Sendai city in Japan's Miyagi prefecture has drawn up a $750-million plan to relocate about 1,700 households in the tsunami-stricken communities to higher ground inland.
The collective relocation will be the largest so far in a government-sponsored program to help rebuild tsunami-hit communities, Japan's public broadcaster NHK reported on Friday.
Coastal areas in the city's Miyagino and Wakabayashi wards were devastated in the March, 2011 quake-triggered tsunami in which nearly 20,000 people were dead or missing, besides wreaking havoc in Japan's northeast.
The city decided to compile a detailed plan for the relocation of about 1,700 households in those areas. For those who want to build houses of their own, the city plans to offer plots of land at more than ten locations inland.
The plan will be submitted to the central government for approval later this month, and it hopes that construction can begin in the coming autumn and be finished at the end of 2015.
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