After the Act on Special Measures to Forward Municipalities' Moves for Vacant houses was enacted in November 2014, local municipalities started to actively advance measures for vacant houses, which had become a social problem. However, no fundamental solution has been identified for problems regarding vacant houses. Many municipalities are considering their policies and investigating the actual conditions on a trial-and-error basis. In this study, we identify the actual distribution of vacant houses based on the result of field survey in Maebashi City. We also examine the necessity of regional sectioning based on the ratio of vacant houses to take effective measures in a local city based on the survey result.
As a result, for Maebashi City, the population aging rate and population density can be used as indices to identify the trend of the rate of change in number of vacant houses from the city center to the suburban area. Most local cities are expected to show a similar aspect because they experience similar issues of aging and decrease in population to those in Maebashi City. The number of vacant houses does not increase unless the resident leaves, even if aging is advanced. The transfer of the resident to a home for the aged and the death of a single resident occur with high probabilities in areas with high population aging rates. Therefore, it is expected that the resident is not replaced to make the house vacant, and the rate of change in number of vacant houses increases especially in an area with low population density.
In this study, we sectioned Maebashi City into 4 concentric areas of "Central Business District (CBD)", "Inner city", "Suburbs" and "Outer suburbs", based on which we established a model to verify the necessity of regional sectioning in a local city and propose favorable measures for the problem regarding vacant houses for each area.
