A change from communes to community living

[MaarkSmith]

In the words of Nisbet, a renowned scholar, a community is the producer of people working together on problems, for the autonomous and collective fulfillment of the internal objectives, and through the experience gained by living under codes of authority that have been set to a large degree by the persons involved. While this definition could be enough to explain the functions of a housing cooperative, it is largely a new point of liberal pluralism.

Community living in ‘communes’ has been more an idea of utopian socialists and it got reflected in their spontaneous experiments in collective social organization of ‘living communes’. Collectivism and commune living, although not an offshoot of the greater October Revolution alone, has largely been practiced in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

The objectives of the communes as defined in one model constitution enacted in 1928 in the USSR were: ‘the tasks of the commune are to raise the new collective man who will be the active defender and creator of socialism . . . one of the major tasks of the commune is the construction of a new socialist way of life . . . The daily life, activities and work of the commune are directed towards the creation of more favorable conditions for the ensuing construction of a new way of life . . . the radical upheaval in the economy, the overturning of social relations will lead to a radical transformation in the way of life.

While the above way of life totally collapsed with the demise of the USSR, in Kochi Apartments have ushered in a different lifestyle, with people from different cultures, religions and following different traditions living in a single large building. The apartment culture has also helped large families to come together under a single housing unit. Thus a new form of urban close knit community is emerging.