Place-Making with Older Adults: Towards Age-Friendly Communities

Ageing populations in Brazil and the UK have generated new challenges in how to best design living environments that support and promote everyday social engagement for older people. The ageing-in-place agenda posits that the preferred environment to age is the community, enabling older people to retain a sense of independence, safety and belonging. Encouraging older adults to remain in their communities has contributed to planning and design concepts such as Age-Friendly Cities and Communities, Lifelong Homes and Liveable Neighbourhoods. However, current urban planning and development models have overlooked the notion of sense of place, articulated through supports for active living, social participation and meaningful involvement in the community. Integrating sense of place into the built environment is essential for supporting active ageing, ensuring that older adults can continue to make a positive contribution in their communities and potentially reducing health and social care costs.
This project has three core aims: (i) to investigate how sense of place is experienced by older people from different social settings living in diverse neighbourhoods in Brazil and the UK; (ii) to translate these experiences into designs for age friendly communities that support sense of place; and (iii) to better articulate the role of older adults as active placemakers in the design process by involving the community at all stages of the research.
We will undertake fieldwork in a total of 18 neighbourhoods (of varying densities and income levels) across 6 case study cities in Brazil (Pelotas, Porto Alegre, and Brasilia) and the UK (Edinburgh, Manchester and Glasgow).
We will use a range of methods to achieve the project aims, including sense of place surveys and semi-structured interviews alongside experiential methods including 'go along' walks, photo and video diaries and community mapping exercises to capture the place-based needs of older adults.
The new data generated will answer the following research questions: (i) How is sense of place experienced by older adults from different social classes living in diverse neighbourhoods in Brazil and the UK? (ii) What services, amenities and features are needed to create age friendly communities that promote healthy cities and active ageing in different urban and cultural contexts? (iii) How can communities be designed to better integrate the sense of place needs of older adults across different urban and cultural contexts?
A community-based participatory approach will be adopted to the research, bringing together all stakeholders in a process of collaborative dialogue and co-design to challenge the hierarchical power relationships that exist when planning 'for' and not 'with' older people. The results will be used to co-create place-making tools and resources which are essential for designing age friendly environments for older adults. Findings will be disseminated to community, policymaker, practitioner and academic audiences through ongoing and end of project knowledge translation activities.

Supporting older adults to age-in-place is central to current policy debates, but the existing evidence base is weak and we know little about what works in terms of delivering age friendly communities and in what context. As a result existing policy and guidelines are either ill-conceived or have not been reconciled at a local level. The study will be of substantial benefit to the ageing-in-place agenda, specifically to policy makers, practitioners and the public. The study will benefit policy makers and practitioners working across a spectrum of fields (ageing and older adults, the built environment, urban regeneration, architecture and urban design, community planning and development) at national and local levels in the UK and Brazil. It is also likely to be of great interest to policymakers and practitioners internationally where the ageing population is a global challenge that both developed and developing countries need to respond to. The project will create the necessary tools and resources for use and application by practitioners across a range of social and cultural contexts. Outputs will become primary reference points for a broad range of stakeholders, informing the development of policy and practice in the areas of age friendly communities and healthy cities, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of interventions to support older adults to live independently in their communities. The long-term aim is to influence regional and national policy on ageing through an age friendly cities and communities agenda that addresses healthy and active aging in the UK, Brazil and internationally.

The project will develop the skills and capacity among project partners, older adults and community partners in the UK and Brazil to lay the foundation for positive change including: shared knowledge and expertise, partnership working and collaborative tools and resources. First, the project will embed the necessary partnership working at a local level (within the respective case study sites) to ensure positive future outcomes. This project will create an enhanced role for older adults such that they can adopt the role of active 'place makers' beyond the research. The projects will contribute to changed attitudes amongst the partners involved ensuring that future place management practices in their respective local and national contexts are shaped around the place-based needs of older adults. Second, the project will bring about changed attitudes and working practices among the partners involved. This will have positive impact in terms of creating the dialogue and platform for more sympathetic, user-led forms of urban planning and design to emerge. The collaborative nature of the research activities will challenge existing 'ways of doing' amongst urban practitioners to look beyond their disciplinary silos to allow new learning to emerge. The close involvement of partners in local and regional government will ensure that the project has impact on the development of policy and practice moving forward, for example through sharing the research evidence, participatory approaches and resources developed as a result of the project. More broadly, the tools and resources developed in this project work towards creating places and communities that will have a positive impact on the health and well-being of older adults. Older adults will benefit long-term from the development of urban development and built environment interventions that support their desire to age in their community, surrounded by services and amenities and supportive social networks.

To ensure that there are clear links between the research and impact we are committed to ensuring that knowledge exchange and mobilisation is a key part of both ongoing and end of project research activities. To this end, we have developed a comprehensive Knowledge Mobilisation (KM) plan (see pathways to impact statement), to ensure that our research reaches its intended audience.