ABSTRACT
Citizens’ movements, and machizukuri movements are no exception, are often induced by sudden changes in the current situation caused by institutions or actors outside the location. The most common cases are development plans and projects, be they public or private, which force the community or citizens of a location to either accept or protest the change. Natural disasters are an extreme form of sudden change in a local or regional system. After the Great Hanshin earthquake in 1995, large-scale urban planning projects in some areas and the absence of support by the administration in other parts of the disaster area left no choice for citizens but to engage in some kind of activity or other to recreate their living environment. Since then, the Hanshin area, and Kobe City at its core, has been at the forefront of machizukuri development in Japan. The surge in volunteer activities in the first few months after the earthquake also had decisive influence on the creation of the NPO-law that was introduced in 1998 (Pekkanen 2000: 111).
