PUBLIC LECTURE: Friendly for Whom? Rethinking Age-Friendly Communities

A lecture by Professor Norah Keating, Director, The Global Social Initiative on Ageing.

In this presentation, Professor Keating speaks about her journey toward answering the question, ‘age-friendly for whom’? To illustrate the tremendous diversity in both people and place, she draws on examples of communities such as retirement villages in rural Canada and high-density urban settlements in urban South Africa; and of active engaged older persons and those who are marginalized as a result of poverty and poor health. She argues that an age-friendly community is one in which there is a good fit between the needs and preferences of older persons and community features and resources.

Viewing age-friendly as a measure of goodness of fit between communities and their older residents provides a platform for examining what community resources and needs might be most compatible with which groups of older residents. It moves the focus away from somewhat static evaluations of whether communities have a set of requisite features toward an examination of what opportunities they afford and to whom.