Tohoku Planning Forum: Sustainable Communities through Social Resilience BY Christian Dimmer - Tokyo Chapter
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n the months that followed the cataclysmic triple disaster of earthquake, crippling tsunami and resulting Fukushima nuclear accident on March 11th, 2011, the full scope of the massive and widely varying devastations along the coast of NorthEast Japan slowly became apparent. While the tsunami claimed nearly 19,000 lives, it had also wiped out entire communities and devastated farmland, ports and much of the regional economy. Although Japan’s government has allocated vast financial resources to facilitate a speedy recovery, this effort is frustrated by the enormous spatial extent of the affected areas, by distinctly different socio-economic and topographic conditions at each locality, a shortage of personnel and materials, as well as the wide spectrum and magnitude of the tsunami devastations. For these reasons there can be no one-fits all recipe for reconstruction. While the rubble of lost livelihoods was
In collaboration with 17 International chambers of Commerce Tohoku Planning Forum organised the event ‘Giving Back to Japan 2: Community Leaders Report’. Mayors from five cities in the disaster-hit areas met on 16 May in Tokyo to discuss community rebuilding in the tsunami and earthquake-hit Tohoku region in Japan.
the hearts of the disaster survivors and their injured communities, participation and a sense of authorship in recovery plans is important for lasting success of reconstruction. After all, it is the social capital within communities, the ties between neighbours, famiTo fill more than physical voids, namely those in the hearts of lies and friends that had the disaster survivors and their injured communities, participa- saved lives and that will tion and a sense of authorship in recovery plans is important if be crucial for the rereconstruction is to be of lasting success. building and sustained function of mostly rural being cleared and neatly sorted in piles, be- communities that will lose around half of hind stayed a vast emptiness that anxiously their population over the coming decades awaited fresh visions for a less than certain due to demographic change. future. To fill this desolation, it is questionable if built structures, dams, roads, facto- More than two years later, the recovery effort ries, and public facilities are enough. To fill is marked by a growing number of promising more than physical voids, namely those in reconstruction projects in various places and architecture for humanity
May 2013
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