Rethinking Communities

The World Health Organization, which ranked the age-friendliness of 35 major world cities, says it’s not particularly difficult for a city to be age-friendly:

• Be clean
• Have well-maintained green spaces with adequate toilet facilities
• Have pedestrian-friendly sidewalks
• Have outdoor seating
• Install and maintain smooth pavement
• Install sufficient pedestrian crossings
• Install adequate street lighting

According to many experts, communities that build for young families won’t retain their senior populations but communities that build for seniors will attract all ages.

The primary challenge that seniors have in remaining independent is transportation. When the grocery store and doctor’s office can only be accessed by car and one can no longer drive, there are very few options. Elizabeth Burton, Professor of Sustainable Building Design and Wellbeing at Warwick University, notes that, “as people age and their mobility declines, they may no longer be able to drive, and their world shrinks – it is therefore much better to live closer to amenities in a higher density of people.”

Rural areas have an even greater challenge when their aging population is spread out over a wide area, says age-friendly design specialist Jeremy Myerson. Delivering social and medical care becomes difficult.

Beyond the lack of access to basic services, isolation becomes an issue when your mobility won’t allow walking beyond a block or two. As a result there is a growing movement away from seniors-only complexes that are disconnected from neighbourhoods and urban centers demonstrating a preference for connectedness and independence rather than shuffling old people off to one side. As Burton says, “it’s either live in a normal house or live in a care home, and there’s not very much in between.”

Some planners are attempting to create that in-between for seniors and are being successful in attracting and retaining them as a result. In historic Cape Cod, smaller developments scaled to the history of the area are being built with access to a wide array of amenities including restaurants, cafes, churches, salons, galleries and so on. Christie Place in Scarsdale is an up-scale development with a two-building age-restricted condo featuring 42 units. Ground floor restaurant, café and dry cleaners with grocer and other retail services are within a 600-foot walk.

So is your community age-friendly? If not, what can communities do? Here are some ideas:

• review the WHO pointers and measure your community against them
• take stock of where senior’s housing and long term care facilities are being built – the outskirts or in the middle of community life
• look at how public transportation is handled – are there taxis, shuttles or buses available to move seniors to the places they need to go?
• work with social service organizations, municipalities, hospitals and churches to rethink how your community could be more age-friendly