Urban Community and Civil Society in the Reconstruction Process from the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake

Abstract

To begin with, in this paper, I raise an issue whether urban community based on ‘new civil society’ has emerged in damaged area in the reconstruction phase after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. In this type of community, various organized actors, like neighborhood and voluntary associations, nonprofit organizations and others, tend to collaborate to solve common social problems. I researched and compared two cases of community reconstruction process in Kobe City. Main findings are as follows. Although different types of collaborative projects were attempted or carried out in reconstruction phase in two communities, both ended at about 10 years after Quake because of conflicting among actors. We may interpret it as a sort of conflict on the community orientation, between ‘local-cosmopolitanism’ and ‘localcommunitarianism’. But we also point out that such collaborative projects have increased all over Japan after Quake. We find out, in this research of reconstruction process, some facilitating or interrupting conditions for emerging urban community based on ‘new civil society’.