Sustainable community : seeking sustainable potentials in an urban community in Kobe, Japan

Abstract

Sustainability was once inherent in many communities of the pre-modern society; however, it has been lost under the progress of the modern society through humankind's rationalized and short-term visions in pursuing more comfort and convenience in their life. Consequently, humankind is gradually heading toward destruction of not only their own systems, but also whole systems on the earth. In the context of the modern society, how can sustainability in communities be regained to promise the future of humankind, the earth, and the universe. The intent of this thesis is to investigate the possible forms and systems of urban communities, whose compact forms and efficient social and physical systems have more potentials to sustainability than those of suburban types' do, while urban communities have been major consumers of energy and resources and major producers of various kinds of pollution and wastes. In order to explore this, the thesis seeks sustainable potentials in an urban inner-city community in Kobe, Japan and develops a sustainable community with proposals of systems and community design in the scale of urban design, a block, streets, and architecture. The site is located in Takatori-Higashi district in the city of Kobe where was totally devastated by the major earthquake in January, 1995 and where is needed to be restructured and reconstructed soon. As the outcome of th is exploration, this sustainable community will establish some possible answers to the question of how the communities for next generations should be and address possible issues of sustainable communities to be further explored and discussed.