Enhancing Sense of Place and Belonging to Lost Places in the Long-Term Recovery: Government Planning and Citizen-Driven Placemaking in Tsunami Reconstruction Memorial Parks after the 2011 Japan Tsunami

Abstract

Physical destruction, land use control, residential buyouts, and relocation of residence following disasters disconnect people and places. This paper explores sense of place and belonging to disaster memorial parks of local communities after the 2011 Japan tsunami. We analyzed government planning, citizen-driven placemaking in tsunami reconstruction memorial parks, and residents’ sense of places and belonging to disaster memorial parks through quantitative and qualitative case study methods, including a questionnaire survey, interviews, analysis of government reports. Our results show that the sense of belonging is determined by their sense of places to memorial parks: "part of the everyday landscape", "nostalgia" and "symbol of reconstruction” enhanced place belongings of local communities. We also find that citizen-driven placemaking embodies the concept of disaster memorial parks developed by government planning. These results suggest that citizen-driven placemaking could potentially serve as a driving force to transform sense of place which enhances sense of belonging to lost places. We conclude that local authorities must pay attention to the fluctuation in the meaning of lost place which may influence long-term community recovery.

Keywords: Placemaking, Disaster commemoration, Disaster memorial parks, Post-disaster recovery planning, Land use governance, The Great East Japan Earthquake