The age-friendly community movement is gaining steam across the U.S. and around the world.
Age-friendly communities are livable communities for people of all ages. They’re cities, towns and counties that are making concerted efforts to build strong, community-based infrastructure in ways that best meet the needs of people as they age. This includes community and economic municipal planning that will enable residents to move easily and safely between their homes and neighborhood services and supports, participate in community decision-making and avoid becoming socially isolated while remaining in their communities and homes as long as possible.
Age-friendly communities aim to encourage social engagement among their residents, which in turn can maximize the quality of life. According to AARP, age-friendly communities need to consider eight aspects of livability: transportation, housing, social participation, outdoor spaces and buildings, community and health services, respect and social inclusion, civic participation and employment, and communication and information.
Thoughtful planning is required to ensure that a community’s built and social environments reinforce healthy aging. Improvements might be needed in any and all of the eight identified domains in order to achieve high levels of liveability.
More than 58 million Americans living in 122 cities, towns and counties have joined AARP’s Age Friendly Community Network. While inclusion on the list does not mean the community is currently “age friendly,” it does signify that the community’s elected leadership has made the commitment to actively work toward making their town, city or county a great place for people of all ages. Indeed, the emphasis is on benefits accruing to people of all ages.
Bangor, which in July became the 100th community to join the network, has embarked on a multistep process of improvement, which will include completion of a community survey, needs assessment and development of an age-friendly action plan. The University of Maine Center on Aging is conducting a series of citywide discussions and an online survey of businesses and organizations on behalf of Bangor Public Health and Community Services. This work, supported by AARP Maine, entails gathering the observations, recommendations and big ideas from a diverse group of residents on ways in which Bangor can become a great place to grow old.
We are learning what Bangor does well in support of community living and where changes might be considered. This process began only recently, but residents already have come forward and identified a number of creative ways in which outdoor space can become safer and more user friendly, how information on available community and health services can be distributed more broadly, and how housing can best be designed to meet the needs of older adults, the disabled and those living on limited incomes.
The city can probably make some suggested infrastructure changes with minimal expenditure of resources, and others will likely represent more costly undertakings. A full report will be issued at the end of 2016.
Bangor leaders should be commended for joining AARP’s Age Friendly Community Network. And Maine deserves special acknowledgement given that it has the highest number of cities, towns and counties — 22 — included in AARP’s Age Friendly Community Network of any state in the nation.
The principles of an age-friendly community fully align with universal tenets supportive of safe, healthy and satisfying living for young and old and individuals and families alike. As Patricia Oh, coordinator of older adult services in Bowdoinham, correctly pointed out in the Maine Policy Review last year, “the same wide path that accommodates a wheelchair or walker encourages a young parent to visit the park with a stroller” and an “intergenerational community gardening project is as attractive to young families as it is to older residents.”
Hats off to the city of Bangor and the 21 other Maine communities that are showing how leaders, with input from residents, can come together and respond proactively and constructively to the dramatic increase in the age of our citizenry. They are setting excellent examples of how to engage in strategic community and economic planning for the future in ways that will promote prosperity while improving the lives of everyone regardless of age.
Lenard W. Kaye is a professor at the University of Maine School of Social Work and director of the University of Maine Center on Aging. He is a member of the Maine chapter of the national Scholars Strategy Network, which brings together scholars across the country to address public challenges and their policy implications. Members’ columns appear in the BDN every other week.