Abstract
In an urban society, one finds many individualists holding pluralistic values and the common norms shared among people are disappearing. In society as a whole, and more specifically residential communities, members have lost their ability to settle conflicts among themselves. Instead, recourse to the public legal system is becoming an unavoidable last step reluctantly taken by the parties involved. But legal systems fail in such cases because effective legalistic communication methods and strong urban community notions are glaringly absent.
In this context, I took up the theme of conflict-settlement and collective decisionmaking in owner-occupied residential condominium housing. Condominium living classically illustrates the complex relationship between urban community and the legal system. There, residents cannot avoid (even if they would choose to) close interactions and, where necessary, rational cooperation and negotiations to maintain community order.
From 1992 to 1993, I researched, using questionnaires and in person interviews, the everyday communications among residents of a 27 year old urban housing complex (danchi) of 320 apartment units in Yokohama, and studied their conflict-settlement and collective decision-making processes. I reported the results of this research at this Association's 14th May 1994 symposium, which reports are summarized in Japanese elsewhere in this issue.
