1990 Volume 41 Issue 2 Pages 149-155
Recently, a cooperative housing movement, based on individual plans and designs, has been developed to avoid the alienation that is found in Japan's urban areas. Residents of some developments have a common goal to develop a new and mutually beneficial community. The objects of this investigation included the aims, planning processes, and present state of such development projects. Lifestyle-oriented projects in central Osaka, and suburban projects aimed chiefly at achieving owner-occupation, were taken as case-studies.
The methods used included questionnaires and interviews of residents living in 101 units of cooperative housing in 11 development projects in Osaka that were conducted in August 1986.
The results show that during the 2 years of preparation before completion of building, the residents developed a strong sense of cooperation allowing them to harmonize their opinions. However, a comparison of inner-city and suburban projects shows that the ways the management and decision-making processes had developed and improved were different, as were the ways of dealing with subsequent daily troubles.
