Transition of Home and Neighborhood Environment for the Elderly：A Case Study of the Military Servicemen's Settlement, Taipei

When settlements of military servicemen had to be reconstructed, we frequently discovered in the news reports that a lot of senior veterans or residents living in settlements were forced to move out. The government arranged temporarily occupies for those residents simultaneously but casually, and ignored the inner existing relationship of interpersonal network inside. Researcher is prompted by the issues including the government used the simplified assignment without concerning about the primary social network, and the space types in renovated residence community from settlements of military servicemen were so identical that it couldn’t meet substantially with habitants’ physical and psychological needs. Those inquiries evoke researcher attempting to discuss the effects about the changes of living space and environmental context upon original residents of military servicemen's settlements.
This research based on the spatial observation, participant observation, field investigation and in-depth interviews of the nine residents living in military servicemen's settlements in Taipei. Since the researcher cares that how these residents adapt in the process of residential mobility and how the transition of home and neighborhood environment affect residents’ psychology before and after moving. Four main research questions frame the current study: (a) How did they link up their life meanings and living experiences with the specific historical spatial condition? (b) What was the residents’ living strategy regarding inside and outside space of the new neighborhood environment after shifting in the original specific environment? (c) After transferring to the new environment, how did residents’ ‘meanings of home’ have to alter? And what was the residents’ adaptability to new neighborhood? (d) How did these elderly in the relocation household of military servicemen's settlements with lower position attach to the new environment after changing?
When facing the high rise apartment buildings with the lift, dispersed neighborhood relationship, and the changing neighborhood is unable to meet their physics and psychological demands at the same time, therefore it makes the elderly feel strong alienation. But most of these old residents didn’t feel downhearted day by day, on the contrary, they changed the use of limited space energetically and spontaneously, and utilized resource of community to fit even more their true demand of health status, family’s structure and life that those changed with time. Hence they formed another new existence tactic and living style. This research expects to have achievement that could find the suitable ways to solve the problem of the transition of home and neighborhood for the elderly in Taiwan society nowadays.