Kobe and cities surrounding it were heavily damaged by the 1995 South Hyogo Earthquake which occurred at Jan. 17th. In order to clarify the usage and the damage of open spaces within the area under such a situation, a survey was carried out by Japanese Institute of Landscape Architects (JILA), approximately within the 3rd and 4th week following the Earthquake. The author surveyed mainly public parks in Hyogo, Nagata and Suma ward in Kobe City as a member of JILA with other stuffs at Museum of nature & Human Activities ,and compiled the data. JILA already reported the summerized results. However, the raw data and detailed results were not described in the report. The purposes of this paper are to publish a regionally limited part of the results from the survey and to discuss the clarified problems ragarding the safety of the area. Through the discussion, following points were induced. 1. Huge stone-made monuments and elevated highways were the most dangerous public facilities around open spaces in the area. To maintain safety from monuments, enclosure by fences or hedges may be effective. 2. 51% of the surveyed open spaces were used as camp sites by refugees. These can be classified into 3 types, i.e., 1)Dense and well-ordered type, relatively well supported by governmental sectors and containing many tents from the Japan Self Defense Force, 2) Sparse, however, a collective type, formed by groups of tents, occasionally organized by a self-governmental community, and, 3)Not a collectiv eone, almost no organization and not supported. Some refugees selected the camp site according to their own necessity for privacy or other reasons. Uniform organization or support may eliminate such chances of selection. 3. Public parks enclosed with solid fences (e.g .steel-pip efences) may lose accessibilit yF.or one must remove the fence to enter or to leave there when the access is filled with rubble, hence, the fencing materials must be chosen carefully. 4. The usage of public parks is statisticall yrelated to the existance of local faciliti e(se.g. community halls ,schools, local governmental facilities..etc.).Howev esruggestive the fact seems, more detailed research andsurveys are needed for designing the relationship between open spaces and such facilities.
