Japanese| Japanese |
back index 
next
The activities of "Restoration from Hanshin Earthquake Disaster/Supporters' Network for community development "Machizukuri", "(Supporters' Network) added a new page to the history of "Machizukuri Specialists". Especially from points of "community development machizukuri", it has left valuable actual results. "Kinmokusei" has had an important role as a valuable medium which reported "activities of Supporters' Network" one by one.
3)"Supporters' Network" two years after the earthquake, Expectation of Machizukuri specialists for restoration about life and housing.
Yasuyoshi Hayash, Research Center for Planning Technology
K-46
What the activities of Supporters' Network after the earthquake have meant
The thing that I clearly remember even now is the facsimile from Mr.Ikuo Kobayashi. Ten days hadn't passed after the earthquake when Machizukuri consultants and architects started "Restoration from Hanshin Earthquake Disaster/Supporters' Network for community development "Machizukuri"".
I guess that the reason why many "Machizukuri specialists" could rush to the damaged areas so quickly was that they couldn't stop themselves from doing it because of their eager zeal to help the victims, as well as the fact that they had connections with various areas before the earthquake.
It is already well known that these specialists worked together, not individually, and established a network, supporting each other, and that acting in partnership with the local government they became an important power for restoration. I think that it opened up a totally new way for "Machizukuri specialists" to make a contribution to society and has had significant results, unlike in the past.
Emergence of new specialists
Special domains such as land readjustment, redevelopment, engineering and architectural design played an important role in previous disaster restorations. In this restoration "Machizukuri specialists" who think about "Machizukuri together with residents" had an important role along with these specialists. The feature of these new specialists is that they they don't think about restoration from systems' and methods' points of view, but that they try to think how they can meet the needs of residents from "life's points of view", that is, "reconstruction of residents' life and housing and reconstruction of the community". "Machizukuri specialists" are a new breed of specialists who specialize in thinking about restoration in cooperation with residents.
Machizukuri with unity
Machizukuri means that a town is formed not only in the "hard" domains, divided by the vertical structure of public offices, but that it is "synthetic machizukuri", united with "soft" domains such as taking care of problems about elderly people and employment for jobless persons. It is equivalent to Community Development in America.
The significance of "Machizukuri", which meets various needs by connecting vertically structured measures of the government horizontally by residents' effort, has been it's social acceptance. The project being planned in Matsumoto District, which unites housing for elderly people with bases of welfare services is one example, and it is a matter of course that residents' activities in Mano District and Noda North District are "synthetic Machizukuri".
It is predicted that Machizukuri organizations for restoration by residents will develop variously and that the role of "Machizukuri specialists" will become increasingly more important. I hope that "SHIMIN KATSUDOHO" which is expected to be enacted will become one power to support this movement. (April 29th, 1997)
| Japanese |
back index next