Things that Realize a Communal Life

Regional Revitalisation

Faced with a declining and aging population, small cities are losing their inhabitants and are under threat of disappearing. The old established regions are going disregarded, while the suburban farmlands are turning into residential complexes—an absurd sprawl that has consumed a large amount of resources for site development, infrastructure establishment such as water and drainage systems, and also resulted in socio-economic costs including environmental degradation. Furthermore, the new urban inhabitants remain disconnected from their newly inhabited regions and also possess a marginal bonding power, failing to form relationships or communal understanding with one another. In order to bring vitality to shrinking rural towns, a population move can be considered an alternative solution, organised under a collective residential plan that can encourage communities to settle and build a life together. For those who leave his or her urban life, local migration is also a way of becoming a part of a new society.

There are certain projects contemplating migration—Osiri gareum Cooperative Housing (hereinafter Osiri gareum) and Nunmoe gareum Cooperative Housing (hereinafter Nunmoe gareum), in which would-be immigrants join a residential cooperative union and move into a rural area. Osiri gareum, constructed within an existing town, employed established