Japanese Experience Toward Accessible and Usable Built Environment: Lessons for the Developing EconomiesSatoshi Kose, Professor, Shizuoka University of Art and Culture, Japan SummaryIn Japan, legal enforcement has not played a major role in making the built environment accessible and usable for a long time. It was rather the mix of recommendations and economic incentives that proved to work so far, particularly for housing design with emphasis on designing for the ageing society. Up until fairly recently, legal tools were not effective because they were rarely mandatory. Instead, administrative guidance was extensively utilized, sometimes effectively, sometimes not so effectively. Only in 2000, Accessible Transportation Law came into force, which made it mandatory for the new public transportation system to be accessible and usable. This in turn drove the government to go another step into requiring larger scale buildings to be accessible and usable. Although not all types of buildings are covered, the law gave the local governments to enforce stricter regulation in some way, and it is expected that accessibility will be fairly quickly achieved in economically stronger cities. In such areas, the competition among the businesses will inevitably lead to the race as to which is most user-oriented, i.e., which is most accessible and usable. Dwelling design is not yet regulated but the incentives by the government, and gradually by the private sector as well are toward universal design, somewhat similar to visitable dwelling design. At present, therefore, the three major components of the built environment, i.e., dwellings, public buildings, and public transportation are all going toward accessibility and usability. The lesson from Japan is therefore that economic incentives of some kind must be in place to make the requirements effective. Without requirements it is very difficult to persuade people, but without incentives people are reluctant to move. IntroductionIn Japan, the movement toward accessible built environment started in the early 70s. Some local cities started to introduce their own ordinance, which requested building owners to make the building wheelchair accessible. Such ordinances could not make the requirement obligatory; they were only based on request. The effectiveness therefore depended on the determination of the staff responsible. Toward 1981, the International Year of Disabled Persons, developments in the field were very slow. In 1981, the building control division of the Ministry of Construction asked the Association of the Architects' Office to draw up design guidelines for accessibility, and the Government Buildings Department also compiled their own version. During 1983 and 1992, when the decade was ending, the move toward accessibility was slow. In 1986, when the government reported that Japan would become a country with a quarter of its population aged 65 and over in the year 2030, Ministries tried to find out how they could cope with the situation. Ministry of Construction started a five-year project targeted to propose measures for housing, building and town planning. While the project was still progressing, the FHAA and ADA were enacted, but the news was not quickly known by those who were involved. It was only in 1993 when the Fundamental Law on Disabled Persons was revised that awareness spread. Much earlier than that, in April 1991, the design guidelines for multi-family public rental housing were revised. As the public rental housing is linked to the central government subsidies, the revised guidelines worked fairly effectively, without being kind of regulations in themselves. In 1994, Accessible and Usable Building Law was enacted, but the requirements were not mandatory. All the government could introduce were tax incentives, lower interest loan systems, and other modest measures. Although the law gave some power to the Governors of the local governments, their effectiveness was very limited. However, in some type of buildings, for example the supermarkets used the law as their tool for publicity. Instead of spending a lot of money on advertisement, such companies used mass media, TV news and newspaper coverage in particular, to show how they are accessible and user-friendly. This to some extent helped persuade building owners to make their buildings accessible through compliance with the law. The number of accessible buildings gradually increased as years went by. See table 1.
Note: Fiscal year in Japan is from April through March. FA 2000+ means floor In 1995, the government finally issued the dwelling design guidelines for the ageing society in Japan, after a long delay. The Japan Housing Loan Corporation, the government housing mortgage scheme quickly adopted key requirements as their own to be eligible for preferential interest rates and larger sum of mortgages. This economic incentive drove most of major housing manufacturers to revise their fundamental design toward accessibility almost overnight (the change took place in October 1996). The favorable scheme is used by many clients, and quite a portion is using the designed for ageing society to make most of. See table 2.
Note: The preferential interest rate scheme was introduced in October 1996. The fact that both dwellings and buildings moved toward more accessibility forced the public transportation to finally move toward inclusion of accessibility issues within their policy. In 2000, the Accessible Transportation Law came into effect. Before that, Japan had a period with special provisions for wheelchairs, i.e., elevators for wheelchair user only, convertible escalators for wheelchairs, etc. Frail seniors were excluded from the users in most of these occasions. The law made it mandatory for new public transportation facilities with daily users of 5,000 or more to be made accessible. To make the radical change happen, the governments are providing substantial amount of money to the transportation company. The obligatory requirements for public transportation in turn triggered the arguments that buildings should also be required to be accessible and usable. We succeeded in persuading those building owners and managements. The Accessible and Usable Building Law was revised in 2002. Many of the original requests became requirements, and a few building types were included to be covered. The revision streamlined the flow of building permit application, and the same building control officer checks the compliance with regulations, etc., which means that the building permit will not be given if accessibility requirements were not met. The third point is that the local governments can now raise the requirement level through their local ordinance. If the residents in the local area ask more stringent regulations, then it could be done. When the residents make too high a demand, no private sector will choose to build there, which will lead to economic bust in the area. The revision just took effect from 1st April 2003, so we have to wait and see how things will develop. Argument: Legal Requirements or Economic IncentivesIn the US, UK, and many countries, disability rights' based legislation is common and it proved to be effective. However, it is because social expectations have already reached the stage where such enforcement is accepted. Compared to that, some Asian and Pacific countries have legal requirements but they are less effective in the implementation because there is a wide gap between what it is now and what it should be. Majority of dwellings are self-built, which means no building control actually applies. Large scale modern buildings in the metropolitan areas excepted and it is doubtful that even the structural standards or regulations are followed. In Japan, at least the structural regulations are followed. The problem for accessibility has been that the issue emerged only fairly recently. With rapid ageing of the whole society, no one would argue against requiring accessibility now. If we look into detail how the notion developed, and how people followed advice, it is clear that economic incentives worked. The governments, local and central, tried to persuade building owners and prospective clients with economic incentives, mostly in the form of interest subsidies, sometimes with direct subsidies. Among other countries, Norway utilized the government housing mortgages as a tool to make changes happen regarding dwelling design. Its State Housing Bank has been asking higher quality design to be eligible for the mortgages, and thus Norway has accomplished similar results as Japan. Author's Note: This paper partially utilizes an earlier version of a report prepared for the World Bank in 2003. ReferencesKose, S. (1996) Possibilities for change toward universal design: Japanese housing policy for seniors at the crossroads, Journal of Aging and Social Policy, 8(2&3), 161-176. Kose, S. (1997) Dwelling Design Guidelines for Accessibility in the Aging Society: A New Era in Japan? in Wapner S. et al, Eds., Handbook of Japan-US Environment Behavior Research: Toward a Transactional Approach, Plenum, 25-42. Kose, S. (2001) The impact of aging on Japanese Accessibility design Standards. In Preiser and Ostroff Eds., UNIVERSAL DESIGN HANDBOOK, pp. 17.1-17.12. Kose, S. (2001) Housing for an ageing society: Adapting housing design toward universality is the minimum requirement for inclusion, Inclusion by Design Congress Proceedings, Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work Web page, (http://www.inclusionbydesign.com/worldcongress/Proceedings/Kose.pdf). Kose, S. (2002) Six Essential Requirements of Good Design: Alternative Approach to UD, Proceedings of the International Conference for Universal Design in Japan 2002, Organizing Committee, 10-13. Kose, S. (2002) Designing Dwellings for a Highly Aged Society: Recent Progress in Japan, Proceedings of the International Conference for Universal Design in Japan 2002, Organizing Committee, 402-404. Kose, S. (2003) Progress of universal design in Japan: Can it cope with rapid population ageing? Proceedings of Include 2003: Inclusive design for society and business, London: Helen Hamlyn Research Centre, Royal College of Art, 189-192. Kose, S. (2003) The Japanese experience, Inclusive Design: Design for the whole population, London: Springer, 308-316. Takahashi, G. (2001) From accessibility for disabled people to universal design: Challenges in Japan. In Preiser and Ostroff Eds., UNIVERSAL DESIGN HANDBOOK, pp. 30.1-30.19. |