Abstract
This research attempted to clarify the role and place of small-scale residential development land in the movements of residents. The area researched was the Sekizawa district of Fujimi city in Saitama prefecture, where the ground-floor area per residence is small and small-scale residential housing is common. Around 1970, many inexpensive, narrow residences were constructed in the Sekizawa district. Despite being owned, many residents moved in and out of those dwellings. The residents were mostly young, ranging in age from 25 to 34 years. Residents moved out after a few years, and few continued to live in the same new building. Thirty percent of outmigrants moved to either the central area of Fujimi or the neighboring town of Miyoshi. The families that left proceeded to purchase houses larger than those they had previously lived in. This indicates that the residences in the Sekizawa district were considered to be temporary dwellings for young households, which lived in on the assumption that they would be vacated later. However, after the mid-1980s, this high resident turnover rate began to decrease. This is attributed to the rapid rise of land prices caused by a bubble economy. While the resident turnover rate fell in the Sekizawa district, home reconstruction began to increase. By comparing the floor area of residences before and after reconstruction, nearly all increased their total floor area. Consequently, it can be assumed that home reconstruction served as a substitute for moving to a different residence. Furthermore, in residences constructed after 1975, ground-floor areas exceeding 100 m2 became more common, and fewer residents moved, implying that through home reconstruction and the construction of residences with relatively larger floor space, the role of a dwelling as a permanent residence became more common.
Regardless of home ownership, the causes of high resident turnover can be attributed to: 1) a steady rise in wages and land prices prior to the collapse of the bubble economy; 2) a shortage of rental housing for families; and 3) the lack of a condominium system such as that in use today. As such, the residences with smaller floor area in the Sekizawa district were a product of the times. At the same time, the high resident turnover rate was an exceptional phenomenon of a period of rapid economic growth.
