Ann Ziebarth

Impacts of Residential Environments on Housing Satisfaction among Korean American Elders

Abstract The purpose of this study was to identify important aspects of residential environments on housing satisfaction among Korean American elders. Using Shea and Inman’s ecological model for the assessment of housing for older adults, this research utilized the subjective perceptions of various aspects of their residential environments as an intervening variable to predict housing satisfaction. A total of 177 Korean American elders participated in this study. In the analysis of quantitative data collected in 2003 using a self-administered questionnaire, the psychological (a sense of belonging to one’s neighborhood) and social (neighborhood social environment and community services) aspects of residential environments were positively related to housing satisfaction. The physical environment was not significantly related to housing satisfaction. The results of this study supported the importance of community involvement at the neighborhood level.

Walkability features for seniors in two livable communities: a case study

Worldwide the number of people over age of 60 years is rapidly increasing. Many communities are challenged to make their communities more walkable and age friendly. Addressing the trend, this study investigated two major metropolitan regions’ policies regarding livability and examined how two case study housing sites practiced walkability for seniors in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area in Minnesota, the United States, and the Vancouver Metropolitan Area in British Columbia, Canada. Analyses show that in the Canadian case, the policy was explicitly age-friendly requiring senior citizen’s involvement and proximity to places for seniors’ activities in planning activities and implementation. In contrast, the US case focused on transit-oriented development and did not specifically require age-friendly practices. Walkability of a specific multifamily housing site in each case was evaluated to identify the impacts of the livable communities legislation. Analyses of the site evaluations found substantial differences in available destinations that encourage walking among seniors. The conclusion provides suggestions for ways that cities and their urban regions can be made more sustainable and livable as the number of elderly residents increases over time.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Housing in the Countryside

Overview Approximately 60 million Americans live in the open countryside, rural areas and small towns with populations under 2,500 (Housing Assistance Council, 2014b). Yet most housing research tends to be urban centered, or alternatively, without any geographic reference. Research subjects may be drawn from rural, as well as urban locations, but rarely are the findings related to specific rural settings and concerns. Housing research place-based in a rural setting exists in a scattered way appearing occasionally at conferences or in journals related to community development, housing, or rural sociology. With this special issue, Housing and Society, the journal of the Housing Education and Research Association, addresses that information gap drawing together articles focused on housing research of rural and small town locations. In addition to cuttingedge rural housing research, the special issue includes research notes, articles on teaching and program reviews in rural communities along with book reviews pointing to sources of further reading for interested scholars and educators. This introduction serves two purposes. First, an overview of rural housing is provided highlighting the unique issues for housing in the countryside caused by distance, low population density, limited community capacity, as well as legal and policy restrictions. Second, the introduction outlines the articles presented here giving readers a preview of the special issue. My goal for the introduction is to provide you, the reader, with a context within which to understand the information presented and to develop a holistic sense of rural housing by tying the articles together. Ziebarth •

Intentions of Nursing Home Entry Among Elderly Residents in Jeju, Korea

Abstract This study examined factors affecting intentions of nursing home entry among elderly residents in Jeju, Korea. Longer lifespans and lower birth rates have resulted in a rapid increase of Korea’s aging population for whom long-term care services are needed, especially for the oldest-old. The oldest-old populations tend to be functionally dependent and, thus, may need skilled services provided by nursing homes. A multidimensional assessment, the Andersen Health Services Behavior Model (Andersen & Newman, 1973), was applied to study the factors that influenced the elderly residents to consider entering a nursing home. The data were collected from Jeju Development Institution in 2008; the sample included 349 individuals over 85 years of age. The findings indicated that awareness of institutional care services and difficulty with complex activities of daily life were positively associated with intentions of moving to a nursing home. Awareness of community care services and expectations of caregiving support from family members negatively affected the intention to move to a nursing home. The study expands the existing literature in three ways. First, the findings are drawn directly from opinions of potential nursing home residents who are among the oldest elderly, those over age 85. Second, the study provides an international perspective with cross-cultural assessment of previous literature. Third, specific recommendations are presented for the Korean context. This study can help care service providers and policy makers conceptualize needs of elderly residents in nursing home care in Jeju province.

Irish-vernacular architecture: An illustration of semiotic analysis

AbstractA methodological framework of vernacular architecture may be employed to study the interaction of culture and design. This is possible because culture and design are interwoven in such a way that studying one provides insights into aspects of the other. Houses employ powerful symbols, often representing a culture’s social structure. While lack of documents often constrain the study of design, vernacular architecture may represent the historical nature of the cultural material being examined. Structural semiotic analysis provides a methodological framework for researching material culture through studying a sample of items, analyzing them in the context of supporting information, developing testable hypotheses, and proposing a supportable theory of the object’s cultural meaning. The process is illustrated in this article using examples of vernacular architecture from 18th and 19th century Ireland.

Book Review: Education and Training for Rural Transformation: Skills, Jobs, Food, and Green Future to Combat PovertyLiWangAhmedManzoorKhanQutubHongweiMeng. 2016. Education and Training for Rural Transformation: Skills, Jobs, Food, and Green Future to Combat Poverty.Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publishing. 336 pp.

including the party and housing landscape, including social and sheltered housing. They will also need to familiarize themselves with terms unique to the United Kingdom. For example, the terms “social housing,” “sheltered housing,” “council housing,” “housing association,” “housing authority,” “new town,” “estate,” “maisonette,” and “scheme” play important roles in this discussion and could have been included in a glossary. This book may especially appeal to housing planning professionals in the United Kingdom who are interested in the important role that local, state, and federal housing policy plays in communities in terms of health, safety, and welfare of families. As noted by Murie, as with any policy, there are winners and losers. He ultimately concludes that the objective of any policy should be to maximize output while controlling for unintended consequences.

60.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-93-515-0900-4

Texas, how the Envision Central Texas process raised the awareness of the region among Central Texas residents, and the theory and characteristics of megaregions through the lens of the Texas Triangle. The concluding chapter goes beyond Texas to Steiner’s experience with Chicago’s Metropolis: 2020 and the Regional Plan Association’s America: 2050. The fifth part of the book, which outlines Steiner’s experiences in Italy and China, includes the most detailed narratives. He describes Italian garden and design traditions and how they draw upon regional conditions and shape urban spaces, in an essay that reads like a travelogue. In the following chapter, the longest and most descriptive of the book, he recounts working with an early landscape architecture studio group at China’s Tsinghua University. He details his travels, both with the studio group and without, and highlights the attributes of planning and culture in China and challenges they pose for designers. The book’s final section underscores how manmade and natural disasters such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina illustrate the challenges that designers face and the need for solutions that foster resilience. Steiner describes his participation in the competition to design a national memorial for Flight 93 and the role of the landscape as an enduring memorial to human actions. He also discusses the ecological and equity considerations in enhancing the resilience of floodand natural disaster–prone areas such as the Gulf Coast. Steiner concludes the work with advice for graduates and his thoughts on the status and future of the design professions. He weighs the merits of the “star system” of architecture and discusses several important tracks that architects could take to support a more sustainable future. Steiner goes on to note the importance of collaboration between the design and planning disciplines and how connecting and mapping technologies are changing the way that designers work and people interact. He ends with four major recommendations for design professionals: (1) acknowledge the relationship between the built environmental and health, (2) build green, (3) stop sprawling and conserve the built environment that exists, and (4) think regionally. He sees sprawl and population growth as major design challenges but suggests that innovation, interdisciplinary approaches, and ecologically based design can help to overcome them and build a more resilient world. The strengths of Design for a Vulnerable Planet lie with its engaging, diverse, and reflective narrative. Steiner draws on decades of firsthand experience and knowledge of the architecture, landscape architecture, and planning fields. The chapters are (mostly) short and readable, and they provide a breadth of views on design and a variety of scales of action. True to Steiner’s arguments for regionalism, the work emphasizes Texas, which makes for fresh narratives in a field dominated by accounts of efforts in East and West Coast states. Steiner provides opinions on prominent topics such as New Urbanism and “star architects” and includes projects that did not live up to expectations, for which he endeavors to provide an explanation. The largely first-person format is easy to read, but some narratives are more effective than others and the content of the chapters varies widely. The “Sustainable Sites Initiative” chapter, for example, includes little text and relies largely on diagrams and reprinted descriptive literature. In contrast, the lengthy China chapter provides descriptions of Steiner’s work but also asides about cultural exchanges, weather, and television programming. The chapters are stand-alone essays, each with a different organization and objective and little direct connection to the rest of the work. Steiner depends on brief section introductions to bring the articles together, with varying success. Where narratives are personal and descriptive, it works, but where chapters are more academic, and simply recount the objectives of design and planning efforts, they could easily have been reworked to be more consistent. Overall, Steiner has created an interesting, engaging work that provides reflective synthesis as only someone with his wealth of experience can. His depth and breadth of understanding, gained over a career working at a high level in several design disciplines, provides a unique perspective from which to draw conclusions about the future of the different design fields. The book contributes to our understanding of the process and product of ecological and regional design, particularly in Texas, and the dynamics and challenges of projects that increase sustainability. It also enhances the foundation and awareness of the new regionalism and landscape urbanism and bridges design disciplines, providing an inside view of how the groups can—and do— work together toward the same goal of sustainable design. Design for a Vulnerable Planet will be of interest to students who endeavor to understand how planners and designers can build a healthy, attractive, and resilient world. It introduces key techniques and initiatives, defines important terms, and illustrates how planning intersects with other design disciplines. Several of Steiner’s essays also provide a realistic look at the give and take of actual planning projects. Though not suitable for a main text, the book would be good source of supplemental readings for a sustainability or environmental planning course. The work will also be useful for planning and design professionals seeking case studies of techniques, challenges, and lessons learned in recent regional and ecological planning efforts.

Book Review: Inclusionary Housing in International Perspective: Affordable Housing, Social Inclusion, and Land Value Recapture

Abstract The work of early twentieth-century housing reformers illustrates the strong tradition of social action research within housing studies. These housing heroines successfully influenced public policy with their scholarship. As an antecedent to today’s feminist scholarship, their work centered on issues that are critical to people’s lives and implicitly recognized gender as a key factor. Furthermore, the feminist perspective is also apparent as these women acknowledged the experiential knowledge base of the people they sought to help incorporating their perspectives into the research. Feminists approach their work with explicit outcomes in mind: empowering participants and making effective changes and improvements in their lives. Thus, feminist scholarship is political as well as academic. Few research subjects are better suited to a feminist scholarship than housing studies. Where one lives has a direct impact for economic opportunities and for the well-being of household members. Therefore, the public policies that shape housing are directly linked to people’s lives and livelihoods. Yet, the majority of housing research tends to remain at arms length, emphasizing the “objective science” model of research rather than action research designed to advocate for social change. It is time to examine the history of women’s role in formulating housing policy and consider following the example of early twentieth-century activists in our own housing scholarship.

Housing Heroines: A Tradition of Social Action Research

Abstract Members of leasehold cooperatives hold an incomparable position. While they have greater responsibility than renters do, they lack the equity stake and ownership responsibilities that limited or market-equity shareholders possess. In this case study, members of nine leasehold cooperatives completed a survey measuring management satisfaction, communication, and control over decision-making to explore the presence of empowerment among leasehold cooperative members when their control over their building is limited. The findings suggest that empowerment occurs even when there is no equity provision and few responsibilities in co-op operations. However, when empowerment exists with low member responsibility, the relationship between members and management may be troublesome. This indicates that there are beneficial outcomes from increasing resident responsibility and that limiting opportunities for members to participate can lead to conflict and tension between residents and management.

Empowerment in leasehold cooperatives and its influence on the member/management relationship

The recent spate of mergers in the U.S. financial sector is the latest example of a trend that startedin the 1980s: a growing concentration and centralization of the financial sector. Comparing 1990to 1980, there was a decline in the number, but an increase in the size, of financial institutions. Thisstudy examines how this national trend manifested itself in Wisconsins rural banking markets.We find an increase in financial institutions (suggesting greater competition), a higher ratio oflocal to nonlocal financial institutions (suggesting a continuing local connection between lendersand customers), and an increase in the size of service areas (suggesting greater capacity for capitalmobility). Greater capacity for capital mobility suggests a need for alternative credit sources fordeclining rural areas.