1. Objectives
The objective of this research is to understand “daily living areas” of the elderly in a local city. By comparing the results of prior research in Kanazawa and then determining the actual state of all of official senior care service areas in the local city, we are able to clarify the quality of elderly residents' daily living areas and how special features figure in each area.
2. Research method
The target city, Kaga, has seven official senior care service areas that we divided into eight districts for the purpose of this inquiry. To understand conditions affecting the elderly with respect to the living areas they frequent, we interviewed a sampling of elderly from all districts concerning their characteristics, home addresses, and destinations when they go out. Specifically, in each district, we selected around 15 supportor care-requiring seniors who use day services as well as around 15 relatively healthy elder people who participate in neighborhood preventive-care circles. We asked those selected about their home and where they go when they go out: supermarket, family clinic, hospital, beauty parlor, barber, bank, restaurants, day services, salons, etc. In total, we collected data from 323 people — 149 support- or care-requiring seniors and 174 healthier elder people.
3. Results and discussion
As with the prior research results in Kanazawa, two layers of living areas were confirmed, but Kaga showed an expansion of living areas compared with Kanazawa.
Accordingly, the distance traveled by support- or care-requiring seniors when they go out was longer. Although they had their own walking areas, they went out on foot relatively less often amid a noticeable dependence on vehicles as a means of transportation.
A comparison of all eight districts within Kaga resulted in a bipolarization of districts — where the number of trips by seniors who walk only when they go out was either above or below the average number of such trips for all districts.
For those seniors who walk more than average, it is possible that their walking routes complete their life.
The primary factor influencing healthier elderly to go beyond the average distance when they go out was shopping facilities. For seniors who had come to require care services, easy access to secondary hospitals is important.
The average living area frequented by the elderly had expanded to three districts for healthier seniors and to two districts for support- or care-requiring seniors. These districts happen to correspond with one to three junior high school districts.
As the shopping facilities primarily sought by healthier elderly, and the secondary hospitals demanded by support- or care-requiring seniors, tend to concentrate in particular districts, we see the centralization of diverse daily living areas into multiple city cores.
