Monday, June 13, 2011
It's been three months since the 3/11 earthquake---Part 1: We face more critical situations than ever.
I have experienced being involved in an urban town project that includes urban land readjustment. Can you imagine the project? For example, there are many small houses and shops in an urban area in front of a major train station. All the streets there are narrow, and it often causes traffic jams. When the area needs to be redeveloped to meet social demands, the project is promoted. Generally, it takes a long time like a decade to accomplish the project since it takes some time for the local government to negotiate relocation, compensation, equivalent exchange and what have you with residences, landlords and other stakeholders.
Anyway, right after the 3/11 earthquake, it was reported that the Kobe local government had finally accomplished urban town projects related to another massive earthquake which hit mainly Kobe in 1995. The earthquake devastated some old towns. To rebuild better towns, Kobe launched the urban towns projects. Since at the time, the Kobe local government was known for having a lot more flexibility to negotiate than other local governments, I expected that it wouldn't take ten years for Kobe to accomplish the projects (When I worked with Kobe, I was surprised to see that Kobe wasn't like a local government).
Although the 1995 massive earthquake hit urban areas, devastated some of them and killed a lot of people, the disaster-struck areas weren't very large and were located near the helpful, fully functioning large city of Osaka, which was hardly damaged by the earthquake. Three months after the 1995 earthquake, all the infrastructure was already restored, almost all the bodies were discovered, and many of the victims were able to move on to the new stage "reconstruction".
It's been three months since the 3/11 disaster happened. We face more critical situations than ever. Many people are at a loss as to what to do.
