Cities under stress: Cumulative and cascading effects of disaster on urban governance in Tokyo, 2011

On March 11, 2011, devastating earthquake and Tsunami hit East Japan. In addition, serious accidents of crippled nuclear power plant caused a crisis in Japan. Tokyo is located relatively far from epicenter and nuclear power plant, yet, it experienced serious stress under multiple influences of a series of events. The disaster had a multifaceted character. It brought about unexpected chain of effects in not only physical and economic but also political, social, and cultural spheres of urban life. More importantly, various additional effects of disasters were often produced, controlled, mediated, or interpreted in Tokyo as a political, economic, and cultural center of the nation. This paper considers about the nature of such cumulative and cascading effects of disaster on urban settings, by focusing on Tokyo. Each event under crisis has a different place of occurrence. It also has a different place of origin. In addition, each event has a different geographical scale of influence. Yet actually those are intermingled at the same time in each place, often finally leading to restructuring and rescaling of current urban settings. This paper focuses on emerging political regime of the city through crisis and recovery processes since March 2011. The mixture of neo-liberalism and new interventionism will be discussed.