In the District Planning area of Sannomiya, over 160 out of about 560 buildings, 30% of existing buildings were destroyed. In October 1997, a year and 9 months after the disaster, 31 of them were reconstructed; 26 are under construction and about 50 buildings are planned. The remaining 50 and more sites, including the sites used for temporary buildings, parking lots or the place for construction materials, did not have any plans for future land use. Over a half of these sites were still left as the vacant land in November 1996. While the reconstruction of the infrastructure such as roads proceeded, reconstruction of office buildings has been slower. Owners of large sites were worried whether there would be enough tenants to fill the new office floors. Most of the owners of small buildings did not also own the land and the complicated ownership and difficulty of raising fund makes it difficult for them to reconstruct in a short period. As the background of the slow reconstruction, Kobe had been losing its role as a central business district even before the earthquake and moreover business was slow in nationwide at this time. The local government was eager to promote joint projects by small landholders as well as to designate District Planning area, aiming at restoration of central business functions and reconstruction of urban areas. In the Sannomiya area of 70 hectares, however, only about 10 cases of joint rebuilding have been discussed among the landowners. The reasons are as follows:
1) Landowners do not like to make the ownership complicated. In particular, those landowners, who had hard time to obtain their land after World War II, want to keep it, and have a strong desire to build their own buildings on their own land.
2) It is not clear whether they will be able to find the tenants or owner of the extra floors produced by joint projects.
3) The joint project would provide the large area of floors, which would require parking on the site. As the result, a great increase of rental space is not expected.
4) The local government prepared a comprehensive design system and a promotion program for better building project to support the joint project with deregulation's and bonus system. Nevertheless the landowners believe that the economical loss by preparing parking lots is much bigger than economical advantage of FAR bonus or subsidy resulted by using the support system.
It is important, in the restoration, for owners, developers and city government to share the vision of community development and to know the role of individual buildings as the part in the reconstruction process as well as ordinary Machizukuri. To make it possible, it is important to discuss, adjust and agree with urban development guidelines of land use and urban design for the area. It is about the time to seek for the vision and create written guidelines.
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