Eleven - Alternative age-friendly initiatives: redefining age-friendly design

Summary

Introduction

This chapter challenges a general reluctance within the design world to engage both with the subject of ageing generally and in work to develop age-friendly environments. It identifies new and creative ways in which architects, artists and designers might be drawn into debates around age-friendly urban practice and suggests that by bringing an emerging scene of socially engaged designers into the framework of age-friendly policy, it becomes possible to both enrich current thinking and practice on age-friendly cities.

The past three years have seen increased interest in design and engineering in the dynamics of ageing and urbanisation, and the different ways in which the profession might respond to demographic trends within cities. Institutions such as the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and Arup (the global engineering firm) have started to respond to the changing demographic environment of cities, using workshops, seminars and reports to initiate a debate on their role in the creation of age-inclusive spaces. In 2013, the RIBA published its Silver linings report based on a series of roundtable discussions that sought to generate a series of design scenarios for the next generation of city dwelling ‘third agers’ (RIBA, 2013). In 2015, Arup, through its research arm, started to explore its own scenarios around urban ageing and the way in which cities are shaping the experience of growing old (Arup, 2015).

These institutional initiatives can, in some ways, be seen to run parallel to the age-friendly policy initiatives of the World Health Organization (WHO), drawing on the momentum that the field of age-friendly discussion and debate has been able to create through the WHO Global Network for Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (see Chapter Two). But, for the most part, the discourse and discussion on ageing and urbanisation within the design world has tended to stand apart from the language and thinking of age-friendly policy. It is a paradox that while policy-led discussion on age-friendly cities often focuses on issues to do with design (what cities might do to create environments that are more ‘age-friendly’), within the design world itself, engagement with the idea of age-friendliness remains limited. This is particularly apparent among socially engaged design practitioners reluctant to engage with debates around population ageing and urbanisation, even as, ostensibly, these are the practitioners best placed to engage with the social policy debates around the construction of age-friendly cities (Handler, 2014).