Public Committee for Restoration

The Public Committee for Restoration was an influential advocacy active between 1944 and 1977 in Kien-k'ang, the Themiclesian capital city. The group's name refers to its initial, public objective of reversing the devastations of the Pan-Septentrion War in Kien-k'ang and re-create its shape before the war. But subsequent actions taken by the Committee, especially after 1949, have been characterized less by a didactic adherence to restoration but the advancement of various objectives that did not necessarily exist before the war. The Committee, superintended by exclusive cliques of landowners, leagues of civic groups, and major business interests, has been accused of promoting class-based segregation that have ethnic overtones or implications, though the group has vocally denied such characterizations.

Throughout its lifetime, the Committee supported slum clearances, urban beautification, and centralization of civic administration. In the 1950s to the mid-60s, the Committee advocated slum clearances on quarters where conditions were so squalid as to constitute a "threat" to the neighbourhood and thus require improvement. The City, adhering to the Committee, usually purchased the problematic property and offered the proprietor a "settlement property" elsewhere; the cleared slums were then re-developed by entrepreneures on good terms with the Committee into desirable neighbourhoods populated by more expensive properties.