LABS FOR RAINWATER SOCIETY
Key Elements Realizing The City Vision
Numerous activities likely to resonate with these generations were prepared in this research with the aim of realizing the defined city vision. They were designed to extend, spreading from the core generations with which they most resonated to reach other generations as well. The main results of the research are indicated below.
(1) Intergenerational research teams
In order to carry out intergenerational research, it is important that research teams themselves are multigenerational. Consideration was given to the age composition and gender composition of teams. Teams were made up of people from all generations, from their 20s to their 80s, with a roughly 1:1 ratio of men to women. They combined members with humanities and science backgrounds, consisted of members with connections with local people and who had engaged in close-knit community activities, and drew from all of the engineering universities in Fukuoka City. Having teams composed of people who can assess the mentalities of all generations, and who have connections with those generations, is extremely important for intergenerational co-creation activities, and was a key factor in the growth of these activities.
(2) Multifaceted, stratified approach
We repeatedly engaged in diverse activities aimed at a wide range of stakeholders, including tea parties at the Convivial Center for Rainwater Harvesting, the superhero stories, Mizbering Hiikawa, regular publication of the seasonal "Amamizu Seikatsu" periodical, the publication of the picture book "Hiikawa No Yamata No Orochi Taiji" ("Hiikawa Drives Out the Eight-Headed Serpent"), Rainwater Coordinator Training Program for technical specialists, interchange with stakeholders of Tokyo's Zenpukuji River., lecture meetings, and active participation in symposia.
We call this a multifaceted, stratified approach, and it is the core research method used in this project. Over time, new keypersons appear, new groups are formed and existing groups collaborate and expand their activities.
A multifaceted approach involves diverse efforts directed at varied stakeholders and combinations of stakeholders (such as nursery school aged children and university students or junior high school students and senior citizens). A stratified approach repeatedly addresses these stakeholders through the multifaceted approach.
The target stakeholders are residents of watershed areas and industries and organizations expected to be particularly important key players in the realization of Rainwater Society. Watershed area residents are approached at each generational level -- senior citizens, middle-aged residents, young parents and people of the same age, young adults and college students, junior high school students, elementary school students, and children not yet of school age. Industries and organizations include civil engineers, architects, and gardeners that perform actual implementation for private homes, government bodies that implement policies (prefectural, city, and ward level), private companies and enterprises, organizations involved in vegetation planting and environmental improvement activities, and educational organizations such as schools and nursery schools. We used multiple methods to approach each of these targets. We believe that our multifaceted, stratified approach is one of the major accomplishments of our research.
(3) Low participation barrier activities
Activities such as the Riverside Cheers (in which people gather along the Hii River on July 7 for a toast and drinks) and the Hii River Walk are easy for people to take part in. This provides opportunities to expose diverse stakeholders to the Rainwater Society concept. These low participation barrier activities are extremely important opportunities for participation.
(4) Gathering spots and platforms
People from all generations participate in activities at the Convivial Center for Rainwater Harvesting, primarily through events. These events are particularly driven by senior citizens, and the Center serves as a base of local residents. The Center attracted a broad range of stakeholders to share experiences with implementation through intergenerational co-creation, drawn by the allure of implementation. This contributed to the spread of the rainwater society concept. The monthly Mizbering Hiikawa meetings developed as a platform for sharing various activities in the watershed area. Young parents and young people with an interest in the local environment actively participated in these meetings. Creating gathering sites and platforms is an effective method of promoting intergenerational co-creation.
(5) Approaching technical personnel and other occupations
The rainwater coordinator training program was attended not only by members of the general public, but also technical specialists, environmental group members, government personnel, members of international organizations, and more. These participants developed their own network.
There were key persons from various industries and sectors, and the workshops played important roles, such as developing into training for the World Bank, launching a Green Infrastructure Association chapter in Fukuoka, and helping share the Rainwater Society vision with major consultants. Approaching technical personnel is also important from the perspective of spreading the vision.
(6) Rooted in culture
This is another of the important outcomes of this research. Science and technology must be applied at the cultural level in order to truly resonate with people. We considered "rainwater visualization" to be a key phrase, but it isn't enough to merely visualize it. It needs to have emotional resonance as well. To emotionally resonate with people, it is important that efforts extend to the aesthetic and cultural levels. One of our hypotheses is that the failure of conventional and comprehensive flood control projects to spread to existing residences is due not only to their being "invisible systems," but also because they have not been able to become "cultural systems."
As the following examples show, in this project we extended academic knowledge and technologies to the aesthetic and cultural levels, which resonated with people.
(7) Living organisms link generations
Through interviews and a postal study, we measured the amount people were willing to pay for current Hii river improvement projects and further ecosystem-friendly river improvement projects being carried out in 2009 as flooding countermeasures. The average amount respondents were willing to pay per month for the current river improvements was 457 yen, while the average amount they were willing to pay per month for further ecosystem-friendly river improvements was 652 yen. These figures were high compared to existing case studies related to rivers (Ono 2001 and Shinbo 2005), and the average amount for the further ecosystem-friendly river improvements was roughly 200 yen higher than that for current river improvements. This shows the interest that people living alongside river have in flood control measures and ecosystem-friendly river improvements, as well as their desire for improvements to wildlife living environments.
A study in Fukuoka Prefecture found that a large number of people used the area alongside the Hiikawa River for walking, etc. (roughly 5,000 people per day), reaffirming the importance of improving the environment of the Hii River and linking it to the Rainwater Society framework.
Furthermore, the Multi-Story Connection Team conducted multiple interviews and workshops within communities. Through these activities, it found common threads in local history that wound through daily life in the areas of the histories, levels, ages, and living spaces of residents. It created a list of these nodes , and plotted (1) wildlife, (2) river structures, (3) events, (4) scenery and landmarks, and (5) key logistics sites on maps, representing them with icons. Workshops held using these maps showed that focusing on living things made it easy to cultivate a sense of imagination about the futures of rivers by looking from the present back into the past and from the past into the future. Our research also showed that it was possible to create a system for measuring generations diachronically, and in the present, by using living things as indices, in relation to a) the current level of awareness and understanding, b) whether effects are continuously diachronic, and to what degree, c) the potential for leaders to maintain continuity through the past, present, and future, and d) the potential for lost interest to be rekindled through reinterpretation or revisiting. We found that other nodes changed with time, and that diachronous sharing was difficult.
(8) Visualization
We created various visualizations to make it easy to understand the Labs' philosophy and activities. We used the concept of visual identity to create visuals such as a car decorated as the Tamerunjar Car, symbolizing Rainwater Society; a logo design for uniformly communicating the Labs' image, a miniature model of the Convivial Center for Rainwater Harvesting, a roughly 60 second long animation regarding the Convivial Center for Rainwater Harvesting's collection of water, a method for information provided by smartphones using QR codes, and business cards. We believe the logo and decorated car, in particular, were especially effective not only at being easy to understand visualizations, but in conveying the validity and trustworthiness of the activities.
The superhero stories and physical expressions of rainwater carried out with children visually expressed the core Rainwater Society story of "collecting rainwater that falls from the sky, using it effectively to provide water to the land, enriching rivers and the sea, and returning it to the sky." We successfully created opportunities for children to become more familiar with Rainwater Society while having fun.
(9) Pictorial map
In this project, as indicated in (6) and (7) above, it is vital to root Rainwater Society as a cultural system, part of the connections between people, nature, and societal culture, at sensory and awareness levels that support peoples' day-to-day activities. In order to accomplish this, as indicated in (6), it is essential to design everything from elemental technologies to the locations of rainwater tanks to have aesthetic and cultural value (or the potential to create this value in the future), be it the use of artistic, visually stimulating water pots as elemental technologies or designing homes, gardens, and water channels to be emotionally appealing. People are reinterpreting the historical cultures of their local communities, and they are accepting and rebuilding them as their own culture in their daily lives. Efforts must be made to embed Rainwater Society in this process. However, at the same time, our research has also made it clear that, in Fukuoka City, there is a great deal of inflow and outflow of people, that there are multiple levels of societal culture depending on when a person moved in, and that because of this there are always multiple threads running through communities and spreading out in different ways.
The pictorial map was developed as a way of connecting Rainwater Society to community culture and embedding it as a new cultural system. We discovered watersheds within existing community culture, and used play, work, scenery, arranged constructs, and the like to uncover concrete relationships between people and watersheds. These were expressed on maps as icons that spanned the times, and the maps themselves were arranged to reflect the regional views of watersheds of community members. We conducted interviews, and based on the results of those interviews designed and created a pictorial map. Workshops were used in each of these processes.
Different versions of the pictorial maps were upgraded through a process consisting of multiple stages. At present, work is underwayon a version which shows changes since the mid-1950s.
