VULNERABILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL STRESS OF OLDER ADULTS IN DEPRIVED NEIGHBOURHOODS IN THE NETHERLANDS

Recent policy rests on the assumption that it is better for older people to live independently within the community for as long as possible. A related assumption is that the local community forms a supportive context for vulnerable older people; the environment can compensate the limitations resulting from growing old. However, Lawton's 'environmental docility hypothesis', in which the interaction between characteristics of the environment and a person's competence is described, forms a reason to be more careful with this assumption. In a survey of 1,939 Dutch older adults carried out in 2002-2003 this hypothesis is explored for older people living in deprived and non-deprived neighbourhoods. The results of the analysis seem to be in line with Lawton's hypothesis. In non-deprived neighbourhoods, no differences in environmental stress are found between vulnerable and non-vulnerable older adults, while in deprived neighbourhoods vulnerable older adults experience significantly higher levels of environmental stress than non-vulnerable older adults. Copyright (c) 2008 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

Urban ageing: technology, agency and community in smarter cities for older people

Despite the widespread popularity of smart cities in policy and research fields, and the ever-increasing ageing population in urban areas, ageing issues have seldom been addressed in depth in smart city programs. The main focus has hitherto been on making physical environments 'older people friendly'. We review studies in environmental gerontology, policies and HCI that show the multifaceted relationship between ageing and cities. We discuss two case studies with scenarios of engagement of older people in urban areas we undertook in the past 4 years. By drawing upon the results, we propose a vision of smart city that conceives of older people as embedded in intergenerational urban communities and capable of creating new engagement situations by reconfiguring IT-driven scenarios to their interests and social practices. This paper aims at expanding the current visions of smart cities for older people by building along three main dimensions: technology, agency and community.This work has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (TIN2011-28308-C03-03), the EU through Life2.0 (CIP ICT PSP-2009-4-270965), FGSIC and OSC through WorthPlay and supported by the A-C-T (Ageing-CommunicationTechnology) network funded by the Canadian SSHRC.info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/3PN/TIN2011-28308-C03-0