The village studied in this research is Onoura, a village in Toyo island found in the Seto inland sea.
Onoura has a unique landscape with high-density housing, narrow alleys, and varying elevation. With depopulation and aging in the area, the landscape heritage and space for socialization are threatened.
This paper aims to describe how the village of Onoura is supporting everyone, especially the elderly through productive outdoor socialization. For people living in rural areas, opportunities to go outside the area for recreation and social purposes are very rare. So to improve the quality of life of the people in rural areas, especially the elderly, we need to create places that are conducive for socialization. Furthermore, this paper aims to analyze the distribution and behaviors of the people in the public area of Onoura and how they address the challenges regarding the physical structure of the area.
The measures devised to obtain data are: (1) surveys to investigate the occupation and utilization of the public areas that are affected by the residents' perception of personal space, (2) the time sampling procedure to record behaviors of residents in relation to time-patterns, (3) behavior mapping to investigate the nature of activity, and (4) the last one, interviews, to investigate the perception of the residents.
In conclusion, results of the study show: (1) positive actions by residents' autonomy in the use the public area. For instance, residents voluntarily encouraged the use of the public area, and this activity contributes to the formation of the village of Onoura, (2) the relationship between the composition of villages, how residents spend their time outdoors, and the factors that affect retention/stay, (3) The outdoor space that people stay in is also considered a place for local residents to watch over and care for each other.So it possible that this outdoor space where people stay can be a place for informal care system in the area.
