Practical efforts for post-disaster reconstruction in the City of Ishinomaki, Miyagi

During the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR), discussions on “designing for a safe and secure home and community” referenced various case studies and challenges from the “Build Back Better” (hereafter “BBB”) project. This paper introduces the following achievements of the BBB projects carried out by the authors: 1 leadership from academia that established a framework of practical dialogue (conferences) – more than mere information sharing – for maturing plans, 2 creation of the master plan concepts for each project based on expert perspectives in urban planning, landscape, and architecture, 3 development of an interrelationship between local tsunami defenses, such as river and coastal levees, and community-specific contexts and damaged facilities within the framework of civic design and community-building in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake, 4 designing of reconstruction plans achievable through coordination with relevant institutions and through consensus-building with residents amid a high number of reconstruction projects, 5 advanced level of maturation of plans gained through continuous collaboration, and 6 creation of a place for community interaction as one step in recovery process and as a venue to realize the importance of public information disclosure.