Towards Age-Friendly Built Environment

Abstract

The population of aged people is increasing dramatically throughout the world and this demographic variation is generating different challenges for societies, families and individuals in many different ways. One of the effective approaches for responding towards demographic ageing is to have more evidences on creating age-friendly communities. Despite of having number of researches on ageing, there is limited knowledge on identifying components for developing age-friendly communities and cities. This research therefore, aims at discovering the benefits of properly designed age-friendly communities and interrelationships of key related concepts. To accomplish this aim, relevant research papers have been reviewed and subjected to thematic analysis. This study emphasizes on improving the overall wellbeing of elderly not only by finding out the improvement strategies on the health care facilities but also by finding strong evidences on benefits of designing their housing and immediate outdoor environment. Therefore, this study recommends future research directions on developing built environments responsive to the aspirations and requirements of aged population which can not only assist the adoption and maintenance of an active lifestyle, but it can also be beneficial to the physical and psychological overall well-being of aged population. More studies on planning urban environmental settings targeting aged population can be beneficial to not only aged people but for people from every age group. Thus, these settings will be advantageous for anyone with varying requirements with changing generational needs and lifestyles from a child to a couple to aged people.



Author Information
Reshma Shrestha, University of South Australia, Australia
Alpana Sivam, University of South Australia, Australia
Sadasivam Karuppannan, University of South Australia, Australia

Paper Information
Conference: AGEN2017
Stream: Aging and Gerontology

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Posted by James Alexander Gordon