Planning and Designing Healthy Lifespan Communities [continued from page 1] eight physical and social-environmental domains that are assessed to gauge their existing agefriendliness. Of the three physical environment domains within the WHO protocol, “Outdoor Spaces and Buildings” is the most relevant to many landscape architects, urban designers, and planners. Fortunately, many of the types of public realm, urban design interventions that support the ability of older citizens to successfully engage with and traverse their environments and communities also support the abilities of its younger members. As one (often-repeated) planners’ expression goes: if you design and build communities that work for its youngest and oldest members, they will most likely work for those community members in between. It is this explicitly lifespan-oriented approach to community planning and design, at both broad and granular levels, that distinguishes the great places to which our profession aspires. These great places also factor in the types of supportive services and amenities that are particularly conducive to community members’ successfully and healthily aging-in-community. To be precise here, what I refer to as successful aging-in-community is not the same as what is generally referred to in the media as “aging-in-place,” which focuses on keeping older community members in their existing homes regardless of whether or not those homes meet their residents’ current needs
and abilities. While certain recent surveys quote very high percentages of older residents preferring to remain in their current homes, it is very likely that these surveys are illustrating a larger desire for residents to remain in a community that is familiar to them—one which allows them to draw upon the personal relationships, stores, restaurants, services, and open spaces that they are comfortable with. Ask yourself: if most older community residents you know had viable options to live in quality, needs-appropriate and affordable dwellings, with adequate transportation and service options, within their current and beloved communities, would they still insist on staying in their current dwellings?
Broadening the Conversation Does it really matter whether smart, well planned, designed, constructed and maintained open spaces, parks, streetscapes, plazas, trails and playgrounds were specifically intended for one population cohort or another, or designed to further a livability initiative, a sustainability plan, a place-making effort, or to promote public health and fight obesity? Taking a lifespan approach will be most successful if the community conversation does not only include the usual players. Capital infrastructure planning investment decisions should also reflect attention to considerations of their impacts on healthy living throughout the lifespan of a com-
This 2012 IL-ASLA award-winning project by Site Design Group includes landscape elements that encourage the passive and active involvement of residents of the CHA’s Judge Fisher Apartments.
4
munity. The current record in most communities on this score is mixed. As described in Janet Attarian’s cover article in Elevation’s Winter 2012 issue, Chicago’s Department of Transportation is now approaching its sustainable transportation infrastructure in a highly collaborative manner, and working with diverse city departments and agencies—from Public Health to Water Management—to work in an integrated fashion. On the other hand, recent public transit decisions have included closure (since rescinded in the face of high profile political pressure) of the 111th Street bus route that used to stop at the doorstep to West Pullman’s newest shopping center, and a portion of the Lincoln Avenue bus route that served as the spine connecting many North Center and Lincoln Square services. Much work remains to be done in terms of taking a lifespan approach to promoting healthy and active living in our communities, and the design and planning community’s voices are important ones in this important ongoing conversation.
Brad Winick, AICP, LEED AP, is a graduate urban planner and architect, a seasoned planning consultant, having managed downtown, community, neighborhood, waterfront and open space planning projects for a rangeof public and private sector clients for 20+ years, an Adjunct Professor at UIC’s College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs, where he developed and teaches a graduate Urban Planning and Public Health course on planning healthy communities for an aging population, and a Board Director of AgeOptions (The Area Agency on Aging of Suburban Cook County). Increasingly focused on issues at the intersection of planning and aging, he recently established Planning/Aging, a niche consultancy dedicated to helping communities plan for their aging populations. Brad is available for teaching, speaking, writing and consulting engagements, and can be reached at planning.aging@gmail.com .