Towards the All Age Friendly City

Author(s):

Helen Manchester(presenting / submitting)Keri Facer(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

14 SES 09 B, Place-Based and Place-Conscious Education II

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

11:00-12:30

Room:

109.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Rocío García Carrión

Contribution

As our global populations become increasingly concentrated in cities we have seen a renewed call for ‘spatial justice’ (Soja, 2009) or the ‘right to the city’ (Lefebvre, 1991). Related to this we are beginning to see the emergence of two parallel, but currently unconnected, movements – namely, the ‘Child Friendly City’ movement (led by UNICEF) and the ‘Age Friendly City’ movement (led by the World Health Organisation). These movements both aim to ensure that planners, policy makers and developers design cities that take account of the interests of age groups who are too often marginalized in current policy and design processes. They are both hugely important.

In thinking about and advocating for children and older adults separately, however, we risk ignoring the fact that these groups often live alongside each other, occupy the same public spaces, have interests and needs in common. Important opportunities may therefore be missed to create services and infrastructure that address the interests of both groups. Moreover, by treating these groups separately, we risk furthering current trends toward intergenerational tensions that have the potential to be profoundly harmful for the well-being and learning of all living in our future cities. A different approach, and one that we propose in this paper, is to imagine future cities as ‘All-Age-Friendly Cities’ that offer services, infrastructure and spaces that not only meet shared needs, but better liberate the different talents of all ages to create greater intergenerational learning and solidarity.

Taking a broad view of education and learning as lifelong and lifewide, and as taking place across and between multiple contexts in the city we interrogate how co-producing alternative ideas about the future of intergenerational learning in the city can enable real change to happen in the present. This paper draws on a particular approach in the discipline of futures studies where the future is seen as a lived consequence of decisions we are making today and have made in the past, and as emerging from social and political struggles. The motivation of this field of study is to begin to challenge assumptions perpetrated about the future and to work together with others, both within and outside the academy, to build alternative visions of the future which we can begin to work towards today (Facer, 2011).

Method

The All-Age-Friendly City project, carried out in Bristol, UK in Spring-Summer 2014, emerged from a desire to imagine the future city from the perspectives of those people – children and older adults – who are too often overlooked in the design and planning of cities today. Our interpretation of the city as a complexity of places where people relate to each other and their environment (Geddes, 1904) influenced our methodological approaches which involved multidisciplinary, cross sectoral work. The project bought together researchers working in childhood and aging, members of local government, artists, community groups, computer scientists, developers, planners and practitioners working with children and older adults, to co-produce ideas about how cities might better meet the needs and interests of our oldest and youngest generations. Researchers first engaged in desk research to explore current thinking on, for instance: the care of our rapidly aging populations (Walker, 2003); the decline of inter-generational interaction in public spaces (Hatton-Yeo and Watkins, 2004); and the interests that children and older adults have in common (Brannen, 2003; Timonen et al 2013; Pain 2005, Lorenc et al 2013, Pain 2006; Topham 2013; Sweiry and Willitts 2012; Age UK 2011, Birdwell and Bani 2014). Two workshops were then held with diverse individuals who were led through a series of future thinking activities designed to help them to co-produce alternative visions of the future. In the first workshop, participants started from long-term trends and explored the role of contingency and radical novelty in shaping future trajectories for intergenerational relationships in an imaginary future Bristol of 2070. This generated two scenarios that disrupted contemporary assumptions about employment and the organisation of time, space and resources. In the second workshop, participants worked from a map of age-related patterns and practices in the city today, to create a new city map that reflected the desired practices and values of a future All-Age-Friendly City, harnessing the technological and social drivers described earlier. This generated two scenarios that built strongly on contemporary concerns and issues. These four scenarios were used to identify a set of key areas that would benefit from development and investment to create a future ‘All-Age- Friendly City’.

Expected Outcomes

In this paper we draw on our research to define the All-Age-Friendly City as characterised by: • a focus on the representation and voice of children, young people and senior citizens in democratic processes and citizenship while recognising the heterogeneity of these groups, • attention to the experience and perception of safety in the city, including physical, economic and psychological safety, for children, young people and senior citizens, • a sense of ownership of the city, in particular its public spaces, and feelings of belonging, being considered and being welcome in these spaces, • a city that is walkable, supported by high quality, accessible and low cost transport systems, that encourages mobility and participation in public life, • integrated planning processes and service design that consider and encourage beneficial opportunities for interactions between children, young people and older adults in all areas of education, health, family and civic life. Two core concerns emerged from the research. Firstly, the need to design cities and educational encounters in order to enhance the capacity for intergenerational solidarity in particular, by building trust between different age groups and by creating opportunities for spontaneous encounters. Secondly, the need to design cities for the shared mobility and living needs of children, young people and older adults, in particular, by developing new approaches to public transport, public space and housing.

References

Birdwell, J. and Bani, M. 2014. Introducing Generation Citizen. DEMOS, UK Brannen, J. 2003. ‘Towards a Typology of Intergenerational Relations: Continuities and Change in Families’ Sociological Research Online. 8 (2) Facer, K. (2011) Learning Futures: Education, technology and social change. London: Routledge Geddes, S.P. (1904). City development: A study of parks, gardens and culture-institutes. Bourneville: The St. George Press Hatton-Yeo, A. and Watkins, C. (2004) Intergenerational community development: a practice guide. Stoke-on-Trent: Beth Johnson Foundation. Lefebvre, H. (1991) The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell. Lorenc, T., Petticrew, M., Whitehead, M., Neary. D., Clayton, S., Wright, K., Thomson, H., Cummins, S., Sowden, A. and Renton, A. (2013). ‘Fear of crime and the environment: systematic review of UK qualitative evidence’. BMC Public Health 2013, 13:496. http:// www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/13/496/#ins2 Pain, R. (2005). Intergenerational Relations and Practice in the Development of Sustainable Communities. Background Paper for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. International Centre for Regional Regeneration and Development Studies, Durham University. Pain, R. (2006). ‘Paranoid parenting? Rematerializing risk and fear for children’. Social & Cultural Geography, 7 (2) 221-243. Soja, E. (2009) The City and Spatial Justice. Paper prepared for presentation at the conference Spatial Justice, Nanterre, Paris, March 12-14, 2008. Retrieved from http://www.jssj.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/JSSJ1-1en4.pdf Sweiry, D and Willitts, M. (2012). Attitudes to age in Britain 2010/11. In-House Research No 7, Department for Work and Pensions, UKAge UK. 2011. Agenda for later life 2011: Public Policy and An Aging Society Timonen, V., Conlon, C., Scharf, T., and Carney, G. (2013). Family, state, class and solidarity: re-conceptualising intergenerational solidarity through the grounded theory approach. European Journal of Ageing, 10: 171-179. Topham, G. (2013). Public transport fare rises hitting the young the hardest, says study. The Guardian, 28.05.2013: UK. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/may/28/public-transport-fare-rises-young (Accessed 11.01.15) Walker, A. (2003). The New Generational Contract: Intergenerational Relations And The Welfare State: Intergenerational Relations, Old Age and Welfare. Routledge: London

Author Information

Helen Manchester (presenting / submitting)

University of Bristol

Graduate School of Education

Bristol

Keri Facer (presenting)

University of bristol

....

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.