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An older woman with walking sticks
In some cities, public and private service providers are working together to address older residents’ needs. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian
In some cities, public and private service providers are working together to address older residents’ needs. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

What would it take to make an age-friendly city?

This article is more than 7 years old

Planned, multi-generational communities might be great for those who can afford them. The rest of us need cities better equipped for older people

The challenges of caring for older people are growing as we live longer. By 2050 an estimated 83.7 million people in the US will be over 65, almost double 2012 figures.

As well as health concerns, there is an epidemic of loneliness among older people. A study of over 60s by the University of California, San Francisco found 43% of those surveyed felt lonely on a regular basis.

“We are failing our society at all ages – we’re failing children, we’re failing seniors as they retire,” says Steve Nygren, the co-founder and developer of Serenbe, a planned community of 500 residents on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia.

The aim of Serenbe is to tackle the social isolation people can experience as they age, either because they live in cities that are failing to meet the needs of older people, or because the retirement homes or communities they move into can leave them feeling cut off.

“In our research, we found that seniors want to live in multi-generational communities, they want to see kids in the street,” says Nygren.

The next stage in Serenbe’s evolution is the development of the Mado community, where life will centre around a 250,000 square foot complex filled with restaurants, offices for eastern and western medicine practitioners, and a Montessori school.

The community will feature homes of all sizes, some of which will be built around a communal guest house, to attract a range of demographics and encourage socialising. A dormitory-like residence is also planned, aiming to give older people proximity to neighbours, services and caregivers. And to monitor residents’ wellbeing, homes will be equipped with technologies including wearables and GPS.

Miss Sargfabrik, Austria. The inter-generational community brings together groups who can feel socially excluded, including older people and single parents. Photograph: Haeferl

From Kanazawa in Japan to Miss Sargfabrik in Vienna, Serenbe is part of a new wave of sustainable communities around the world, purpose-built with the aim of tackling loneliness and breaking the tendency to segregate older people.

On paper these communities seem utopian, but this kind of planned community may not be for everyone.

The cost of change

One of the key challenges is around affordability. House prices in Mado, for example, aren’t cheap, ranging from $300,000 (£236,000) to more than $1,000,000 (£786,000). Mado’s future developments, such as the dormitory-style dwelling, are expected to offer lower-income housing options but those plans are still a work in progress and housing costs are not yet available.

As well as financial cost, there is the issue of change. Older people are reluctant to relocate, says James Treggiari, executive director of Legal Assistance for Seniors, an Oakland, California-based nonprofit. “Even if you offer seniors a fancy house with more services, the vast majority would say ‘I’m good where I am’ … It’s so entwined in their identity.”

Research supports this theory: the most recent annual studies by the US government’s Administration on Aging found 80% of people 65 and older live in metropolitan areas and only 4% of older people moved in the past year, compared to 13% of under-65s. A bigger question may be how to make existing urban communities more supportive.

Take San Francisco. Despite being home to a number of organisations working on issues of ageing, says Dr Karyn Skultety, vice president of health services at the Institute on Aging (IOA) in the city, it still struggles to meet older people’s needs, notably with high real estate costs leading to some being evicted, leaving the city or becoming homeless.

The city’s hilly geography means that transport is critically important, but competing needs from schools to homeless services to transportation makes allocating money for older people a challenge.

The business of building age-friendly cities

The IOA has had some success through partnering with the private sector. In August, the nonprofit announced that ride-hailing company Lyft would join in a three-way partnership with Whistlestop, a shuttle-van service for seniors. The partnership expands the ability for Whistlestop to get seniors to the IOA’s social day programmes, with Lyft providing wheelchair-accessible vehicles.

Lyft and its rival Uber have been criticised for overstating the benefits they offer to underserved communities but Skultety says the Lyft partnership shows the right way to develop senior services. “They’re curious about understanding this group of people that are not using their service and what they need.”

One organisation aiming to build a bridge between companies and seniors is Aging2.0, an initiative spanning 15 countries that brings together early-stage companies creating technologies to support older people.

Among the recently announced finalists of Aging2.0’s Global Startup Search awards is Silvernest, an online real estate service matching empty-nesters with rooms to let and baby boomers who want to live independently but not in isolation.

Other finalists include Mundo Prateado, a Brazil-based organisation dedicated to helping seniors remain active as they age, and NuEyes, which brings a Google Glass-like technology to the visually impaired.

“The story needs to be what can we do to keep people living independently,” says Stephen Johnston, co-founder of Aging2.0. “We need to do a better job of incorporating older people into our lives.”

A key problem is ensuring access to technology. “If you asked most [social service] agencies, they don’t see themselves as channels to sell products,” Johnston says. “There’s a broken economy here; we don’t have a functioning consumer marketplace so we’re not getting the innovations we need.”

Johnston is convinced smaller-scale local partnerships will build to ever-larger populations with access to new technologies, and eventually these innovations will become commonplace.

Until then, it’s a matter of reimagining older people’s place in society, something Nygren says is long overdue: “It’s not like creating spaces for seniors is a sacrifice, it’s about including seniors into a community for all the things they can bring, and to value their contributions.”

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