According to National Development Council, Taiwan has become an aged society in 1993.Currently, with more than 2,860,000 people aged 65 and above (about 12.21% of the total population), Taiwan is expected to enter an aged society in 2018 and a hyper-aged society in 2025. As Taiwan moves toward an aged society and,gradually, a hyper-aged society, how to provide the elderly with a friendly,supportive, respectful and accessible living environment that meets their special needs to prevent and alleviate aging problems is a crucial question that seeks an answer. This study reflects related laws and regulations in aged society in Japan with a practical approach and aims to explore and learn from its support system in buildings and age care. We use Taiwanese policy related to population and technology and related regulations from the Ministry of Interior as a reference,considering initiatives from other sectors related to these issues, and attempt to conclude solutions through buildings and the city planning.
This study offers suggestions for building policy research and related regulations based on building environment aspect. We adopted the concept of “the life course of an elderly person” to break free from past emphasis on physical disability to cover health, sub-health and disabled seniors. This research also takes other physical disabilities such as listening disability, visual disability and disabled seniors into consideration and discusses possible policy directions to encompass prevention, medical treatment and age care. In addition, the underlying premise of this study is to arrange and prepare suitable living environment to provide safe and assuring plan, encouraging elderly a life-long interactions with the society after retirement to better contribute to the community. We aim to construct a safe,assuring, friendly and productive elderly community that include the four following dimensions:
1.Healthy and safe – meeting a variety of needs and enhancing health prevention.
2.Happy and reassuring – supporting care services and encouraging independence and LOHAS.
3.Friendly and barrier-free –food, clothing, housing,transportation, education,and entertainment, eliminating environmental barriers.
4.Energetic and promising –an atmosphere respectful of and friendly to the elderly, facilitating inter-generational integration.
The mid-term goals are as follows:
1.Construction of regional safe and reassuring environments (including the two sub-objectives – 1. environmental planning and design for life stages of the elderly
2.environmental planning and design for the care of the elderly): Set limits to different regions based on the population, the density of public facilities,transportation distance or time, and others to providesafety and reassurance and build quality space to support health care of disabled persons with better prevention for elderly in sub-health stage according to their living environment.
2.Promotion of barrier-free environments for the disabled (including the two sub -objectives – 3. space planning of the living environment for physically-disabled elderly persons and 4.space planning of the living environment for elderly persons with dementia):Design and construct an environment to promote an energetic elderly disabled community to meet the needs of those with physical, visual, hearing, organ,cognitive and mental disabilities and establishsuitable environment for those with physical and cognitive disability.
3.Integration of environmentally friendly policy and laws and technical application (including the two sub-objectives 5.the trend in laws on barrier-free environments for the disabled in developed countries and 6.living spaces and the application of assistive devices for elderly persons):Integrate policies and laws including the timely updated “barrier-free” environment law across different fields and departments to enable an elderly- friendly atmosphere to keep pace with the developed countries and explore the possible ways to bring convenience to the elderly through assistive device and therefore to have a bigger impact on our society with medical and care policy and technology.
To sum up, we have concluded the following suggestions:
Feasible Suggestions Suggestion 1 Proposing the medium-term plan on technological Development for the ABRI’s“Safe, Reassuring Living Environment for the Aged Society”
Organizer: Architecture and Building Research Institute, Ministry of the Interior.
Taiwan is becoming an aged society. Taiwan has faced numerous problems include aging, change of lifestyle and social values. There is a need to examine the past policy and satisfy the need of the elderly in order to construct a healthy and happy retirement life with dignity for our senior citizen. This study aim to construct a “safe and reassuring elderly life” through above-mentioned mid-term plans and to organize and present the “Medium-term Plan on Technological
Development for a Safe, Reassuring Living Environment for the Aged Society”.
Immediately Feasible Suggestions
Suggestion 2 Hosting the 31st Sino-Japanese Modern Engineering and Technology Symposium on“Assessment and Improvement of Living Environments for Senior Citizens in Aged Societies” to establish an international platform for the exchange of knowledge across fields and government agencies
Organizer: Architecture and Building Research Institute, Ministry of the Interior
Co-organizer: Construction and Planning Agency, MOI, Social and Family Affairs Administration, MOHW, Health Promotion Administration, MOHW, associations of related industries, and senior citizens’ welfare institutions
To comprehend international forward-looking perspectives on living environments for elderly persons in aged societies and to learn from Japan’s overall strategic thinking and practices in regard to the legal system, environmental technology,and administrative implementation, the 31stSino-Japanese Modern Engineering and Technology Symposium was held on December 2, 2015. On the topic of “Assessment and Improvement of Living Environments for Senior Citizens in Aged Societies”,Professor Mori Kazuhiko of the Osaka City University, Japan was invited to share its experience and representatives from the industrial, governmental, academic and research sectors in Taiwan were also invited to participate in the discussion.
Through the establishment of an international platform for the exchange of knowledge across fields and government agencies, the importance of building environment in increasing the benefits of care in an aged society was highlighted.