Building-up a Local Community in the City and the Neighbours' Community Sentiments : A case of Mano, Kobe city

Abstract

Recently some studies emerge in Japan on the participation mechanism for building-up a local community in large city, based on theories of resource mobilization. So far in the study of residents' community sentiments, several empirical studies have been done in this field, but not being successfull. In resource mobilization study, the importance of social relation factor is emphasized as for the factor affecting the participation behavior. In this paper, however, I identify the existence of neighbours' community sentiments between the participation behavior and the social relation factor, through examination of the Mano's case.With identifying residents' individual responses to the “urban renewal project” as an issue of building-up local community, I found that basically three attributes factors, resident's family cycle, occupation and the state of housing ownership, affect resident's response, as well as social relation factor.Then I focused on two typical cases which have same three attributes and different responses. Through these case study, I identify different community sentiments between the two, and got the conclusion that the network of relations with local friends and local group participation result into the positive community sentiment towards the participation.