Open House International

Brown, Robert; Theis, Michael

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-02-2005-B0001

The reader might be forgiven for not being familiar with the term Community Asset Management. Indeed, doing a web search for ‘community asset management’ yields a disparate range of responses, suggesting connections to lessons from financial crisis, to knowledge management technology, to nutrition support in home care, to name but a few of the more interesting articles found in a preliminary web search. It certainly was not part of the lexicon in international development when the Max Lock Centre began using the phrase several years ago at the start of Department for International Development (DFID) - UK funded research on Community Asset Management (CAM) in India and Eastern and Southern Africa. Indeed, lack of recognition was one of the two reactions most often received when the term was first mentioned in discussions with various stake-holders in community development in these locations. Once the ideas behind CAM had been explained however, most quickly remarked something along the lines of, ‘Oh yeah, we're doing that’. (See for example MUTTER 2001; see also KRETZMANN and McKNIGHT 1993)

Kalra, Ripin

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-02-2005-B0002

Currently held views and policies commonly suggest that community participation in the development of physical infrastructure is primarily exercised to encourage local ownership and generate local livelihoods. This article draws on the experience of recent primary education building programmes in India using cost-effective construction technologies to observe that the involvement of users in the delivery, maintenance and management of community assets is above all a pre-condition for the fulfilment of the globally agreed development targets. This conceptual distinction provides an experienced reason for any provider to seek an active partnership with the user community and appreciate their grass-roots realities, assets and resources. The article then provides observations from recent fieldwork in India to argue that a realistic mapping of community resources will help to redefine widely accepted development targets for community assets as well as identifying capacity building measures to streamline the delivery and management of community infrastructure.

Taylor, Wendy

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-02-2005-B0003

This article places the concept of community asset management (CAM), the focus of a DFID Knowledge and Research (KAR) project which has been described elsewhere, in the context of the broader concepts of participatory local governance and good practice, themselves the subjects of other recent KAR projects. It is contended herein that it is imperative to local development, service delivery and poverty reduction that these concepts are fully operationalised by the stakeholders involved in the governance process. The article argues that, not only is CAM as a community participation approach a good practice in good governance ‘in its own right‘, but the very practice of the CAM approach involves the operationalisation of other participatory local governance principles.

Gandelsonas, Catalina

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-02-2005-B0004

Drawing on recent research on communication for urban development and on new research on ’Localising the Habitat Agenda’, this article focuses on the communication aspects of transferring projects and good practices to different cultural contexts.Communicating knowledge for the poor has been a research priority for development agencies in UK and USA for the last decade, as communicating best or good practices for achieving development has not been particularly easy or successful. In order to understand the reasons for these communication gaps, the Max Lock Centre at the University of Westminster, UK, undertook research into the complexity of the communication process, and developed methodologies to ensure the effective transfer of knowledge to differing contexts. There are two related challenges to this task. The first is the understanding that communication is a complex process involving actors and actions. The complexity of the interplay between these explains why the communication process suffers gaps that are difficult to bridge; this is why knowledge or best practices can be only communicated if certain conditions are met. The second involves finding a methodology for communicating projects and best practices to different contexts in which practices can be applied.

Karuri, Geci; Saidi, Mwansa

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-02-2005-B0005

There has been a range of initiatives in South Africa aimed at determining how community-based approaches such as Community Asset Management (CAM) can be enabled and supported through mainstream public infrastructure delivery and development practice. One of the critical issues emerging is around the need to clarify and specify roles and processes in CAM projects where the effective role of the community itself is central to the success and sustainability of projects. This paper calls attention to the importance of community participation and empowerment in these development projects, and begins to highlight the paradigm shift that this would require with respect to professional roles in the delivery of the built environment.As a first step towards better defining the new roles and structures that are required, this paper identifies the prevailing attitudes and perceptions of the traditional built environment professionals in South Africa towards participatory projects. In so doing it draws upon a survey whose findings are presented and used as a basis for determining the key obstacles and constraints facing professionals in the effective implementation of participatory, community-based projects.The conclusions and recommendations offered are intended as considerations for researchers and development agents who are grappling with the complex but critical issues of how to enable effective asset-based community development.

Noero, Jo

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-02-2005-B0006

The author's experience of low-income self-help housing in South Africa provides some cautionary lessons on the difficulties likely to be encountered in attempting to implement Community Asset Management. Where communities have seen the State co-opt them into accepting responsibility for those services and support for which the State has been traditionally responsible, the result has typically been resistance by the community and ultimately the failure of otherwise finely conceived policies. Only where the community hold the freedom to choose how to shape their lives in terms of those issues which form the basic stuff of life will it be possible to engage the energy, enthusiasm, imagination and commitment of local people to take charge of their own lives. Further examination suggests that blockages exist that will need to be taken into account if Community Asset Management is to be taken forward; these include: a mismatch between the expectations of funding agencies and the needs of local community groups; competing systems of delivery; the idealisation of the capacity of local communities to both manage and maintain community facilities over extended periods of time; unrealistic expectations of communities; the failure of development professionals to both understand and act on behalf of divided and competing interest groups; the inability to design for rapidly changing social, economic and political environments both locally, regionally and nationally; and a mismatch between noble intentions and end products.

Kadowaki, Kozo; Fukao, Seiichi; Arahira, Tsuyoshi

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-02-2005-B0007

In Japan, various government authorities and public housing corporations built a huge number of dwellings for rent to reconstruct war-damaged cities and to accommodate the high concentrations of population in urban areas in the mass-housing era between 1955 and 1973. Approximately 40% of all public residential buildings for rent in Japan were constructed in the latter mass-housing era (1965-1973). These are four- or five-story reinforced concrete buildings whose building frames are sufficiently strong to withstand several decades' more use but whose interior finishings and functional systems are deteriorating. Although these houses were originally designed for nuclear families, they are now considered too small to accommodate more than three residents. There is growing demand for renovation of deteriorating public residential buildings for rent. Dwelling units of such deteriorating buildings are often enlarged by constructing extensions or by removing sections of existing partition walls and installing new partition walls. In recent years, several local authorities have started to add new elevator towers to residential buildings for the increasing number of aged residents. We have studied these regeneration projects in detail by conducting questionnaires at 60 public housing corporations and hearing investigations at 6 corporations. This paper describes the actual status of the regeneration of deteriorating public multi-unit residential buildings for rent in Japan.

Kronenburg, Robert

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-02-2005-B0008

This paper explores the genre of flexible architecture - buildings that are intended to respond to changing situations in their use, operation, or location. This is architecture that adapts rather than stagnates; responds to change rather than rejects it; is motive rather than static. It is a design form that is by its essence cross-disciplinary and multi-functional and consequently, is frequently innovative and expressive of contemporary design issues. By revealing its basis and the factors that are determining its development, the value and relevancy of flexible architecture to contemporary problems associated with technological, social and economic change can be revealed.The characteristics of flexible architecture are explored by examining the design decisions that lead to culturally responsive buildings. It examines the underlying factors that generate a sense of place and why traditional and historic building patterns have been successful in creating genuinely adaptable architecture. It relates the characteristics of flexible architecture to Open Building principles and examines the effect that such design can have within the different levels in the built environment. The paper focuses special attention on contemporary architecture by examining the recent work of the Japanese architect Toyo Ito, in particular his recently completed Matsumoto Performing Arts Centre, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Based on conversation with the designer and first-hand study of the building, the specific factors that make this new design a valuable resource in the search for flexible architecture strategies are explored.This paper expands on the author's previous research into the foundation areas of this topic, in particular the genre of portable architecture, the impact of technology on the development of architectural form, and the development of experimental and innovative house design in the twentieth century. Its subject is expanded in his forthcoming book Flexible: Architecture That Responds to Change to be published by Laurence King, London, in 2006.

Smith, George R.

2005 Open House International

doi: 10.1108/OHI-02-2005-B0009

POSSIBLE WAY OUT: FORMALIZING HOUSING INFORMALITY IN EGYPTIAN CITIES