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Because many communities where older people live were not designed for their needs, older residents may require support to remain in the least restrictive environment. "Age-prepared communities" utilize community planning and advocacy to foster aging in place. "Elder-friendly communities" are places that actively involve, value, and support older adults, both active and frail, with infrastructure and services that effectively accommodate their changing needs. This paper presents an analysis of the literature and results of a Delphi study identifying the most important characteristics of an elder-friendly community: accessible and affordable transportation, housing, health care, safety, and community involvement opportunities. We also highlight innovative programs and identify how social workers can be instrumental in developing elder-friendly communities.

Promoting a new vision of community—walkable, affordable, environmentally sustainable—the urban design idea of transit-oriented development (TOD) extended the land use and transportation nexus. This review article offers a twenty-five-year retrospective of TOD literature, shaped by disciplinary, policy, and practice predilections. Although the “D” in TOD stands for the encompassing notion of “development,” most literature focused on land development in particular. Meanwhile, sustainable or community development ideas languished, and other Ds such as Density, Diversity, and Design served as an operational framework for outcome-based research. We conclude by urging renewed focus in TOD research on the original goal of developing inclusive and sustainable communities.

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Neighborhoods walkability has become an important public health concern. The child’s-eye view of safe and walkable environments is typically remiss from the literature. Particularly the experience of inner city kids, very different from that of suburban neighborhoods, remains unreported. The study reported here offers new insights based on the walking to school experience reported by the children of inner city neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Interviews with fifth-graders from five grade schools suggest that the dangers in their social milieu are a much greater concern for them than the physical milieu, which the walkability research typically emphasizes. The findings necessitate new policies.