When analyzing the international developments we can certainly find certain aspects that are worth emulating. From the above international perspective emerges the underlying determinants of cooperation; community as a provider of housing for itself and the State as an enabler. The development of Apartments in Kerala is now following a similar pattern.
National ideology, economic philosophy and developmental goals have played a significant part. Socialist ideology of communism in the USSR, social-market economy in Europe and the Federal capitalism and private sector markets in the USA and to some extent in the UK have influenced the development of communes, condominiums and cooperative housing estates respectively.
Tremendous housing needs of those times of course was a pressing and almost omnipresent factor. However, excluding the USSR, reliance on the community for housing provision was born not only on account of state mobility to shoulder the entire responsibility but also not due to recognition of the fundamental human nature. This, in the words of Colin Ward has been described thus: ‘Most of the world’s people feed, clothe and house themselves, usually in co-operation with neighbors, sometimes with the help of their rulers, sometimes despite them, and take some pleasure in doing so.
Further, if cooperation for housing development has been a success the world over, it has been on account of the development of appropriate organizational structures, existence of promoters who could vigorously promote different forms of cooperation, creation of a sympathetic legal environment which encourages financial backing and lastly a climate which made people aware, recognize and practice cooperative housing development. If these could be viewed as imperatives, then to what extent have they been significant in the development of cooperation in housing in India? An explanation to this is rather difficult to answer.
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