| Keywords |
Elders; Social interaction; Housing; Neighborhood; Apartment |
| Abstract |
Elders tend to spend their daily life close to their home due to weakening physical ability. Therefore, it is crucial for them what is available near home for their quality of life. Among other places, space in front of housing unit can play a key role in everyday life of elders. They can see and talk with other neighbors there and it is the easiest place where they can go outside. The condition of the space in front of house can affect how much elders can go outside and involve in social activities. Therefore, this study compared high-rise apartment and low-rise housing in terms of elders’ social activities. These two type of housing had very different physical structure of housing unit front space. Researchers interviewed 50 elders in total in 26 locations. Exploratory in nature, conversational interview was conductive with minimum questions in the beginning in order to understand the circumstances of elders’ social activities.
As a result, elders in the low-rise housing area had more social activities on average than those of high-rise apartments.
Researchers assume, visual, auditory, and physical accessibility between private housing unit and housing unit front (street) space contributed to the difference of social activities. Elders in the low-rise housing had an advantage of better accessibility to the front space and the neighbors from each housing unit. However, the space there could be easily taken by car traffic. On the other hand, common space in high-rise apartment was secured with seating arrangement and landscape protected from car traffic. In the future, positive features from both housing types should be adopted for new housing design. |