Making the most of life: The longevity bonus is a design issue
The 2020 Longevity by Design Challenge at The University of Queensland developed practical and implementable concepts for embracing longevity in our communities. Charrette leaders Rosemary Kennedy and Laurie Buys discuss ideas that arose from the process and visions for the future.
The Challenge: “It’s 2050 and Redlands, Queensland is renowned the world over as the best place to live for people of all ages.”
Australians are living longer and healthier lives. The average life expectancy of baby boomers and gen Xers is 30 years longer than their grandparents’ generation. This dramatic social change represents significant economic opportunities for Australia, if we rethink strategies for older people to contribute skills, knowledge and resources throughout their lifetime.
Yet “retirement” remains a societal norm, and attitudes that depict older people as dependent non-contributors persist. The question is: How can Australian communities prepare for and benefit from longevity? An insight from the Longevity by Design Challenge 20201 was that Australian cities aren’t great places for intergenerational living. Leveraging social change and shifting attitudes requires fundamental transformation of the way cities are planned, built and inhabited.
The Challenge was designed to address the complexity of longevity and its many stakeholders. By integrating multiple disciplines, the charrette leaders created an environment that simultaneously tackled the stereotypes attributed to people 65 years plus and illustrated possibilities that stem from rethinking city design for intergenerational equity and relationships. More than 120 people representing a diverse mix of ages and professions participated on 16 teams. Provocateurs injected new information during the process and the judging panel included high-profile urban planning and development bureaucrats as well as senior living providers. Rather than focusing on “age,” the overall direction was designing for engagement. The experience became a metaphor for what can be achieved when a motivated community uses their imagination, knowledge and expertise to innovate.
Three suburbs in Redland City, Queensland with differing demographics and density were selected as settings for the design-led, transdisciplinary and place-based charrette. These neighbourhoods enabled participants to visualize the interaction between built form, infrastructure and larger social conditions, from a macro to a granular level, as they considered and tested future scenario ideas.
The Challenge included the following constraints: a) no “overnight” transformations and expensive infrastructure b) no injection of large employer organizations c) the local employers are primarily small to medium enterprises d) public and private resources are linked within a complex governance and economic system.
Participants were challenged to produce tangible ideas for future development, to identify policies or actions needed and to suggest a timeline for change.
We are them
During the process, participants identified the following key insights, which drove fresh thinking about the importance of the environment for engaged and meaningful lives:
– Valued human factors, such as choice and autonomy in daily life, are important throughout every life stage.
– We are “them” – we are designing for ourselves, rather than the anonymous “other.”
– Conventional urban planning and short-term development finance regimes separate people rather than create community.
– Lack of mobility and connection between
people are barriers to participation. – Dominant car-centred planning and homogeneous housing suit the needs of very few people.
– In outer or fragmented suburbs, transportation challenges limit participation and exacerbate isolation for those without a car.
– Monocultural retirement villages and suburbs often promote dependence and limit choice and autonomy.
Life in Redlands in 2050
Participants used storytelling, role-playing and backcasting to describe “their” lives in Redlands in 2050 and to demonstrate their enthusiasm for leveraging the 30-year longevity bonus. Their ideas had strong ties to the locality, reinforcing that designing for longevity has multiple solutions. Designing for “everywhere is different” is essential for creating places with “heart” and intergenerational communities, versus designing for “everywhere is the same” and one-size-fits-all.
The narratives spoke of communities that promote opportunities for everyone to contribute, be productive and retain independence, with strategies for the incremental transformation of the physical environment into vibrant, walkable, inclusive, multigenerational neighbourhoods. In Redlands 2050, the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs and startups are aged 65-plus. One team’s guiding principles for communities of connected, cooperative and resilient residents summed up the overall direction for rethinking planning and designing for cities for all people.
Not one team used the term “elderly” in their presentation of future visions.
Ideas for re-imagining the built environment centred on revolutionizing the longevity economy and rethinking mobility. Technology across multiple sectors redefines jobs or creates new ones and addresses environmental issues that benefit everyone. Clean, renewable energy technologies were assumed. Underpinning these ideas were nascent concepts of new sources of finance. “Slow” development capital by patient lenders, such as personto-person investors, superannuation funds and meso-banking, which provide small loans to local entrepreneurs and startups, bring about the gradual reorganization of suburbs and streets, enabling new and expanded housing models to serve evolving population needs.
Connectivity at the heart
“Heart” and “mix” were recurring motifs in re-imagining 2050 Australian neighbourhoods. These analogies described complex ideas that connected new concepts, including the use of technology for physical and virtual connectivity.
New living configurations that supported diverse work and lifestyles and a mixing of generations evolved. Several teams designed-in employment and health hubs at the heart of micro-neighbourhoods, expanding existing hubs based around business, cultural and educational centres and connecting with future hubs.
Mobility networks privileged safe, accessible pedestrian wayfinding over fast-moving traffic. The Tek Trak proposal illustrated how shared or personal electric and autonomous vehicles bring social equity. Targeted digital communication and social media facilitated connectivity, engagement, local employment and entrepreneurship.
Gradually retrofitting neighbourhoods gained connectivity and green space. For example, the rise of new mobility options reduced the need for private car garages, leaving garages free to be repurposed for
working from home or for new enterprises and neighbourhood pop-ups. Three typical suburban house blocks were transformed into “super blocks” delivering five separate dwellings for intergenerational living with shared outdoor space. The People’s Choice winner inverted the walled model of senior living to strengthen age-friendly communities and intergenerational living, telling a powerful story of engagement.
Messy and involving
The judging panel responded most positively to proposals that were “messy and involving,” with its responses reflecting “how we want to live in environments that have a capacity for change, and to be changed.” Ideas such as Tek Trak and suburban “super blocks” do not require a big shift in thinking, are readily implementable and bring gradual, sustainable change. Few people want to live long-term in a perfect, sterile and unchanging “holiday resort,” with everything in place and taken care of – which summarizes many retirement dwellings. The teams’ work-in-progress concepts grasped language and visuals related to the narrative of actual communities and the diversity and connections among individuals. These propositions also demonstrated ways to bridge the gap between what is needed and the impetus for decision-making.
The Challenge took place in a pre-COVID world. Since then, millions of Australians from all walks of life have experienced working from home, not working or the psychological strains of isolation, loneliness and disconnection. To advocate for change in valuing people aged 65-plus as vital and contributing members of society, we need to be clear on what is needed. To create the future we want, we must imagine it. By setting a bold but achievable challenge and working collaboratively across diverse fields, Challenge participants showed that the landscape of living, learning, working and playing in Australia will change for the better for all generations if we take the brake off Australia’s societal and economic advancement by leveraging the as-yet-untapped longevity bonus.
Footnote
1. The Longevity by Design Challenge 2020 was organized by DMA Engineers and The University of Queensland’s Healthy Ageing Initiative, with support from event partners Paynters and Redland City Council (see longevitybydesign. co). Longevity by Design won the research category in the Inside Ageing Awards 2020.