Twelve - Developing age-friendly policies for cities: strategies, challenges and reflections

Summary

Introduction

In June 2010, Manchester was formally admitted into the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Network for Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (GNAFCC), along with 13 other cities from across the world. The UK's first age-friendly city, Manchester, is now one of a significant group of age-friendly cities within the UK, and only one among more than 500 across the world (see Chapter Two). Since the early 1990s, Manchester, which faces important challenges with regard to ageing inequalities, poverty, social exclusion and life expectancy, has been highly committed to improving the quality of life of its older population. Indeed, Manchester has established itself over the years as a leading authority in developing strategic policy approaches to creating age-friendly cities, both at a national and international level (Buffel et al, 2014).

This chapter charts the evolution of the Age-Friendly Manchester (AFM) programme and, more broadly, explores how the UK government's ageing policies and strategies have developed since the late 1990s, highlighting four distinctive periods of nationally led activity relating to older people. It considers how the development of the age-friendly approach in Manchester has enabled a range of actors, notably local government agencies, to develop ageing programmes in the absence of national leadership. It then focuses on the city's involvement in expanding its programme into an ambitious cityregional approach to age-friendly urban development, the first of its kind in the UK. The chapter demonstrates the potential for stimulating age-friendly initiatives at a local and regional level whilst at the same time highlighting the pressures facing urban authorities at a time of economic austerity.

The social and demographic characteristics of Manchester

Manchester: population and social dimensions

The development of the age-friendly cities and communities movement can be seen to have emerged in response to global demographic trends that show population ageing as an important feature of many urban environments. Manchester is a city, however, with a unique demographic profile. Its population of 520,000 (2014 mid-year estimate taken from Registrar General's Mid Year Estimates, cONS, and Manchester City Council Forecasting Model W2016) has been growing steadily since 2001 at a growth rate of nearly 2% per annum, but this growth has not been spread equally across age groups.