| Abstract: | This paper examines the housing recovery policy carried out in Kobe, a disaster city heavily damaged by the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 17 January 1995. The housing problems in the earthquake-hit city resulted not only from direct damage by the disaster. Urban restructuring, underway beforehand, had been generating socio-economic polarisation and geographical disparity in housing conditions. The earthquake caused especially heavy damage on the inner-city housing of low-income people and the elderly. Housing recovery progress in the post-disaster period has also been unequal. This paper shows the growing socio-economic and spatial polarisation. The framework of Japan's housing policy is a two-tiered system. On the one hand, most people are encouraged to obtain their own houses by their own efforts on the market, whereas on the other, public housing as residual welfare housing is directly provided for those who are marginal to the market. The housing recovery policy followed this framework, and functioned to socio-spatially isolate low-income and/or elderly victims. |
