The Challenges of Urban Ageing: Making Cities Age-Friendly in Europe

Abstract

Urban ageing is an emerging domain that deals with the population of older people living in cities. The ageing of society is a positive yet challenging phenomenon, as population ageing and urbanisation are the culmination of successful human development. One could argue whether the city environment is an ideal place for people to grow old and live at an old age compared to rural areas. This viewpoint article explores and describes the challenges that are encountered when making cities age-friendly in Europe. Such challenges include the creation of inclusive neighbourhoods and the implementation of technology for ageing-in-place. Examples from projects in two age-friendly cities in The Netherlands (The Hague) and Poland (Cracow) are shown to illustrate the potential of making cities more tuned to the needs of older people and identify important challenges for the next couple of years. Overall, the global ageing of urban populations calls for more age-friendly approaches to be implemented in our cities. It is a challenge to prepare for these developments in such a way that both current and future generations of older people can benefit from age-friendly strategies.

How Older People Experience the Age-Friendliness of Their City: Development of the Age-Friendly Cities and Communities Questionnaire

“…For over a decade, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been involved in engaging and assisting cities and communities all over the world in becoming “age-friendly” [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ]. The WHO proposed that policies, services, and structures in an age-friendly city, which are related to the physical and social environment, are designed to support and enable older people to “age actively”.…”

Age-friendly cities in the Netherlands: An explorative study of facilitators and hindrances in the built environment and ageism in design

“…The increase of our ageing society is a positive yet challenging phenomenon, as population ageing and urbanisation are the culmination of successful human development. 2 The interaction of ageing and urbanism, which is also termed urban ageing, 3,4 raises issues for all types of communities in various domains of urban living. 5 Understanding the relationship between population ageing and urban change, and the need to develop supportive urban communities, are major issues for public policy.…”

Spatio-temporal assessment of energy consumption and socio-economic drivers in rural areas in Poland

“…Designed systems should have the capacity to mitigate negative trends of increasing energy costs and energy poverty [4]. Another challenge is adaptation to climate change of the ageing population [5][6][7][8][9]. Formulating strategic instruments and defining priority areas of support should be based on evidences and the policy integration principle [10;11].…”