No abstract

The growing population over 65 years old and the process of urbanization are two of the major challenges that the contemporary city has to address urgently. These issues require a rethinking of public spaces to ensure health and well-being and stimulate active ageing. The theme of age-friendly cities emerges in this context; it’s about inclusive cities harmonised with the Agenda 2030 goals and the Universal Design principles since they support people’s lives regardless of age, gender, and abilities. In particular, the neighbourhood scale represents the optimal one able to implement experimentations for the sustainable development of the city. Furthermore, the neighbourhood is generally the place of the elderly’s everyday life where they are encouraged to go out and maintain their daily habits thanks to the existence of a safe and good public realm. Starting from the case study of the Santa Marta neighbourhood in Venice, the author has conducted a multi-phase analysis to investigate the quality of outdoor public spaces and which activities are played in these spaces to understand how the urban experience and the quality of life of the elderlies can be improved. At the same time, both the good practices listed by the WHO for the achievement of age-friendly environments and some of the major neighbourhood sustainability assessment tools were studied, paying attention to the social dimension of sustainability, seen as an “accelerator” of urban well-being and inclusiveness. This paper aims to present the first results of an ongoing research, whose purpose is to draft a new tool able to measure the age-friendliness – called SMARTAGING protocol – of a selected neighbourhood. Specifically, the methodological framework will be better described. In this regard, the new protocol shall support administrations in the understanding of the phenomena related to ageing by directing active policies and design choices with an increasing focus on citizens and local and social issues acting complying with the principles of Universal Design.

Neighbourhood Sustainability Assessment (NSA) tools are voluntary rating systems for certifying sustainable neighbourhoods in case of new constructions or urban renewals. They consist of categories and indicators to value specific performances. Their purpose is to objectify planned interventions assigning a final score which identifies the overall performance of the district in terms of sustainability. However, is it possible to affirm that these systems actually contribute to the improvement of inclusiveness and healthy living in the neighbourhoods? This question arises as a reflection on the two main issues that contemporary cities have to face urgently which are urbanization and ageing population, focusing attention on developed countries. In this regard, “new” urban spaces are called to achieve inclusion and healthy living for all the people and the neighbourhood represents the right scale for reasoning about. The present study investigates some of the most commonly used neighbourhood scale tools (BREEAM Communities, GBC Italia, DGNB Districts, Living Community Challenge, EcoDistricts) looking at how these systems can help to create more inclusive districts. In particular, the analysis aims to understand how much the social pillar of sustainability affects on urban wellbeing. In fact, there is the evidence that in most NSA tools environmental dimension shall prevails on the others. Through a review of each protocol’s “social” categories and of the recent literature on these topics, the study wants to underline criticalities and potentialities of NSA systems and tries to understand in which way a new protocol should act in order to help municipalities, planners and stakeholders in designing inclusive and accessible environments for all.