More than 40 percent of coastal land purchased by municipal governments in three prefectures after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami remains vacant with no utilization plans, an Asahi Shimbun survey showed.
Municipalities hit by the disasters in March 2011 relocated residential areas to hilly and inland areas and purchased coastal plots from their owners.
The purchased lands total about 2,028 hectares in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures. Municipal governments are mainly making plans for companies to set up factories or offices on the vacant properties, but progress is going slowly.
The Asahi Shimbun asked 26 coastal municipalities in the three prefectures about the status of those purchased lands as of February this year. At that point they had decided on how to utilize 1,150 hectares, or 57 percent, of the land.
The municipalities have no plans, or are still considering how to use the remaining 878 hectares, or 43 percent. And in 188 of those 878 hectares, the municipalities are not likely to work out plans for utilizing them in fiscal 2016, which starts in April.
Of the 1,150 hectares of land where uses have been decided, 57 hectares are accounted for by those where the land has already been used or has been prepared for particular purposes.
Many of these are utilized or are being prepared to be used as parks or fishing equipment yards--usages that are unlikely to lead those municipalities to economic recovery.
Before the March 11, 2011, disasters, some of the 2,028 hectares were in central areas of the municipalities. Due to this, the municipal governments hoped that companies would set up factories or offices on these sites to create jobs and revive the areas.
The city government of Iwanuma in Miyagi Prefecture plans to use 87 of its 107 hectares of land for parks and large farmlands. The city government of Higashi-Matsushima, also in the prefecture, has devised plans for using 86 of its 165 hectares of lands, including as factory sites.
However, the city of Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture, has formulated plans for only 15 percent of its post-disaster purchased land.
“Companies are reluctant to make inroads in depopulated areas,” said a city government official.
Meanwhile, a town government official in Yamamoto, Miyagi Prefecture, said, “As the lands we purchased are scattered about, it is difficult to utilize them.”
According to Satoru Masuda, professor of regional planning at the graduate school of Tohoku University, the main purpose of purchasing the properties was to urge residents to relocate inland or to higher areas.
Since there are plots of land that are difficult to use, it can’t be helped that utilization of them has yet to be decided in more than 40 percent of the instances, Masuda explained.
“There are areas where it is more desirable to keep plots of land vacant as they incur minimal maintenance costs, rather than working out unrealistic plans and spending a huge amount of taxpayers’ money on them,” he said.