Kampung Tongkol is one of many poor settlements in Jakarta that have been served with eviction notices in the name of flood control. Residents in this area decided to take action. They collaborated with numerous partners to plan how to improve their settlement, become river guardians, and implement community-based tourism activities. They reblocked their facades, developed a new housing design, began cleaning campaigns, cultural activities, and urban farming. Eventually, the city took notice and supported the community with significant infrastructure and services - a collaborative model that is now being replicated in other communities.

After authorities demolished the vibrant settlement of Kampung Akuarium in 2016 , numerous residents decided to reclaim the land and initiate negotiations for the reconstruction of their housing on the same site. This effort aligned with wider mobilization urging government support for upgrading kampungs without displacing their communities. After lengthy collective effots, the Akuarium community succeeded in its endeavor. Collaborating with architects, they developed a new housing complex on the same site, which will eventually be owned and managed by the Akuarium cooperative.

Instead of a story about one collective housing  project, this one is a story about an entire urban district that collectively transformed itself from a poor and badly-polluted industrial slum in the heart of Kobe, to a clean, healthy, vibrant community where people are happy to live.  Their project took the residents almost three decades, and it covered all aspects of their lives, from housing to health to education to the elderly and children and relations with their factory neighbors.  They were helped along the way by special government town planning subsidies and some sensitive planning assistance. 

Misaki is one of Japan’s 6,000 Buraku communities that have faced centuries of institutionalized discrimination, isolation and impoverishment.  Government programs were finally introduced to right some of those wrongs, and this Buraku community in Fukuoka Prefecture took advantage of them, to completely redesign and rebuild their dilapidated  riverside community,  improve their incomes and bolster their social support systems in the process.  Misaki is one of several pioneering Buraku communities which spearheaded a larger movement of community-led redevelopment of run-down, neglected neighborhoods. 

Kitagata is another of Japan’s 6,000 Buraku communities that have faced centuries of institutionalized discrimination, isolation and impoverishment.  When a package of government programs were finally introduced to right some of those wrongs, this Buraku community in Kitakyushu City and a young team of pioneering community architects took advantage of them, to collectively redesign and rebuild their crowded riverside community.  Kitagata is one of several pioneering Buraku communities which spearheaded a larger movement of community-led redevelopment of run-down, neglected neighborhoods in Japan.