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The WHO Age-Friendly cities project sought to identify the concrete indicators of an age-friendly city and to produce a practical guide to support advocacy, community development and policy change to make urban communities more age friendly.
For Dundalk, the project seeks to increase awareness of local needs, gaps and ideas for improvement, leading to the development of a more age-friendly urban setting.
Active Ageing
To be an age-friendly city, Dundalk will promote ‘active-ageing. Active ageing is the: process of optimising opportunities for health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age’.* An Age Friendly City:
* Recognises the great diversity among older persons
* Promotes their inclusion and contribution in all areas of community life
* Respects their decisions and life-style choices
* Anticipates and responds flexibly to ageing-related needs and preferences.
*Active Ageing: A Policy Framework, WHO, 2002
Local Results
The report presents the findings and results of the WHO Age-Friendly Cities research project carried out in Dundalk, Ireland between September 2006 and March 2007. The report represents a cross-community qualitative assessment of the environmental and social aspects that the community should look at to improve its friendliness for people of all ages, but specifically for Dundalk's seniors.
The WHO Project sets out to identify the concrete indicators of an age-friendly city and to produce a practical guide to support advocacy, community development and policy change to make urban communities more age friendly. For Dundalk, the project seeks to increase awareness of local needs, gaps and ideas for improvement, leading to the development of a more age-friendly urban setting.
This is a very exciting time for Dundalk as it transforms from a traditional manufacturing and engineering-based economy into a new, knowledge-based centre. As an important urban centre on the economic corridor between Dublin in the south and Belfast in the North, and benefiting from a climate of political reconciliation across the island of Ireland, Dundalk is set to grow substantially over the coming years as a result of significant infrastructure investment and Dundalk's 'gateway status', set within the context of the national spatial strategy.
Dundalk is re-generating, and under the variety of pressures that are shaping its current development directions, it is very timely that the community should take an in-depth look at what are the important factors that could make Dundalk a really friendly environment for people of all ages, now, and into the future.
WHO Guidelines
Everywhere cities are growing and greying
As of 2007, over half of the world’s people live in cities and by 2030, about three out of every five people will be urban dwellers. At the same time as cities are fast growing, the proportion of older people worldwide is rising rapidly: from about 600 million today, the number of people aged 60 and older will double to reach 1.2 billion by 2025. Both these trends are occurring at a much faster rate in developing countries.
In supportive and enabling urban settings, older people are a resource for their families, communities and economies.
To help cities make the most of a growing older population as they expand, WHO is releasing the Global Age-friendly Cities Guide on the occasion of the International Day of Older Persons - 1 October 2007.
An age-friendly city adapts its structures and services to be accessible to, and inclusive of, older people with varying needs and capacities.
Towards more age-friendly cities: The WHO Guide
Older persons define “age-friendly”
The age-friendly cities project was launched by WHO at the IAGG XVIII World Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 2005. With initial funding from the Government of Canada and Help the Aged UK, WHO and its partners in 33 cities from 22 countries asked about 1500 older people to describe the advantages and barriers they experience in eight areas of city living:
1. outdoor spaces and buildings,
2. transportation,
3. housing,
4. social participation,
5. respect and social inclusion,
6. civic participation and employment,
7. communication and information; and
8. community support and health services.
The issues, concerns and ideas for improvement voiced by older people were complemented by views of about 750 people who act as their caregivers or service providers. From these worldwide consultations, WHO identified the key features of an age-friendly city and developed checklists for each of the eight identifi ed areas.
The Global Age-friendly Cities Guide is available free of charge in English and French at http://www.who.int/ageing/en.
Print copies can be ordered from WHO Press at
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. Translations into other languages will be available shortly.
Using the Guide
The Guide will help cities at all stages of development see themselves from the perspective of older people, in order to identify where and how they can become more age-friendly.
It is intended for groups and individuals interested in making their cities more age-friendly. This includes government bodies, voluntary and academic organizations, the private sector and citizens’ groups. The heart of the Guide is the checklist of age-friendly features. The checklist is not an instrument for ranking one city against another. Rather, it is a tool for a city’s self-assessment and a map to chart progress. No city is too far behind to make some signifi cant improvements based on the checklist. Going beyond the checklist is possible, and indeed some cities already have features that exceed the core. These good practices provide ideas that other cities can adopt. The same principle followed in creating the Guide applies to using it: involve older people as full partners at all stages. In assessing a city’s strengths and gaps, older people will describe how the Guide’s checklist of age-friendly features matches their own experiences and expectations. They will provide suggestions for change and they can participate in implementing improvement projects. In the follow-up stages of age-friendly local action, older people should be involved in monitoring progress and to act as age-friendly city advocatesand advisers
A global network of age-friendly cities
The Guide is currently being used in several locations to initiate age-friendly city development. Networks are being developed in Canada, Japan, Spain, the UK, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East. By networking, city groups can support one another and share good practices to overcome similar problems.
Age-friendly cities best practices
An inventory of age-friendly best practices identified in the WHO research will be available online in November 2007. Sharing them among cities has already begun. In June 2007, the State of North Rhine Westphalia in Germany hosted a conference involving other cities in the WHO project to explore best practices in age-friendly city housing, health and other services. Another such meeting is expected to take place in Istanbul, Turkey early in 2008.
Age-friendly rural and remote communities
Non-urban communities must also become more age-friendly. In many countries, older people constitute a high percentage of the population in rural and remote areas as a consequence of the emigration of younger people. Work is under way in Canada to identify the age-friendly community features in small towns and villages. These results will be shared worldwide in due time.
Advancing research on age-friendly settings
The research leading to the Guide has yielded many rich findings worldwide, as well as connections among the researchers associated with the project. Additional funding from the Government of Canada is facilitating validation of the checklist of age-friendly city features. With the support of the Institute of Aging of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), researchers are working together to learn more about ageing in urban settings. In preparation are scientific papers describing the concept and methodology of the WHO-led research and examining age-friendly settings in relation to active and healthy ageing. Further collaborative research involving cities in different regions of the world will be conducted, beginning with an initiative led by the New York Academy of Medicine on the theme of “ageing in a foreign land”.
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