Page 47 - Beyond Decommissioning

28 Beyond Decommissioning

than their associations with death and suffering. In the nuclear field, the flourishing
tourism to Chernobyl, Ukraine and Fukushima sites, Japan can be quoted as rele-
vant. For example, 7 years after the Fukushima combined earthquake, tsunami,
and severe nuclear accident almost canceled the local tourism, the number of for-
eign travelers has recovered to pre-accident levels. In the first 10 months of 2017, a
total of 78,680 visitors spent at least one night in the prefecture, exceeding the
77,890 visitors in the same period in 2010 (TTG Asia, 2018). In 2013, a proposal
was launched for a new community—possibly named Fukushima Gate Village—on
the border of Fukushima exclusion zone, some 40km from the site of the nuclear
accident. The objectives of the proponents are multiple. First, they hope the new
village will serve as a living memorial of the disaster of March 2011. Second, it
is hoped the new community will provide jobs for local inhabitants, many of whom
cannot go back to their former homes yet. Tourists will be hosted into hotels that
were built to receive the evacuees at the time of the disaster. The village is planned
to have restaurants and souvenir shops, as well as a museum dedicated to the acci-
dent and its impacts on the people. It is also planned to install research facilities
devoted to renewable energy sources. Tours to the damaged nuclear plant will be
organized for visitors (a process already underway at the time of writing this book).
The final objective of the proposed initiative is for Fukushima to become for the
Japanese and foreigners alike a symbol similar to the cities of Hiroshima and Naga-
saki (Telegraph, 2013).
Although the conservation of the industrial buildings brought about by the cultural
tourism supports the perpetuation of the industrial heritage, by securing its cultural
values, adaptive reuse can be in the long run the only method able to sustain the eco-
nomic survival of the industrial building. Therefore, heritage conservation and social-
economic development should be integrated to inject a new life into the former indus-
trial buildings (Trifa, 2015).
The worldwide move toward adaptive reuse tends to address buildings and other
structures that are not heritage listed, or facilities that are marginal in mere heritage
value, or too young to be regarded as of heritage concern: many factories, industrial
buildings, or large manufacturing plants are currently not assumed to have architec-
tural distinction. However, in such buildings, adaptive reuse can be attached to mem-
ory and cultural values rather than built heritage. These buildings have historically
shaped the identity of a site—for example, as landmarks or pointers to/descriptors
for a place on a map or guidebook (ODASA, 2014).
Industrial heritage is often associated with industrial archeology, although the latter
has specific characters. Industrial archeology is the systematic investigation of written
and material evidence resulting from past industries. This evidence includes buildings,
equipment, end products, land, infrastructure, documents, and other items from the
fabrication, storage, transport, and/or disposal of products. This technical field is
supported by such disciplines as archeology, architecture, civil and mechanical engi-
neering, historiography, museology, and geotechnics, with the aim at assembling
pieces of industrial history into a coherent picture. The interpretation of fragmented
evidence is often required, because the written documentation of many industrial