• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
• /
• v.48 no.5
• /
• pp.709-727
• /
• 2013

Recently, "aging in place" has become the principle philosophy of elderly housing policy in many countries. However, since there is ambiguity surrounding the universal definition of it, the meaning of AIP has been defined by political expediency. This study aims to discuss the meaning of AIP by examining the transition of elderly housing issues and policy in Japan. During the last two decades, the Japanese government has tried to launch a new elderly welfare system to shift the responsibility of elderly care from the family to the society and from the society to the region. And the focus of elderly housing policy has shifted from the promotion of three-generation dwellings to supporting the development of private residences. However, since the main goal has been limiting the welfare budgets rather than enhancing the quality of life, elderly housing issues have been reduced to a matter of choosing either elderly care facilities frequently located in suburbs or not. This paper suggest that we should pursue the true AIP idea in housing policy, and argues that to do so we need to consider AIP from diverse aspects such as temporal continuity, the range of space, the dynamics of place experience and the capability of communities.