33, 175, 221; influence of disaster characteristics, 21, 22(f), 23, 33, 221; influence of government and NPO efforts, 21, 22(f), 23-24, 33, 222(f); influence of pre-existing situation in disaster area, 21-23, 33, 75, 221; long-term process, 12, 18; period of developmental restoration (reconstruction), 18; period of emergency (search and rescue), 18, 53-55, 252n2; period of replacement reconstruction (recovery), 18, 252n2; period of restoration (utilities repair and patching up of structures), 18, 252n2; reconstruction vs. recovery, 27; resilience of cities, 20; socio-economic complexities, 19-20, 26, 219-21; speed of reconstruction dependent on clarification of land use, 176; success in increasing safety of Kobe, 218-19; success rate for economic and individual recovery, 212(f), 214-17; success rate for infrastructure and housing reconstruction, 212-14. See also reconstruction planning, local government; reconstruction planning, national government recovery, post-disaster: 80 percent recovery by 2005, 209-11; definition, 27; existing vulnerabilities worsened by disasters, 221; four distinct periods to recovery/reconstruction, 18-19, 219-21; government support for recovery, not reconstruction, 26-27; government’s rigidity re. income support for victims, 86-87, 267n2; individual and community recovery a goal of disaster planning after earthquake, 215; individuals responsible for rebuilding their own housing, 56, 72, 214-15, 218; lack of insurance for most businesses and houses, 10, 27, 56, 214-15, 219; loss of reconstruction business to out-of-city contractors, 188-89, 215; recovery vs. reconstruction, 27; restoration of individual lives, 215-17; success in increasing safety of Kobe, 218-19; success rate for economic and individual recovery, 212(f), 214-17; success rate for infrastructure and housing reconstruction, 212-14; underfunding for earthquake survivors and small business, 14, 214-15; welfare and socio-economic programs in reconstruction plan (2002), 86-87. See also economy of Kobe after the earthquake; reconstruction planning, local

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government; reconstruction planning, national government; reconstruction, post-disaster; Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan retail trade: Asuta shopping centre in South Shin-Nagata, 155, 156(f), 158; impact of earthquake, 186-87, 188; rebuilding in North Shin-Nagata, 145; recovery, 191, 223, 224(t); relocation of local shopkeepers in South Shin-Nagata, 151, 153, 155, 175; shopping centre in South Shin-Nagata, 150; traditional shopping arcades, 129, 133, 151 Riken Center for Developmental Biology, 199 roads and highways: cost estimate for repairing earthquake damage, 11(t); destruction in earthquake, 2(f), 5(t), 6(f), 7, 50, 254n6; Hanshin Expressway, 2(f), 50, 125; Highway #1: priority funding for repair, 102; new north-south highway rumoured, 120; success rate of the TenYear Reconstruction Plan, 212-13 Rokko¯ district, 40, 41(f) Rokko¯ Island: damage from earthquake, 5(t), 50; development, 42-43; International Port Economic Zone, 198; maps, xii; temporary housing on, 60, 61(t) Rokko¯-michi Station: controls over private rebuilding after earthquake, 92-93, 95; development in pre-earthquake “fourth master plan,” 106-7; intensive reconstruction after earthquake, 96, 97(t), 102, 225 Rokko¯-michi Station South, 96, 97(t), 151, 225 Rossi, P.H., 23 sake industry, 186, 187(t), 190(f), 191, 205, 267n9 Sannomiya commercial area: controls over private rebuilding after earthquake, 92-93, 95; an intensive reconstruction zone, 96, 106; International Port Economic Zone, 198; reorganization in 1960s, 40 Sasayama, Kazutoshi: airport island initiative, 117, 202-3; approval of Moriminami land readjustment project despite opposition from residents, 165; confirmation of designated areas despite citizens’ protests, 110; inner city and opportunity for redevelopment after earthquake, 91; on Kobe’s reconstruction plan, xvii, 181; on Kobe’s recovery of 80 percent of

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pre-disaster capacity (2000), 189; plan for attracting new industries to city, 196; strong leadership, 225; support for areawide “mega-projects,” 14 Schencking, J.C., 28 Schneider, S.K., 230 Self-Defense Forces (SDF), 51 seniors. See elderly Shaw, R., 227 Shichuan earthquake, xiii Shimokobe, Atsushi, 70 Shin-Nagata Station and area: controls over private rebuilding after earthquake, 92-93, 95, 135; devastation after earthquake, 134-35; development in preearthquake “fourth master plan,” 106-7; history of area, 129, 130(f)-32(f); land readjustment project (1980s to 1995), 133; no formal improvement plan for area (1960s), 40; rebuilding in nonpriority areas similar to pre-earthquake, 219, 220(f). See also Nagata ward; ShinNagata Station North land readjustment project; Shin-Nagata Station South urban redevelopment project Shin-Nagata Station North land readjustment project: aerial photographs of area before and after earthquake, 136(f); after land adjustment, 145-46, 147(f); chemical shoe factories, 129, 146; chronology of planning and reconstruction, 144-46, 147(f); community attitudes, 138-44, 175; community (cooperative) housing in multirise buildings, 137(f), 141-42, 145; consultants’ work with machizukuri groups, 141-44; displaced residents in temporary housing in suburban areas, 145; financing problems for individual house rebuilding, 144-46; machizukuri-kai committees, 137(f), 138, 145; priority project (“black zone”) after earthquake, 96(f), 97(t), 102, 135, 225; problems in achieving consensus, 138-44; road widenings and parks, 137(f), 138, 143, 144; summary of project, 135(t) Shin-Nagata Station South urban redevelopment project: chronology of project, 158-59; conflicts over height and density, 151-53, 263n10; consultants’ work with machizukuri groups, 150-51, 158; earlier project (1980s to 1995), 133; housing amendments for seniors, 155, 157-58, 175; multistorey shopping/ residential buildings, 153, 154(f), 156(f); principles of urban redevelopment projects, 151, 153(f); priority project (“black

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Index

zone”) after earthquake, 97(t), 135, 225; property boundaries and mixed-land uses before earthquake, 148-49; redevelopment plans after earthquake, 149-50, 151(f); relocation of local shopkeepers, 153, 155; summary of project, 148(t); transformation into subcentre for western Kobe, 150, 155, 156(f), 158-59 shinkansen (bullet train), 2(f), 29 small- and medium-sized businesses: Awaji roof-tile industry, 186, 190(f), 191, 205; business failures (1997), 189; city assistance, 87, 125, 190, 214-15; destruction, 134-35, 188; employees in public housing located far from work, 62; factories and employment in inner-city areas, 37-38, 70, 129, 133-34; impact of earthquake, 186-88; lack of insurance, 23, 214-15; loss of reconstruction business to out-of-city contractors, 188-89, 215; manufacturing output, by ward (1994-2006), 223, 224(t); national government assistance, 79, 83(t), 215; pearl exporting business, 190(f), 191; reconstruction the responsibility of individuals, 10; recovery after earthquake, 186-91; relocation of local shopkeepers in South Shin-Nagata, 151, 153, 155, 175; sake industry, 186, 187(t), 190(f), 191, 205, 267n9; underfunding of welfare services, 14. See also chemical shoe factories/industry social welfare services: government’s rigidity regarding income support for earthquake victims, 86-87, 267n2; number of recipients, by ward (1994-2006), 223-25, 224(t); requirement in 2005, 207; underfunding for earthquake survivors and small business, 14; upgraded by Kobe after earthquake, 72; welfare and socioeconomic programs in reconstruction plan (2002), 86-87 socio-economic factors: cause of failure to fully exploit redevelopment opportunities, 19-20; government’s rigidity re. income support for victims, 86-87, 267n2; individual and community recovery a goal of disaster planning after earthquake, 215; lack of insurance for most businesses and houses, 10, 27, 56, 214, 219; social homogeneity in Japan a feature in community recovery, 30; socio-economic indicators for wards (1994-2006), 223, 224(t), 225; success rate for economic and individual recovery, 212(f), 214-17; success rate of the

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Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan, 212(f), 214-17. See also economy of Kobe after the earthquake Sorensen, A., 31 South Shin-Nagata Station. See ShinNagata Station South urban redevelopment project Special Financial Aid and Subsidy for the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Law (1995), 79 Special Measures for Recovery of Disaster Areas Law, 80(t), 95 Special Zones for Structural Reform (2001), 197-98 Stratton, R.M., 24 suburban areas: economic recovery rate, 187; income compared with inner-city areas, 53; permanent public housing in, 67-68, 69(f), 70; suburbanization of Kobe after earthquake, 75; temporary public housing for evacuees, 57, 60-62, 145; younger population, 45-46. See also Kita ward; Nishi ward; Tarumi ward; ward statistics subways, 1, 123, 124, 148-49 suicide from isolation and loneliness, 62, 87, 267n3 Suma ward: fires caused by earthquake, 50; maps, xii; narrow streets inadequate for fire trucks, 50; permanent public housing in, 68, 69(f), 70; population decline (after earthquake), 74(t), 75; population, labour, and housing characteristics (1990), 47(t); socio-economic indicators (1994-2006), 223, 224(t); temporary housing in, 61(t). See also ward statistics Sumitomo Rubber Industries, 186 symbolic projects: convention centre, 117, 118(t), 180, 182; enterprise zone system (Koizumi system) (2001), 19798; enterprise zones (1995), 117, 118(t), 180, 181-82; funding, 117, 121, 180-86, 203-4; funding of welfare and socioeconomic programs, 182-83; Hyo¯go Foreign Student Hall, 182; International Business Support Centre, 182; JICA Hyo¯go International Centre for overseas trainees, 182; Kobe Luminarie, 182, 183(f); Kobe Medical Industry Development Project, 182, 184, 197(f), 198; Kobe port as “Hub Port,” 117, 118(t); in Kobe Reconstruction Plan and Hyo¯go Phoenix Plan, 117-18, 121, 179-80; memorial projects, 117, 118(t), 182, 184; multimedia and entertainment project

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(KIMEC), 117, 118 (t), 180, 184, 199; multimedia graduate school at Kobe University, 182; NIRO (Kobe New In­ dustries Research Organization), 182; objectives of these projects, 180; “ShoeTown Nagata,” 182; tourism and, 181; trade import plaze, 118(t), 180; World Pearl Centre, 182. See also Airport Island; economy of Kobe after the earthquake; HAT (Happy Active Town) Kobe Project Tadao, Furuichi, 109 Taisho¯ period (Shin-Nagata area), 129, 130(f) Takagi, M., 57 Takatori district east, 96, 97(t) Tarumi ward: maps, xii; permanent public housing in, 68, 69(f); population, labour, and housing characteristics (1990), 47(t); socio-economic indicators (1994-2006), 223-25, 224(t); temporary housing in, 61(t). See also ward statistics Tatsuki, S., 216-17 telephone system, 5(t), 7, 54, 124 temporary accommodation. See public housing, temporary Ten-Year Reconstruction Plan: chronology of reconstruction period, 233-43; criticism re. airport, 120; criticism re. mixing of short-, medium-, and long-term plans, 117; economic goals embedded in reconstruction plan, 115, 119; evaluation in Hyo¯go Verification Report, 217-18; failure to identify priorities, 118; “Final Three-year Program of the Hyo¯go Phoenix Reconstruction Plan,” 182-83; goals and objectives, 114, 115(f); HanshinAwaji Reconstruction Fund (Hyo¯go prefecture and Kobe), 87, 125; Hyo¯go Verification Report, 217-18; loss of reconstruction business to out-of-city contractors, 188-89, 215; opportunity to obtain special funding for large-scale projects, 119, 121, 123; physical reconstruction and infrastructure recovery (by September 1995), 124-25; preparation using standard process for local planning, 118-19; review by, and recommendations of, national government, 120-23; success in increasing safety of Kobe, 218-19; success rate for economic and individual recovery, 212(f), 214-17; success rate for infrastructure and housing reconstruction, 212-14; waning support for Kobe’s reconstruction (latter part of 1995), 123, 125. See also Kobe

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Reconstruction Plan; Phoenix Plan (Hyo¯go prefecture); symbolic projects Theriwel, R.: on public involvement in infrastructure building, 30 Tokyo: disaster planning after Kobe earthquake, 231-32; reluctance to take on Kobe reconstruction as national project, 89, 91; replanning after Great Kanto¯ Earthquake, 27-28 tourism: impact of earthquake, 186-87; recovery after earthquake, 191; sector promising future growth, 42, 116; symbolic projects way to attract tourists, 181, 182, 184, 194 Trainer, P.B., 219 transportation. See railways; roads and highways; subways tsunami in Southeast Asia (December, 2004), xiii United States disaster relief through FEMA, 24 Urban Development Law (1969), 148 urban planning: aversion to expropriation for public projects, 31-32; citizen involvement more accepted, 29; citizens’ low expectations of governments, 29-30; City Planning Law, 1968, 128, 262n1; communication with citizenry essential element, 227-28; density of population and economic activity, 26; effectiveness of planning for Kobe questioned, 21819, 264n18; focus on major public works (“the state as builder”), 28-29; increase in number of homeless people, 30; lack of effective insurance program, 10, 27, 56, 214-15, 219; neglect for safety and security, 230; rigidity of Japanese model, 13-14, 219-21, 267n2; seniors living in older housing, 30; social homogeneity in Japan, 30; ten-year development plans, 29; top-down (toshikeikaku) vs. bottom-up (machizukuri), 30-31, 117, 227, 230, 231. See also disaster planning urban-redevelopment projects (saikaihatsu): dominant model in urban planning, 219; faster method of land acquisition than land readjustment, 177; intensive reconstruction areas (black zones) after earthquake, 97(t), 99-100, 100(f), 102, 103; preference for negotiation and consensus rather than expropriation in land assembly, 31-32; principles of, 151, 153(f), 263n9; readjustments of existing private plots,

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Index

32-33. See also Shin-Nagata Station South urban redevelopment project utilities: cost estimates for repair, 11(t); damage due to earthquake, 5(t), 5, 7, 54; rebuilding with seismic-resistant structures, 218; restoration, 124 Vale, L.J., 209 Vancouver, parallels with Kobe, xv-xvi volunteers, 52 ward statistics: damage to structures, 8(t); distribution of public housing and replacement rate (1998), 71(t); evacuees, 8(t); loss of housing by age of building, 7, 10(f); new housing starts, by ward (1993-2005), 65-67, 68(f); patterns of death and damage, 9(f); population, labour, and housing characteristics (1990), 47(t), 52; population change (1990-2005), 73, 74(t); socio-economic indicators (1994-2006), 223, 224(t), 225; temporary housing in, 61(t). See also individual wards waste and sanitation facilities, 5(t), 11(t), 124 Watanabe, R., 211 water system, 5(t), 7, 11(t), 54 Weber-Burdin, E., 23 western Kobe: destruction, 4, 5(t), 6(f), 7, 8(t), 9(t), 10(f), 67, 91, 100, 101(f), 102; “greying” of inner city, 46, 53; land readjustment abandoned in 1960s, 40; machizukuri committees, 110-11; narrow streets and older housing, 40, 45, 46(f),

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50, 254n5; opportunity to replan and improve area, 91-92; population change (1990-2005), 73, 74(t), 75, 210, 223; poverty, 53; priority areas and classification, 96, 97(t), 98, 100; profile of population, labour, and housing characteristics (1990), 47(t); public housing, 68, 71(t); small factories, 37-38; socio-economic indicators (1994-2006), 223, 224(t), 225; speed of rebuilding after earthquake, 13, 73, 219, 222; victims and damage to structures, 8(t), 9(f). See also Hyo ¯ go ward; inner-city areas; Nagata ward; Suma ward; ward statistics; entries beginning with Shin-Nagata “white” zones: planning consultants available, 100; problems in rebuilding, 177, 265n19; public assistance only for seniors and low-income individuals, 56, 72, 102-3; rebuilding with pre-earthquake densities and narrow streets, 219, 220(f); rebuilding rate, 100; self-reconstruction areas (no public assistance), 99(f), 100, 102-3, 177 Wisner, B., 30 women: deaths by gender and age, 7, 9(f); impact of decline of chemical shoes industry, 193 World Health Organization Kobe Center, 184, 225 Wright, J.D., 23 Yada, Tatsuo, 203 Yoshimitsu, Shiozaki, 167

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