CONDITIONS OF THE RENEWED HOUSING IN THE OLD WOODEN APARTMENT AREAS : A report on spontaneous renewal process in the wooden apartment areas : Part 1

Abstract

This paper analyses the physical features of the new housing which have been spontaneously replacing the old wooden apartments for last 10 years, by means of case studies in the high density wooden apartment areas in the periphery of the Osaka city. The conclusion of the studies are summerized as follows. Building activities replacing old wooden apartments became intensified in early 1980s when a conspicuous decrease in the number of households was taking place. The cases wherein previous apartments have been replaced by houses account for about 80% of all. Of which, 49.3% was rebuilt into detached houses, whereas the row houses newely provided through substantial remodelling (both internally and externally without demolition) account for 26.5%. Both the detached and row houses are for sale. On the other hand the rate of fireproof apartments constitutes only 10.2%. All of these renewed dwelling units are of considerable low-quality, presumably adding to the housing stock of smallest-size units in the metropolitan region. Owing to fragmented plot sizes, the site area of the detached and row houses average 62 m^2 and 39 m^2 respectively, or about 40% and 70% of the respective averages of those in the Osaka prefecture as a whole. Therefore the building-to-land ratios (BLR) or the building-volume-to-land ratios (BVR) are conspicuously high. For example, in case of a row house, BLR is as high as 96.8%, meaning a BVR of 179.7%. Even in case of a detached house, a BLR of 71.5% or BVR of 142.1% is observed. These figures indicate illegal building activities. Besides the replacement is undertaken mostly by way of site-by-site improvement of apartment buiding, meaning small-scale activities. The size of fireproof apartments are not significantly larger than the previous wooden apartments. The units constituted of 2 rooms are not appropriate to the needs of families who want to move out of the wooden apartments.