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Fires, Earthquakes, Modernization and Air Strikes: The Destruction and Revival of Japan's Cities

Carola Hein: May 6, 2002; Running Time: 01:16:09

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

Natural disasters, fires, and earthquakes, destroyed Japan's cities in whole or in part on numerous occasions over the last centuries. Human intervention, political change, modernization, and the air raids of the Second World War brought about further destruction and promoted the transformation of the Japanese city in the 19th and 20th centuries. Carola Hein argues that the traditional patchwork character of Japanese cities allowed for flexibility in their transformation, and that many traditional features of Japanese urbanism survived in spite of the obvious changes. The reconstruction of Japanese cities was generally left to private initiative and comprehensive centralized planning intervention, and only occurred when and where the cities had to be adapted to political, economic, social and cultural changes.

Lecture Details

Location: Room 10-485

About the Speaker

Carola Hein

Assistant Professor at Bryn Mawr College in the Growth and Structure of Cities Program

Carola Hein is Assistant Professor at Bryn Mawr College in the Growth and Structure of Cities Program. She trained in Hamburg (Diplom-Ingenieurin) and Brussels (Architecte) and obtained her doctorate at the Hochschule fr bildende Knste in Hamburg in 1995 on the topic of "Hauptstadt Europa." She has published and lectured widely on topics of contemporary and historical architectural and urban planning. From 1995 to 1999 she was a Visiting Researcher at Tokyo Metropolitan University and Kogakuin University, studying the reconstruction of Japanese cities after World War II and the Western influence on Japanese urban planning.