This keynote presents machizukuri as a community-led approach to urban and regional practice that has evolved in Japan over the past half century, rooted in a much longer historical experience of living with the contradictions of nature.
In the Japanese context, nature has always been understood as both a source of life—providing fertile land, water, and rich landscapes—and, at times, a source of serious danger through earthquakes, floods, and other disasters. This dual condition is conceptualized as the world of shan–shui (mountain–water).
Machizukuri emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s as local communities responded to environmental degradation, disaster risks, and the loss of historic environments caused by rapid postwar growth and function-oriented redevelopment. Conventional planning systems, which prioritized infrastructure and disaster prevention while neglecting place-based environmental and cultural values, proved insufficient. In response, residents developed experimental, bottom-up practices that embodied local democracy and collective learning.
The development of machizukuri can be understood in three generations. The first emphasized experimental participation and grassroots democracy. The second expanded collaborative design and co-creation among residents, professionals, and local governments. The third, shaped decisively by post-disaster recovery after the 1995 Hanshin–Awaji Earthquake, advanced comprehensive community-based management through new civic organizations and volunteer networks, forming a “third arm” beyond the state and the market.
As machizukuri matured—developing both its methods and institutional frameworks—and was poised to address the complex challenges of the twenty-first century, Japan encountered the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. This disaster not only caused immense physical destruction but also revealed, with greater clarity, the deeper and more systemic challenges that contemporary society faces.
Through the processes of post-disaster machizukuri, we gained a range of important, if modest, insights: how to live with increasingly severe natural conditions, including those intensified by climate change; how communities can come together in solidarity; and how shared narratives of recovery and future life can enable people to overcome crisis.
Situated within Japan’s shan–shui landscapes and layered urban history, machizukuri represents an ongoing effort to live with nature that is simultaneously generous and occasionally hazardous. In an era of climate change, demographic decline, and technological transformation, this keynote argues that machizukuri offers globally relevant insights into resilience—grounded in long-term social learning and place-based coexistence with nature.

* Shan–shui (literally “mountain–water”) is a classical East Asian concept that expresses an integrated understanding of landscape in which mountains, water, and human life are perceived as an interconnected whole. It is not merely a physical description of scenery, but a cultural and philosophical worldview that emphasizes harmony, flow, and the dynamic relationship between human settlement and the natural environment.
The “Shan-Shui World” refers to a comprehensive, integrated environment rooted in the eastern edge of the Eurasian continent, where the warm and humid monsoon climate nurtures lush green mountains and pure flowing waters. Within this natural setting, human life—comprising daily living, production practices, and the environmental technologies that sustainably support them—evolves in harmony with nature. The landscapes shaped by these interactions form a unique cultural aesthetic. Together, these elements constitute a cultural-ecological system where people coexist with nature across generations. This “Shan-Shui World” can be broadly understood as a realization of the concept of “Shan-Shui Ichi-Nyo”—a worldview in which mountains (shan) and waters (shui), nature and humanity, landscape and livelihood are not separate but indivisibly one.
This world encompasses cities and villages, rivers and lakes, satoyama (managed woodlands), and satoumi (coastal commons), forming spaces not only for agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, but also for intellectual creativity and cultural expression. As our era seeks renewed harmony with nature, this integrated Shan-Shui environment offers rich insights and valuable models for sustainable living and place-making.