Urban Community Building Community Park

As a part of an advanced capitalist country, Japanese urban governments have been dealing with the erosion of economic and fiscal base since late 1990s. Based on the situation, Japanese urban governments followed other cities in advanced capitalist countries, shift their orientation of urban governing, from a managerialism to entrepreneurialism style of governing Among others, one consequence of the reorientation to entrepreneurialism urban governance is a closer partnership between private and public sector for the (economic) development of the city. This style of urban governance emerged in the late capitalism era, and seems to focus on more economic advantages. Thegoverning style brings disadvantages to Japan’s traditional- neighborhood based - non-profit quasi- government association, known as chonaikai/jichikai, resulting in the neighborhood association further loses its significance as urban community-integrating association. Yet, one chonaikai from an aging residential area in Morioka city was successful in integrating its residents, joining hand-in-hand with local university and public as well as private sector, in an intertwining network, and re-built its own community park using the idea of Groundwork Initiative from the UK. Taking up the case as the focus of study, this paper aims at probing the dynamics of the network among chonaikai with various public – private actors, to show that entrepreneurialism governance could leave some space for the Japan’s traditional neighborhood association to prevail in urban community.