Planning for an ageing city: place, older people and urban restructuring

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the strategic policy processes, economic structures and tactics within which age and plac e programmes are formed, implemented and evaluated. The research draws on the Multiple Streams Approach to understand the relationship between problem identification, policy processes and politics and how they come together to respond to the needs of older people. Drawing on Belfast (UK) the paper examines the interactions between planning, health and social policies in the creation of an age-friendly city. The data questions the claim to age-friendliness given the way in which older people are increasingly shifted from the asset-rich urban core to the suburban periphery. It highlights the need to understand how structural processes, the property economy and an emphasis on speculative development have favoured policies based on gentrification in general and youthification in particular. The paper reflects on the limitations of the Multiple Streams Approach but also shows that the challenge of ageing and place is not simply one of weak integration or poor governance. The way in which interests, policies and politics shape better outcomes for older people needs to be factored into initiatives to create a more inclusive approach to urban planning.

System “Person-State-Society” in Period of Social Turbulence and Big Challenges (Case Study: Tomsk City, the Russian Federation)

“…Society is constantly faced with various challenges, the nature of which is quite diverse. Some lie in the political sphere (military, local, and interstate confrontations and conflicts [1][2][3][4]; change in political regimes [5][6][7][8]; and ethnic confrontations [9,10]), while others are projected onto the system of economic relations (financial recession [11,12], structural restructuring of the economy [13][14][15][16], and sanctions [17][18][19][20]), some are generated by the social organism itself (cultural and ideological shifts [21][22][23][24][25][26][27] and social differentiation [28,29]).…”