Managing and bridging communities in temporary housing: case of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in Kesennuma City, Japan

Yasutaka Ueda () and Rajib Shaw

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2016, vol. 80, issue 1, 567-587

Abstract: Over the past years, many scholars emphasized the importance of maintaining social relations which were built before disasters into temporary housing communities. However, reality is that most of the temporary housing complexes need to develop newly community relations due to the difficulties of maintaining community ties built before disasters. This paper attempts to find community management issues in newly developed temporary housing communities and argues solutions to the issues of constructing social capital. Key findings from this study are summarized as follows: From bonding aspect, the challenges of community management in temporary housing are leadership, ownership, and participation. One of the suggestions to solve these challenges is to employ community organizers, and a union of existing neighborhood associations is supposed to be the community organizer. From bridging aspect, information sharing among presidents of the neighborhood association in temporary housing was effective for the improvement of community management in the neighborhood associations. If this information sharing is run by an external organization, the external organization can be a bridging organization to make weak ties among neighborhood associations, which overcomes negative impacts of social capital. From linking aspect, particularly housing reconstruction is a big concern for residents in temporary housing and gives impact to community management, and therefore, linking information on housing reconstruction process to management of neighborhood associations in temporary housing is significant. To foster three categories of social capital in temporary housing, key is a bridging organization as an external organization, which functions to link among neighborhood associations and neighborhood associations to external resources. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Keywords: Temporary housing; Neighborhood association; Social capital; The East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1007/s11069-015-1984-3

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