Housing, Care, and Community In a Turbulent Global Context: Local Responses to Demographic Change
Housing, Care, and Community In a Turbulent Global Context: Local Responses to Demographic Change
Abstract Submissions Closed
RC43 Housing and Built Environment (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Roundtable
This RC43 Housing and Built Environment roundtable examines how small and medium-sized towns are navigating demographic transitions within a turbulent global context, particularly youth outmigration and the growing concentration of older adults who remain in place. These shifts are not only reshaping local population structures but also intensifying pressures on housing systems, mobility, care provision, public services, and institutional capacity.
Co-hosted by interdisciplinary professional organizations focused on housing and real estate in the United States and Korea, the roundtable brings together perspectives from both contexts while inviting broader international comparison. It situates local demographic change within wider global dynamics such as economic restructuring, uneven development, and evolving care regimes and explores how these forces manifest in place-based challenges such as housing/building vacancy, constrained transportation systems, shortages of care and health services, social isolation, digital exclusion, and fragmented service coordination.
Adopting a collective impact perspective, the roundtable provides a comparative and collaborative platform to examine how local actors respond to these intersecting pressures. Rather than treating housing as an isolated sector, the discussion emphasizes the interdependence of housing, mobility, care, social infrastructure, and governance, and the need for coordinated, cross-sector strategies.
Contributions are invited that share local challenges, responses and propose practical or policy-relevant approaches, including age-friendly initiatives, adaptive reuse of vacant housing and buildings, community-based care models, shared mobility systems, intergenerational support networks, and digital tools for service integration. The roundtable aims to identify actionable pathways for strengthening resilience and advancing more inclusive, age-responsive communities under conditions of global turbulence.
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