These days, "a place for community" is attracting more attention. "A place for community" is the place operated flexibly, mainly as a cafe with a various activities such as class of hobby, exhibition or retailing. As the concern about social isolation growing, the place come to be expected to be a solution for the issue. However, with taking consideration of characteristics of group such as "bonding", the relationship made by "a place for community" may be have exclusiveness to outgroups. Especially because a bonding group strengthen common trait of group members in general, risk that individual trait causing isolation might be strengthen after group composed by " a place for community", and the group itself will be estranged from local society as a result.
With this respect, this paper aims to clarify the actual condition and background of group isolation of "a place for community". Three following focusing point has set and different survey has conducted ; 1) "Visitor record analysis" to grasp situation that some of users have characteristic as a group and get “bonding”. 2) Questionnaires and interviews to frequent users of the case facility to grasp situation that the group members have trait harming relationship with local society, in common. 3) Questionnaires to the people familiar with local society and analysis about events held in the case facility to grasp the situation that the group is estranged from local society.
As a result, following findings were obtained.
1) The number of frequent users has a steady state and frequent users tend to be fixed. The existence of steady state reveal the aspect of frequent users as a group, and fixed users means the exclusiveness of the group. These findings suggest that the frequent users of the case is "bonding" as a group.
2) Most of the frequent users have negative feelings to communication among neighbors and health problems in common. On the other hand, those frequent users are not necessarily the patient of clinic which operates the case, and their housing situation is almost same as the average in the district where the case locate. This finding suggests that the number of potential users is not so small, and a lot of "place for community" can get into the situation of group isolation.
3) Only about half of the target person from local society know the existence of the case facility and less than 30% people has understood what the case is doing. In addition, according to the analysis about events held in the case facility, it clarified that the large number of events held with medical and nursing association, and the number of events held with neighborhood or ordinary association in neighbor (e.g. restaurant, general store and NPO) is small. These findings suggest that the situation of case facility being estranged from local society, and have connection with medical and nursing association in contrast.
4) Findings about the common trait of frequent users and social relationship with outgroup of the case facility, correspondence between common trait of users and relationship with outgroup can be seen. This correspondence seem to be caused by the flexibility of “a place for community”, which is important characteristic of “a place for community” to make relationships among users and get users “bonding”. The important point of group isolation is that a factor preventing communication with local society plays a role during this process of “bonding”.
5) As a whole, "a place for community" has a risk that small group get “bonding” toward refusing communication with local society.
