On 9 January 2023, The Japan Times published an article on disaster reduction research in Japan and the Pacific, which includes expert comments by UNU-IAS Research Associate Juan Pastor-Ivars.
Drawing on the experience of these two disaster-prone regions, the article explores how city design can mitigate disasters using alternative approaches such as regenerative urbanism. This concept is at the core of Architecture and Urban Design for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience (ArcDR3), a global initiative that brings together 11 universities researching strategies for risk-resilient environments across the Pacific Rim.
Excerpt:
“The types of cities they (ArcDR3 participants) are proposing are very new in the field of urban planning, and are quite interesting,” said Juan Pastor-Ivars, an expert in urban ecosystem development at the UNU-IAS (the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability) in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture. “I think that their approach is correct, as they understand that there should be a balance between what we get from nature and what we need to protect ourselves from in nature too.”
The full article is available on the Japan Times website.
