The purpose of this paper is to show the contemporary role of kominkan in each community.
Lately both the decentralization and the fiscal crisis of the government have magnified the difference among communities, and accelerated the collapse of community life. Even so, the most kominkan have not taken effective measures to help preserve communities. Unfortunately those involved with kominkan seem uncertain as to what actions may be taken.
In this sense, the American experience of urban revitalization will afford us some useful suggestions. A new model of urban revitalization and community based development has emerged over the past 30 years. It seeks to maximize the economic potentials of inner-city neighborhoods through partnerships of private investors, government, and nonprofit organizations with a fundamental goal of the eradication of the low-income ghetto. At the heart of this approach is the involvement of neighborhood residents and the community development corporations, or CDCs.
Community-based development focuses investment directly on the neighborhood. Through housing rehabilitation and new construction, improvements to neighborhood retail districts, social services such as child care for working parents, treatment for substance abusers, and employment training for the unskilled and unemployed, community-based development attacks both the symptoms and the causes of problems that undermine the "healthy city" projected by new downtown development.
Whether or not the idea proposed by Sakuo Teranaka will be embraced depends on the way those involved in kominkans make use of lessons drawn from such a new model of urban revitalization
