Age-friendly city design: Identifying common opportunities across the world
Today’s design choices need to reflect the fact that the world’s population is both ageing and becoming increasingly urbanized. Safiah Moore and Greyson Clark consider some experimental projects from across the globe that have found new ways to help ensure that everyone, including older people, can live full and productive lives.
Designing with, and for, the older people in our communities is becoming increasingly important as we see two major societal changes: our population is ageing and is increasingly urban. For the first time in history, there are now more people aged over 65 than there are children under the age of five.1 By 2050, the global population over 60 years of age is expected to reach
2.1 billion (more than double what it is today)2 and approximately 70 percent of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas.3
These major shifts are being experienced alongside other drivers of change, including the increasing occurrence of extreme weather events as a result of climate change, the application of digital technologies to transform aspects of healthcare and lifestyle, a general community desire to “age in place,” and economic pressures on public services to “do more with less.”
According to Josef Hargrave, Arup’s Global Foresight Manager, “The future is not evenly distributed.
The challenge with any megatrend is our ability to contextualise its impacts ... We need to develop a better understanding of the realities of ageing communities across the world and identify common opportunities for us to address the challenge through better decisions today.”4
Arup undertook a worldwide review of the implications of an ageing population and an increasingly urban population.
Its report, Cities Alive: Designing for Ageing Communities, identified four key needs for older people: autonomy and independence, social connectedness, health and wellbeing, and security and resilience. These needs frame opportunities across the built environment to build resilience and strengthen communities, supporting full and productive lives for older people.
A number of case studies – both international and across Australia – help to showcase the potential to “design in” or “design for” health and wellbeing at all stages of physical or mental ability and to respond to these four key needs of older people. The examples also highlight the value of respecting, celebrating and applying the knowledge of older people to create rich and diverse communities.
In Singapore, Kampung Admiralty by Woha is a mixed-use development that hosts a housing estate, a medical centre, an “active ageing hub,” banks, food stalls and a range of retail. Here, “mixed-use” is not just a land-use description; rather, it signifies deliberate design for engagement between generations to support health and wellbeing. For example, a childcare centre sits within the development and programming brings young and older people into shared activities and places, facilitating cross-generational interaction. (For a review of Kampung Admiralty, see Architecture Australia Sept/Oct 2019.)
With almost one-third of its population forecast to be 65 or older by 2025, the city of Toyama, Japan is applying a “compact city” approach to development. Using subsidies, the government incentivizes developers and homeowners to encourage senior housing and community facilities in “residence encouragement zones,” which cover the city centre, areas within 500 metres of tram lines and regional rail, and areas within 300 metres of high-frequency bus routes. These initiatives enable greater autonomy and independence for older people.
Creative approaches to existing assets are being applied in New York
City, where the Market Ride program uses school buses during off-peak hours to transport older people to local markets, cultural institutions and other destinations. Harnessing a city’s assets resourcefully can help to forge new connections and interactions that might not otherwise occur.
In Sydney, as well as across the UK, programs such as Dementia Cafe have been implemented to cater for people with dementia as well as their carers. “D Cafs” provide a weekly or monthly
meeting place, providing opportunities to socialize, access information or services and enjoy a change from the usual routine.
As evidence continues to build around the correlation between access to nature and wellbeing, Booroongen Djugun, an Aboriginal residential aged care facility in Kempsey, New South Wales, reveals how building materials, views and open spaces can be designed to connect with land. Elders contributed to the design, which reflects the spiritual beliefs and traditional customs of the local Aboriginal community. This facility demonstrates the opportunities that can come from listening and learning from Country, and designing sympathetically and appropriately for a community’s needs.
Bree Trevena, Research Leader for Arup Australasia, highlights the need to “design with empathy, humanity; design with people rather than for people ... to make places to live in, rather than places to die in.”5 Sound Field, a collaborative installation by Arup and Bloxas Architects, was displayed at the Alzheimer’s Australia national conference in Melbourne in 2017 and the National Design Centre in Singapore in 2019 to provide an immersive experience of the role of sound in urban design and what it might feel like to live with dementia. Projects such as this build awareness of the experiences of others and advance the conversation about the need to transfer design practice across multiple dimensions.
Demonstration projects like all of these enable testing and learning, and provide the opportunity for shifts in design as well as regulation and policy to unlock the potential for widespread change. To design effectively for ageing communities, both obvious and less apparent strategies across the built environment must be explicitly identified, as both can have profound impacts on the lives of older people and their carers. Using insights and experience from across sectors (health, economics, digital technology and others), built-environment practitioners have the opportunity to make deliberate design choices to benefit all, including older people.
— Safiah Moore is an associate at Arup, where she leads the Planning team in the Jakarta office. She seeks to extend the opportunities for shaping better cities through cross-sectoral collaboration, greater listening and co-creation with communities.
— Greyson Clark is part of the Integrated City Planning team in Arup’s London office, working in strategic planning, master planning, and the planning and implementation of major infrastructure projects.