A Role of Neighborhood Stores as the Communication Place for the Elderly People

Abstract

As people buy daily foods at the supermarket recently, many small neighborhood stores were shut. But neighborhood stores have some important functions for the community. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the meaning of the neighborhood store for the elderly generation people. Three methods of surveys were taken for this study; 1) a survey to the dwellers in the mini-housing development in 1960s,2)a survey to the customers of the store in the area, 3)an observational research of customers in the store. The results are as follows. Main customers of neighborhood stores are elderly generation people and they live very near the store. People who enjoy chatting (or communicate with) neighbors in the store like shopping at the neighborhood store.

<b>Mobility, Space, and Community: a Study on the Importance of Tokyo’s Car-free Local Shopping Streets as Social Spaces for Residents</b>

“…Micro-scale area studies about the contextual implications of car-free streets in neighbourhoods are therefore critical in understanding the relationship of local residents and adjacent shopping streets in Japan. The current understanding relies on fragments of research efforts targeted at particular aspects of streets such as studies on walking speed (Matsumoto, Kiyota & Ito, 2009), and studies related to the use of streets by elderly people (Sone & Kayama, 2009;Tsuboi & Kitano, 2010). Although shopping streets support day-to-day livelihoods of residents and offer a unique shopping experience for visitors in Tokyo, they are suffering serious decline.…”