WHERE TO LIVE AS YOU AGE — TRY DOWNTOWN
Suburban car-centred ideal at odds with goal of walkable ‘age-friendly’ urban area
As Premier Doug Ford’s decision to cut council almost in half reignites talk of the urbansuburban divide, the Star finds the old differences aren’t what they used to be. In an occasional series, we take a look at what divides us and what we share, no matter where the ward lines fall.
In her apartment building at Bay and Bloor, Adina Lebo has neighbours who include a young couple and a 94-year-old woman. The older woman needs a hand with her groceries.
The couple needs someone to check in on their cats when they’re away.
“We all help each other,” said Lebo, who’s in her late 60s.
“It’s way better for the health of everybody to have people of all ages around.”
It’s the kind of arrangement Lebo wants to keep as she “ages in place” downtown, hoping to stay in her community, where she can easily get to coffee shops, grocery stores and a movie theatre.
As part of an occasional series, the Star is taking a looking at the old fault lines of amalgamation and re-examining where the city is divided, and united.
Toronto, like Canada, is getting older, but the city’s suburbs are aging faster than downtown. The problem, experts say, is that the suburbs, especially the former municipalities of Scarborough and Etobicoke, have largely been designed around driving, and can be more difficult places to age in place.
“The size of the demographic change that we’re going through is unprecedented,” said Glenn Miller, a senior associate with the Canadian Urban Institute.
That change, he said, leaves the megacity with the challenge of redesigning the suburbs to let an aging population stay independent longer.
Ideally, a senior should be able to move from a more isolated detached home into an apartment in walking distance to groceries and a recreation centre — without having to leave their neighbourhood, “so that they can age actively and gracefully and perhaps avoid the need to move into long-term care eventually,” he said.
As a whole, the city is following the same trend as the rest of Canada, which saw the percentage of adults over 65 rise from 11.4 per cent in 1996 to 15.7 per cent in 2016.
The percentage of adults over 65 rose in every former municipality between 1996 and 2016, except East York. And it’s a trend that’s expected to continue, with the number of adults 65 and over in Toronto set to almost double by 2041, according to projections in the Toronto Seniors’ Strategy, a set of city hall actions to respond to the aging population.
The highest percentages of adults over 65 are found in Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke. In Scarborough, between 1996 and 2016, the percentage rose from 11 to 15.8; in North York, from 14 to 16; in York, from12.4 to13.9; and in old Toronto from 11.2 to 12.2.
Etobicoke, which has the highest percentage of seniors in the city at 16.1 per cent, even more than the national number, rose from 14.2 per cent. East York dropped from 14.5 to 13 per cent.
The city of Toronto approved a seniors strategy this spring that includes 27 recommendations to adapt to a growing senior population, including developing a seniors housing strategy, and identifying “aging improvement areas” — neighbourhoods that have high concentrations of vulnerable seniors where more services could be added.
But Lebo said she believes the city hasn’t caught up to what’s needed “in terms of mobility” to make aging easier, like bigger elevators to accommodate wheelchairs in condos, railings, crosswalks and even armrests for park benches.
“We’re not living in an agefriendly universe, and by agefriendly I’m talking about from cradle to grave, because the same thing you need for seniors you might need for a pregnant mom with a stroller and two kids.”
It’s this “cradle to grave” planning where the old divides of the borough boundaries start to show. (Along with fewer seniors, the old city of Toronto also has fewer kids and teens than the suburbs, according to the census).
While there are challenges everywhere, the suburbs can be even harder for seniors, Lebo says.
On Saturdays, Carol Banez and the Scarborough Ontario Seniors Association run older adult activity classes, such as line dancing and Zumba, out of Scarborough community centres as a way for seniors to get exercise, socialize and keep their minds active.
But it’s hard for seniors who don’t drive.
“We have a few that would like to come but transportation is not accessible,” said the 71-year- old. “For the other seniors who are left isolated on their own, that’s where the problem is.”
While there’s a TTC bus stop on Ellesmere Rd., near Birkdale Community Centre, where classes are often held, it can be a long bus ride for seniors living in nearby subdivisions or apartments. It’s also about a 15-minute walk for an able-bodied senior from the shops and services at Scarborough Town Centre, according to Google Maps.
Compare that to the Sunshine Centres for Seniors Bloor and Yonge location, within easy walking distance from the subway, several coffee shops, and a library.
There are some areas in Scarborough “where there are no sidewalks,” said Banez, pushing seniors onto the road and creating a dangerous situation that can keep seniors from going out.
And if they’re “stuck at home” that’s when isolation, depression and even more health issues can creep in, the retired geriatric nurse said.
Losing a licence can be a paralyzing blow in more car-dependent areas of the city, such as Scarborough. In Ontario, once a person hits 80, they face a renewal process every two years that includes a vision test and driver record review.
They can also have their licence taken away for medical reasons such as dementia.
“It’s almost like taking away independence,” Banez said. “They just feel very lost.”
To address this, developers need to start building more housing options that can let more suburban seniors to age in their own communities, such as accessible midrise apartments and mixed-use blocks, Miller said.
“Most of the suburbs built since the late ’50s, ’60s and ’70s in Toronto and surrounding areas and many other places were really built with the car in mind,” he said.
As people have aged, and are less able to drive, they find themselves too far to walk to shops, medical appointments or recreational activities, like those at the Birkdale Community Centre, and transit there is often lacking.
One goal of the seniors strategy is to get “age-friendly language and policies” into the city’s official plan, he said, to “send a message” to developers about the “huge opportunity for different kinds of housing.”
The city also needs to build flexibility into existing public spaces to accommodate the bulge of older people, both downtown and in the suburbs, said Samir K. Sinha, director of geriatrics at Sinai Health System and the University Health Network.
Underused schools and daycares, for example, could be turned into dementia care programs.
“We need to make sure that we build smart communities that have lots of those services that are conveniently accessible,” he said.
“So that as we age, as we may have more mobility problems and other things, it never becomes hard to navigate in one’s own neighbourhood.”
Gil Penalosa, founder and chair of non-profit 8 80 Cities, which works to improve cities for all ages, said older adults do need special services such as dementia programs. But they also want some of the same things — like parks within walking distance and safe streets — as young families with kids.
“We must stop building cities as if everybody was 30 years old and athletic,” he said.
“We have a few that would like to come (to classes) but transportation is not accessible.” CAROL BANEZ SCARBOROUGH ONTARIO SENIORS ASSOCIATION