In the areas affected by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, large-scale urban redevelopment and land readjustment projects took place, and the administration and citizens even argued over policies regarding urban reconstruction efforts. The role of urban development has become a big issue at other disaster locations as well, such as those affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. What issues has urban planning faced in Japan these past 30 years and how has it changed? We asked Professor KUBOTA Aya of Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Engineering, a regional design expert who has continued to visit disaster sites like that of the Great East Japan Earthquake.
I understand you were working at an urban planning and design company in Tokyo when the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake struck.
Kubota:
I think it was the month after the earthquake, but once I heard that damage surveys of the buildings were being carried out primarily by academic societies in architecture and urban planning, I decided to join. These surveys involved walking around the disaster area and visually observing the amount of damage done to each building while marking them on a map with colored pencils. I remember it being very cold while I was sleeping over in the spectator section of a gymnasium. It must have been so awful for the victims of the disaster.
Later, after returning to the world of research, I also had the opportunity to learn about Kobe’s recovery. At the 20-year mark since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, I walked around the city together with students researching the earthquake and listened to accounts from residents.
20 years had passed since the earthquake, so I felt that we needed to dig deeper and think about how the space created through recovery projects is rooted in the region at the meta level. I also thought that such a viewpoint is necessary for verification of urban planning.
The point of recovery is not how many people come back
What kind of activity were you performing at the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster site?
Kubota:
At the time of the earthquake, I was doing research at the University of Tokyo, and since the university had a facility in Otsuchi Town in Iwate Prefecture, I was able to get involved in recovery efforts there. I became recovery project coordinator of a district called Akahama, where I considered how to incorporate residents’ opinions as administrative programs.
Residents don’t just have one opinion. There are even some tense situations that arise between the residents and administration. In the midst of all that, I think it was beneficial to the reconstruction site that there was activity in which students could get involved in the region. Once the students realized the importance of the town’s history and gathered photos to put on display, it seemed as though the residents became aware of what was important to the town as well.
In Otsuchi, the mayor and many other administrative staff members lost their lives due to the tsunami. Other staff members lost family members. Despite the circumstances, the staff members were at the forefront of it all to hold discussions with residents. Perhaps this is brash of me to say, but through this process, I really did see the staff members grow right before my eyes. Support staff from other municipalities were also passionately at work. But it seems like it would be difficult to get those around them to understand the significance of their experiences in Otsuchi after they return to their respective municipalities. I feel as though it’s necessary to have a system in which individuals can share and make use of the experiences they gained during recovery efforts with those back home.
I hear you also continue to frequent Minamisoma City in Fukushima, which is still recovering from the nuclear power plant accident.
Kubota:
I’ve always had an interest in pollution problems. I think that nuclear disasters are a type of pollution. Odaka Ward in Minamisoma City, an area I’ve been visiting since 2014, received a 5-year evacuation order after the nuclear power plant accident, and all of its residents did just that.
I then began assisting in redevelopment together with students, and when the residents began to return in 2016, Minamisoma City concluded an agreement with the University of Tokyo, to which I was affiliated at the time, to support local communities with starting and advancing discussions amongst themselves. I responded to the requests of residents in creating materials and assisting with events, and I was also involved in the rebuilding project for the meeting area, the revival project for the salon where residents gather and the reconstruction of the land use maintenance system.
Through this activity, the residents taught me an important viewpoint: “Don’t make the number of returnees to the region your objective.” What’s most important is satisfying the individuals who live here now while enriching their livelihoods. They made me realize that that is what should be considered first and foremost.
Concern about deterioration of urban development, one of Kobe’s assets
Were the lessons learned in redevelopment following the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake utilized in the disasters that followed?
Kubota:
After the earthquake, the citizens of Kobe expressed their distaste for the plans shown by the administration. In Japan, the term “urban development” refers to a movement started of the people, by the people, and for the people. Within that movement, there’s the idea that it’s only natural to get involved in one’s living environment. This idea manifested strongly in Kobe following the earthquake and remains a precious asset of the city to this day.
However, following the Great East Japan Earthquake, after looking at the citizens and society in the area and the destructive blows they were dealt, I feel that the thinking has shifted to a need for the Japanese government to do something about it. Nowadays, I sometimes even get the sense that people would rather not waste their time with more unrefined urban development methods that involve residents tossing their opinions back and forth, especially these last few years.
I think the effects of urbanization taking place all throughout Japan and the world have greatly influenced this shift. Regions are, essentially, time and space in which various people come together. You’ll occasionally run into people who you’d rather not and even butt heads from time to time. But you could also say that that’s what makes things interesting. However, there’s been an increase in individuals who find it easier to just not have those kinds of things happen. They’ll solve problems with money when possible and leave things to the administration to take care of when they can. People want that kind of society and at the same time, I feel as though the field of urban planning has actually moved in that direction as well.
Even the disaster site of the Noto Peninsula Earthquake had significant challenges facing its recovery efforts.
Kubota:
The Noto region may be thought of as a powerless region with an aging and declining population, but rather than assuming that without asking its residents, I think it’s important to establish a venue for asking what the residents want to do. If you ask them, they’ll discuss it.
It’s also necessary to provide public support to aid in these discussions. If residents wish to go and see previous examples of recovery efforts, then we should support them in doing so, since gathering information is invaluable. This kind of backing will promote discussions. But by assuming that the residents have no power and allowing the administration to envision their own cities of the future, we’re bound to repeat our past mistakes.
Reexamining the values behind urbanization and suppressing the enormous growth of disasters
Your research focus is on regional design, but how is that different from urban planning? What type of regional design is necessary for recovery?
Kubota:
When you use the term “urban planning,” it gives a sense of fixing the bad things, returning to a blank map, and then building roads and other things on that blank map, doesn’t it? But regions affected by disasters aren’t a blank map. You’ve got to consider the state of the region immediately before the disaster and the fact that, while not perfect, the region had been supporting the lives and livelihoods of the people who live there. So, it’s natural for residents to want to return the town to the way it was.
But it’s impossible to confirm everything regarding the state of a region at the time of a disaster and with all the inevitable challenges involved, you have no choice but to think about designing the region in a different form than its current one. The idea behind regional design is having residents take the initiative in searching for that form.
If it’s for the sake of the region, residents will do what they have to do; that’s what it means to be a “region.” But urban planning tends to ignore residents’ autonomy. Whether it’s redevelopment or land readjustment, the same kinds of cities are popping up all around Japan in accordance with regulations. Even though these regulations were originally intended as a method for regions to use when discussing the kind of town they’d like to build, that idea seems to have turned on its head.
When disasters occur, oftentimes there will be a kind of perfect, glimmering recovery plan that emerges. But, it’s hard to imagine that the things that couldn’t be done before a disaster could suddenly be possible after it. Though it may be a hassle, all we can do is take our time to discuss, fight when we ought to fight, and think about what’s really important to the region and the livelihoods of the people that live there.
How should we face large-scale disasters moving forward?
Kubota:
You could also say that the urbanization that I mentioned earlier is the culmination of engineering technology. Urbanization and all its technological marvels have resulted in the enormous growth of disasters as well. Even when it comes to pollution, in the past, there were many cases in which pollution resulted from one company’s pursuit of profit, but with public utilities like nuclear power plants, these effects have spread even wider. Even our own daily lives are complicit.
I think it’s time that we really think about how we can change urbanization not simply in urban planning, but in civil engineering, information engineering and all other areas as well. The values behind urbanization are also tied to social issues such as population decline, declining birthrates and an aging population. I think we need to seriously think about how we can incorporate different values to fundamentally reconstruct our idea of urbanization.
*Kobe University and Tohoku University are in a comprehensive agreement in the area of disaster science. Kubota spoke at the “Kobe University symposium on the 30th memorial of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake” held on January 11, 2025.
Resume
In 1991, graduated from the Department of Urban Engineering of the University of Tokyo’s School of Engineering. In 1993, completed the master’s program at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Engineering. After working in urban planning at ARTEP (Tokyo), in 1998, completed the master’s course of the “Historic preservation program” at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. In 2000, completed the doctoral program at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Engineering. After serving as an associate professor and specially appointed professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Engineering, in 2023, became professor at Urban and Territorial Design Unit of Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Engineering.
