An absorbing study of how Japanese policy-makers confronted challenges and exploited opportunities to rebuild a city in the aftermath of the world’s first major postwar disaster.

Six thousand people died and hundreds of thousands lost their homes when an earthquake hit Kobe in January 1995. The Hanshin Earthquake was the largest disaster to affect postwar Japan and one of the most destructive postwar natural disasters to strike a developed country. Although the media focused on the disaster’s immediate effects, the long-term reconstruction efforts have gone largely unexplored.

Based on fieldwork and interviews with planners, activists, and bureaucrats, Reconstructing Kobe records the first ten years of reconstruction and recovery and offers detailed descriptions of the geography of crisis and opportunity. Which districts were most vulnerable to the quake and why? Did planners successfully exploit opportunities to revitalize the city and make it more sustainable and disaster proof? David Edgington’s intricate investigation of one of the largest redevelopments in recent history offers a compelling post-disaster case study for planners and policy makers and is essential reading for students and scholars of Japanese urban and planning history.

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David Edgington’s fine analysis of the Kobe earthquake (officially known as the Hanshin Awaji Great Earthquake) places the event within a wider context of urban planning and disaster planning in Japan and examines the long-term impact of the earthquake. In so doing, it provides the reader with one of the most precise dissections of the Japanese planning system that has yet been written, as well as furnishing a profound insight into the various aspects of urban Japan.

"Edgington presents a richly descriptive account, based on meticulous data collection, of the urban planning and urban management aspects of Kobe’s long-term recovery from the Hanshin earthquake. The painstaking quality of the research is evident throughout the book, which imparts the key lessons of Kobe’s experience with disaster recovery." - Social Science Japan Journal, vol 14, no 2, Summer 2011