Designing cities for the elderly

This thesis seeks to answer how urban design in an established town can be adapted to accommodate an aging population. It uses the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, as an example of a community making active efforts to improve its design and services to meet the needs of its elderly citizens. Among the many challenges seniors face in Brookline are barriers to mobility, need for activity and company, threats to physical safety, and limited range of travel. Through careful planning and design, local governments can make physical improvements to the public environment to allow seniors easy access to all parts of the town or city, and these improvements benefit people of all ages as well. However, institutions like the Senior Center in Brookline are essential for providing a high quality of life, by hosting recreational and educational activities, organizing services and outreach to isolated seniors, lobbying for appropriate representation in local policymaking, and increasing awareness of elderly issues. A combination of infrastructure improvements, services, and long-range planning can overcome the obstacles of cost, ignorance, and poor design to make the public environment accessible to all ages and abilities.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Lee, David, Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sam Bass Warner.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40124

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40124