update：February 27, 2025

 

Interviewed by Mitsuru Ohno
Japanese text written by Nobuaki Takeda
Translated by Naoto Okamura

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One of the biggest misfortunes caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 was the devastation of local communities. But humans are resilient by nature. Disaster victims have relocated to new places and formed new communities to invigorate their newly adopted communities, despite some relationship challenges at times. What is key in that process is whether residents will be able to find “their own communal place” in such new communities. A case in point is a community building project for post-disaster public housing developed in the Asuto Nagamachi district, Taihaku Ward in Sendai City, Japan’s northeastern Miyagi Prefecture.

 The Toyota Foundation provided grants to this project on three separate occasions -- in 2012, 2014, and 2016 -- which in turn helped revitalize local communities and led to the establishment in October 2016 of a non-profit organization called Tsunagari Design Center (TDC). Professor Nobuyuki Arai of the Faculty of Architecture, Tohoku Institute of Technology, serves as the deputy representative director of TDC. When asked about this interesting project, Professor Arai said, “Since there was no precedent, we were working on this project, with an aim to set a precedent by ourselves.”

At the time, Sendai City’s municipal government conducted a survey of disaster victims about their intentions to rebuild their houses. According to Professor Arai, many respondents, including seniors, said they didn’t know how to answer survey questions such as which area they would prefer to live in if they were to move into a public housing complex. “That’s why we decided to provide a place for discussion and launched a workshop for how to sustain and continue a community that was fostered in the temporary housing. That was also around the time when we applied for a Toyota Foundation grant,” he said.

Sendai City’s municipal government has put in place a system in which the government selects proposals from private enterprises and buys facilities built by them or what is called public proposal buyout scheme. Professor Arai believed this would help realize the idea of creating a public housing complex that can retain the community of disaster-displaced residents. This was the reason behind the launch of the workshop, he said.

The workshop titled “Let’s think about living in my ideal house and town WS” was held for a total of nine times from March 2012 to January 2013, and as many as 60 people sometimes took part in it. “We continued to talk about what would be the next steps, including what kind of a town they would like to live in after moving out of the temporary housing. In the workshop, we looked at a small-scale model of a public housing complex that would incorporate their wishes, I remember seeing on their faces many participants express hope for the future,” Professor Arai said. “In the end, the residents and construction company officials discussed together and drew up public housing plans and submitted a proposal to the city government.”

Unfortunately, the proposal did not get adopted. But instead, three public housing buildings called Asuto Nagamachi municipality-run housing complex -- a total of 327 units spread across No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 buildings -- were constructed at three locations within a walking distance from the site of the temporary housing. A total of 82 households moved into these new housing units while trying to maintain a communal connection.

The residents started moving into the public housing units in April  2015. Some 25% of the residents came from the temporary housing in Asuto Nagamachi district, while the remaining 75% of them hailed from other government-paid temporary housing units from various areas. To gauge the life of these residents, Professor Arai’s laboratory and TDC jointly conducted a survey of all the households in October 2015, six months after they moved in. The survey found that the residents showed a high level of satisfaction perhaps because of a sense of relief after moving out of the temporary housing. But the survey also found that as high as 45.4% of them said they had no one to talk to other than their family members. Residents told him that they would meet other people less after move into the public housing, while some said they felt it was more fun living in the temporary housing community. “The survey revealed that many households were in a state of near isolation, so we reckoned that offering support was necessary,” said Professor Arai.

At this time, he decided to apply for a Toyota Foundation grant for the second time, for he thought it was necessary to establish a system for mutual support covering all public housing residents at the three locations. As more than 70% of the head of households in the public housing units aged 60 or older, it was considered quite difficult to run a neighborhood association independently on their own. Professor Arai concluded that it would be necessary to provide assistance or set up a system for taking on such a responsibility on behalf of senior residents. For that to happen, a grant money would be indispensable for implementing such an initiative on a pilot basis.

In October 2016, non-profit organization Tsunagari Design Center (TDC) was established, with an eye towards building communities that can better deal with an aging and isolated society. TDC launched its activities centered around community building and assistance for running the public housing neighborhood association, as well as research and survey of disaster-displaced people’s new way of living.

To create a communal place for everyone, Asuto Nagamachi district makes the public housing’s gathering venue open to outside people and groups, thereby encouraging their use of the venue for more opportunities for interaction and building a less isolating environment. As such, TDC has been involved even in the stages of studying how to manage and operate the communal space. For instance, water and electricity costs for a gathering venue are normally defrayed by a neighborhood community association’s membership fees. This means that the more frequent the venue is used for various activities, the tighter the association’s budget becomes. This will likely give rise to dissatisfaction among the resident members. Thus, TDC has introduced a system for charging venue users about 500 yen for three hours. What’s more, it has also introduced an online reservation system to make it easier for booking and running the venue, which is likely to lead to greater use of the facility. Furthermore, free Wi-Fi service became available in 2021 to enhance the venue’s usefulness.

In addition, TDC held what it called “Asuto Cafeteria” event during weekend lunch hours one to three times a month, offering about 30 set meals at reasonable prices -- 300 yen for an adult and 100 yen for a child -- and providing a place for eating lunch and enjoying interaction. The cooking was done by other support organizations. A dozen of such organizations, including a local catering service group and a college seminar specialized in training dietitians, took turns to do the cooking and held this lunch event for nearly 100 times prior to the start of the pandemic.

Every time, different menu items, such as hamburger steak, curry and rice, and Chanko hot pot, were offered to allow the participants to enjoy various types of dishes. “TDC’s role was to make arrangements for event dates and who would be in charge of cooking, reception, and accounting, as well as to set up tables and chairs. Since this Asuto Cafeteria is part of our efforts to help prevent isolation, we place counter seats by the window so that a person visiting by him/herself can also feel comfortable. While many of the participants are elderly women, some elderly men have begun to come in by themselves due in part to these efforts,” Professor Arai said.

The know-how accumulated from the experiences of Asuto Nagamachi has been applied to other regions. At the request of Shiogama City’s government, a municipality located on the coastal area north of Sendai City, TDC extended support to the community building effort for housing for disaster-displaced people in the city of Shiogama from fiscal 2018 to fiscal 2020. Assistance was given at four locations, including 170 units at Shimizusawa Higashi Public Housing and 80 units at Nishikicho Higashi Public Housing in Shiogama City, both of which began accepting disaster-displaced people from 2015 through 2017.

Even after one year since the residents moved in, no neighborhood community association was formed and various problems, including altercations between residents, occurred. At the time, an semi-government housing organization, Urban Renaissance Agency (UR), was responsible for operating public housing facilities in the city of Shiogama, and UR asked TDC to begin offering support in April of 2017. “At first, we held meetings to discuss issues with some voluntary residents, but we didn’t see any momentum building to forming a neighborhood community association at all. So, we decided to conduct a survey of all the households by questionnaire to find out about how the residents live and if they are willing to create a community association,” said Professor Arai. “As a result, 39% of the respondents said they would like to join if such an association was formed, while 42.1% answered they would not like to do so. And yet, the residents themselves felt the need for jointly managing their public housing facility. Instead, we suggested that they form a housing management association that would be responsible for collecting a common-area service charge and cleaning up common-use corridors and gardens. As such, they decided to create a management association smoothly.”

Meanwhile, club activities by various organizations, both internal and external, were already held at the gathering place of the public housing facility. To keep up the level of such activities and promote the greater use of the venue, TDC produced and distributed brochures about the gathering place. It also held meetings for exchanging opinions between venue users and the residents’ management association representatives 12 times a year, thereby working to implement initiatives to enhance the communal place’s role in preventing social isolation.

In fiscal 2017, TDC also assisted in the effort to make gardens greener at a collective relocation site in Tamaura-nishi district in the city of Iwanuma, south of Sendai City. In fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2019, TDC encouraged parents and children to use the gathering place and held workshops on pottery and confectionary making, among other events.

Outside of Miyagi Prefecture, TDC took part in a workshop in which prospective residents and experts exchanged opinions about the planned public disaster housing Minami Aoyama Apartment, a facility for inland disaster evacuees in the city of Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. TDC mainly offered advice on how to design a communal gathering place inside the public housing facility. “We made a lot of suggestions about the gathering place, and the use of shoes inside the building has been approved. This not only makes the place more welcoming but also makes effective use of the space by eliminating the space for shoe storage cabinets,” Professor Arai said. “Staff members of Morioka Reconstruction Support Center for Devastated Areas, which is an organization in charge of managing the gathering place, told me that the use of shoes inside proved to be so right!

Furthermore, TDC visited the town of Mashiki in Kumamoto Prefecture, southern Japan, which sustained extensive damage from the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake, and shared its support know-how and expertise gained from the disaster reconstruction process. The use of shoes inside a gathering place for creating a communal place has taken root in disaster evacuee public housing facilities across Japan.

Then comes the inevitable question: How has TDC secured a revenue source for continuing its activities even after the Toyota Foundation’s grants ended? What TDC has decided to do is to run a share house facility. The idea was generated when a TDC member was asked about how to re-use an empty house owned by an acquaintance. After studying possible uses, TDC decided to use it as a share house so as to generate a revenue. Professor Arai and his students decided what to retain and remove from among remaining furniture and equipment, drew up renovation drawings, and successfully transformed the house into a five-rooms share house facility.  

TDC received grants on three separate occasions from the Toyota Foundation. What kind of achievements has that made?

In fiscal 2012, the first granted project title was “Building and continuing a new mutually-assisting community in proposing residents-centered reconstruction housing.” Since the Sendai City government introduced the so-called public proposal buyout scheme – a system in which the government selects proposals from private enterprises and buys facilities built by them – the grant money was used to conduct activities, including disaster housing proposal-making workshops for disaster evacuees to discuss what kind of a house they would like to live in. “I think workshops gave hope to and empowered disaster victims who had lost their family members and properties. At the initial stages of reconstruction, it was important to conduct an activity for transforming ‘despondency into hope.’” These activities helped deepen trust between disaster victims and supporters. Without trust, TDC could not have continued its activities,” Professor Arai said.

From fiscal 2014, the Toyota Foundation’s second grant was given to TDC for its project “Building a mutually-assisting community embracing public reconstruction housing at three locations in Asuto Nagamachi district.” Support activity for disaster-displaced people often comes to an end when they move out of temporary housing, he said and added that it was very significant that TDC’s support activity has been carried over even after they moved into the public housing units. “The grant money allowed us to help form their neighborhood community association and to hold workshops encouraging support organizations to continue their activities. As a result, we helped develop an independently-run community association and build a mutual network of support organizations for collaboration. These were great achievements,” Professor Arai said. “By identifying how the gathering venue was used and what it would take to create a communal place, we came to learn about what diversity-minded community and communal place should be like. That was a great takeaway for us. I think it was thanks to the grant money that we have become aware of this new value.”  

The third grant from the Toyota Foundation was made to the activity that TDC carried out in fiscal 2016, “A program promoting the use of a shared space for creating a communal place in public housing for disaster-displaced people.” Offering greater usability and user value through initiatives, such as introducing the usage fee, building an online reservation system, and installing Wi-Fi connection, has prompted diverse organizations to use the gathering venue, Professor Arai said. “Asuto Cafeteria requires volunteers to do the cooking, but for them to continue, we need to be careful to not overburden them and keep them engaged and satisfied. We have been able to achieve that balance by using the grant money to defray every little cost for having volunteers. In my opinion, paying such careful attention to staffers working on the ground is essential for having a sustainable system in place.”

What Professor Arai has learned through the support activity is that careful examination is necessary for extending support to a community transitioning from an emergency situation to a more normal state. He acknowledges that giving support can serve as an important element of care for disaster victims who suffers great losses, including of people-to-people ties and community solidarity. Over time, however, human relationships can be troublesome at times. “At a time like that, seeking only for a vibrant atmosphere and active interaction can make some people feel uneasy. Under such circumstances, it is important to recognize changes in a given situation and modify the content of activities accordingly,” he said.

What’s more, Professor Arai also feels that the role his university team plays is more significant than expected. “I realized that a university is well-positioned to act as a bridge connecting various stakeholders. When it comes to introducing a new system or new idea, it is not only important for us to explain in detail for better understanding but also necessary for us to win people over. It seems that they listen with an open mind when information comes from university-affiliated supporters,” he said. “For one thing, TDC is characterized by the fact that it has a number of university researchers on its board of directors. With that in mind, we would like to continue with our activity, going forward.”

Those grant-awarded projects have yielded a number of activities, but most notably they have led to the establishment of TDC itself. While it is true that few public housing communities make good use of their gathering venue, TDC has become a leader in creating a communal place for residents by utilizing such a venue. In this process, we have built relationships with various organizations, which in turn has helped us to launch a profit-making business of running a share house,” Professor Arai said. This underscores the fact that many connections made through promoting the grant-awarded projects have solidified TDC’s organizational structure.