Making Sustainable Network-Community for Refugees from Fukushima Nuclear Plant Disaster on Stable Historic Castle Town and Region

After Fukushima nuclear power generation plant accident disaster, all of residents in the area contaminated by radioactivity, and all public facilities are evacuated to surrounding regions or more remote cities by central government’s directions. So refugee temporary housing estates are scattered and aged people left there after six years since the disaster. Namie town is the biggest one in these area. City of Nihonmastu is typical Japanese castle town city and adjacent to contaminated area, and accepted many Nanie refugees, temporary housings, town office and schools, hospitals and industry site, so on. Fukushima Namie Recovering Project team, organized by NPO Shinmachi-Namie and Waseda university, proposed Network-community connecting several refugee housing estates, evacuated public facilities and other city cores. It is necessary to connect them and reintegrate their community facilitating “supporting system for network community” in practice. This vision of Network-community would be adapted to the historical stable region, which involves various dispersed, aged and isolated communities. Nihonmatsu, as the Castle Town City of Nakadori-region in Fukushima prefecture, attracts people’s attention by its historical urban areas, old streets and lots of unoccupied housing and so on. That is, it is very hard to let Nihonmatsu people think optimistically about the shelter for Namie evacuees. Nevertheless, the areas of Nakadori region including Nihonmatsu may cooperate with the Namie evacuee and energize the ruined coastline by “Network Community” – the network that encompasses various historical traditions that still exist today as the regional resources; thus, the vision of future Fukushima is expectable.