OSAKA CITY'S EARTHQUAKE PREPAREDNESS IMPROVEMENT MEASURES

In the early morning of January 17, 1995, an earthquake of magnitude 7.2 occurred, with its epicenter in Awaji Island, to the south of Kobe City located near Osaka City. It was later named the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake.

The earthquake left over 6,400 people dead and about 40,000 injured, completely destroying over 100,000 houses and buildings, causing about 300 fires, resulting in the suspension of such “lifelines” as city water, electricity, and gas supply, and halting transportation systems including road and railway traffic. It inflicted extensive damage not only on Kobe, but also on Osaka and other cities.

In the light of destruction caused by the earthquake, in 1997, the Osaka Municipal Government, the Osaka City Regional Preparedness Plan, which includes citizen evacuation in the event of earthquake, construction of seismic-resistant facilities, and fire-fighting and other emergency activities. The original plan was prepared, on the basis of an inter-plate earthquake occurring beneath the Pacific Ocean. In addition to this hypothesis, the new plan also incorporates the assumption that an earthquake with its epicenter under Osaka could occur due to movement of the Uemachi Faults running under the central part of the City in the north-south direction. Estimated damage that could be incurred through this potential earthquake were used for the latter plan.     

Prediction models for sewer infrastructure utilizing rule-based simulation

Management of infrastructure projects is becoming increasingly challenging due to inherent uncertainties. The most effeective way to deal with uncertainty is to collect supplementary information and knowledge. When expensive or infeasible, quantification of uncertainty may be performed using analytical or simulation techniques. The City of Edmonton, Canada has approximately 4600 km of sewer pipes in the combined, sanitary, and storm sewer local systems with uncertainty issues related to deterioration. The City has taken a proactive approach with respect to sewer rehabilitation, as it is more cost-effeective to repair a defective pipe prior to failure rather than after a collapse. This article demonstrates an approach for predicting the condition of a sewer pipe and the related cost of rehabilitation, given the limited data. Three models are described in this article that are developed to assist the City of Edmonton to effeectively plan maintenance expenditure. Each model uses a combination of rule-based simulation and probability analysis to assist in the planning of future expenditures for sewer maintenance, thereby producing an invaluable planning tool.     

Planning for population ageing: Ensuring enabling and supportive physical-social environments – Local infrastructure challenges

Ensuring enabling and supportive environments is a key global priority in planning for population ageing. This paper examines the challenges local governments face in creating age-friendly physical-social environments. Findings from a recent study of local government and ageing in New South Wales, Australia and subsequent research are reported. The analysis reveals that local councils have differing abilities to provide age-friendly local infrastructure. Challenges are greater overall for regional, rural and fringe councils compared to metropolitan. Timely provision is greatly constrained by insufficient resources, the large scale of the task and the low priority accorded, despite the immediate need for action. A pressing requirement is demonstrated for local councils to give primacy to population ageing in their long-term strategic, asset and financial planning, and to engage in reform measures to assist in financing the cost.     

Space of Risk: The Contribution of Planning Policies to Conflicts in Cities,Lessons from Nazareth

This article defines a new concept, ‘Space of risk’, as a lived space that has low levels of trust among different urban groups; where people feel vulnerable and defenseless against terrorizing, urban clashes and riots. Based on a qualitative study, the article examines this concept in the city of Nazareth, which has been in turmoil since the introduction of a plan for a plaza. The article concludes that the reasons that may strongly contribute to the production of spaces of risk are: lack of the right to the city for urban inhabitants; the hegemony of the state over the city through ‘ethnocratic’ urban policies; the hegemony of global forces and neo-liberal agendas over the locale; deficient local politics; absence of communicative planning procedures; and contradictions between planners conception of the place and the way inhabitants conceive and experience it in their daily life practices. As planning has the power of creating and triggering risks in cities, the article suggests some practical ways for planners to avoid the production of spaces of risk through new techniques of collaborative planning.     

Environmentally Sustainable Construction: Knowledge and Learning in London Planning Departments

Environmentally sustainable construction is now recognised as a significant element of the broader sustainable development agenda and planners are being called upon to play a role in delivering more sustainable patterns of construction and development. This puts particular demands on the knowledge resources of planners since knowledge is implicated in the power relations between planners and developers. This paper examines the interrelationship between knowledge of environmentally sustainable construction and practice in planning departments. Drawing on a survey of and interviews with planners in London, it discusses the construction of knowledge within the dynamics of planning organisations and the potential for learning to promote a more sustainable built environment. Wenger's concept of communities of practice frames the analysis, alongside consideration of the translation of knowledge into bureaucratic and usable forms and the role of knowledge brokers in this process.     

Emotions and Planning

Planning analysts taught to separate cognitive and emotional qualities of judgment tend to study cognitive rather than emotional relationships. Psychological research on planning emphasizes the cognitive over the emotional, while social psychological research studies the effects of cognitive emotional interaction on planning judgment. This article argues that planning analysts might combine cognitive and emotional ideas about planning using research insights from the work of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio and the conceptual insights from the work of philosopher Martha Nussbaum. Two brief planning episodes illustrate the relevance of such integration for studying and understanding the kind of planning judgments practitioners make in their everyday practice.     

Public Participation and New Urbanism: A Conflicting Agenda?

The challenges to public participation in planning are numerous. Inclusive and equitable processes are recognised as an ideal in much planning theory and practice, yet this ideal is increasingly difficult to realise in today's societies that comprise diverse and multiple publics. Within the wider sustainability debate, “New Urbanism” has emerged as a pragmatic alternative to conventional low-density development. Concomitant with a range of prescribed physical outcomes, the New Urbanism movement advocates a process of “citizen-based participatory planning and design”. Charrettes, with urban design workshops, are the favoured tools for achieving this goal. However, it is argued that the adherence to a single type of participatory tool can be inconsistent with accepted ideals of participation processes and has several implications. Of particular concern is the role of the charrette planner or facilitator, a figure who has the potential to manipulate the public because of his/her inevitable allegiance to the New Urban agenda. In addition, the examination of a charrette process in a small New Zealand town raises several broader questions about the ability of the approach to address issues of inclusiveness and the recognition of difference, two fundamental elements of good participatory processes.     

Dialectics of Power: The Case of Tulihta Land-use Agreement

Case studies of planning which involve criminal corruption are rare. The article presents a Finnish court case known as “Tulihta”, concerning the breach of a land purchase contract and treachery in the preparation of the detailed plan for the land property in question, during 1989–1993. The case is analysed from the power perspective by using a framework developed by Mäntysalo and Rajaniemi (2003 Mäntysalo, R. and Rajaniemi, J. 2003. Vallan ulottuvuuksia maankäytön suunnittelussa. Synteesi, 22(3): 117–136.  [Google Scholar]). In the framework, two sets of binary characteristics of power, namely power as control and as ability, and explicit and implicit power, are combined into a horizontal-vertical field. The case analysis is aimed to test the applicability of the framework, as well as to reveal the manifold aspects of power at play in a land-use planning process.     

Places that Support Human Flourishing: Lessons from Later Life

This review paper contends that by paying attention to the quality of life issues raised by older people, planners may promote better places for all. Recent research in the UK that asked older people to identify quality of life criteria revealed that health, income, social networks, community participation, information, activities, home, neighbourhood and mobility are key areas where old age can be enriched. The paper argues that of these, home, neighbourhood and mobility are paramount for four reasons. Firstly, older people are seen as situated, even fixed, in domestic environments; secondly, society has responded to later life by creating age-segregated spaces; thirdly, lessening mobility may increase the importance of the local arena and fourthly the interplay between the self and the environment underpins or undermines independence. The significance of place means that planners, even more than other professionals, need to be age aware. Drawing on recent national and international research this paper contemplates what a more age-friendly place might be like and considers how issues of age can interact with the broader planning agendas of sustainability, cohesion and liveability to create places that promote well-being for every member of the community.     

Collaborating to Compete—The Governance Implications of Stakeholder Agendas at Mount Pulag National Park,the Philippines

Regional planning has long sought to manage places that extend across political boundaries. The international trend to decentralize governance and promote co-management of protected areas is consistent with emerging collaborative spatial planning theory (Healey, 1997, 1999, 2006), which suggests that through dialogue, parties assert multiple cultural perspectives, share knowledge, and forge shared landscape values as the basis of decisions. As a form of collaborative spatial planning, co-management specifies shared resource management power between national government and one or more local or indigenous communities. Both approaches assume decentralized governance systems. Although critics fault collaborative planning for glossing over historical and cultural contexts, and for ignoring power in decision making, few case studies ask why partners participate or how specific decentralized governance institutions affect plan implementation. This paper draws from a study of co-management at Mount Pulag National Park, the Philippines—a shared indigenous cultural landscape that was to be managed by a board representing multiple local, indigenous, and national jurisdictions. Tracing road decisions by two municipal partners, the paper summarizes how and why major stakeholders adopted and then circumvented protective policies by building duplicative road projects across fragile forests. In this context of changing indigenous rights, the same decentralization laws that enabled co-management also rewarded competition and strategic behavior that weakened the collaborative and fragmented the shared landscape. The case demonstrates the need to interrogate, rather than assume the benefits of decentralized governance and to study why stakeholders participate before relying on voluntary collaboration to manage regional landscapes. The initial version of this paper was presented to the 2006 annual meetings of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Fort Worth, Texas.