Abstract
Shortage of successors and increasing vacant houses have been the urgent issues in the areas with preserved historical townscape. It is highly required to understand the inhabitants’ consciousness for the way of maintaining and succeeding historical townscapes to the future generations, and future direction of community development led by local government. This paper deals with Masuda district inscribed as one of the important preservation districts for groups of historic buildings, and discusses that area’s inhabitants’ consciousness for maintaining and succeeding historic buildings as well as the emerging possibilities of vacant houses. We made interviews targeted on representatives of Masuda Preservation Society of Historic Townscape and questionnaire survey for its members. While we got a positive reaction in an interview for making use of recent situation as a driver for community development, questionnaire survey revealed that there were really a few households fulfilling succession of houses and successors’ concrete plans of returning home.
