Ageing-in-place: the role of neighbourhood outdoor space in urban China

Due to the increase in life expectancy and the one-child policy, China is experiencing population ageing in line with global trends, characterised by huge and rapid growth in numbers. The ever-changing physiological and psychological status inherent to the ageing process emphasises the importance of helping older people maintain a good and independent life in their own home and community for as long as possible. This is vital for older people’s own health and wellbeing, as well as reducing the pressures on health and social care and their cost to the government. Older people are especially sensitive to their social and immediate physical environment. An age-friendly community requires a close person environment fit to properly address older people’s individual needs, physical environmental, and social environmental conditions. A supportive neighbourhood environment can encourage older people to conduct outdoor activities, which are vital to them to keep healthy and maintain social connections. As a part of the neighbourhood environment, neighbourhood outdoor space plays an important role in influencing older people’s daily activities and ageing-in-place experiences. The attribute of neighbourhood outdoor space can allow, or indeed prevent, older people from conducting outdoor activities. Therefore, the affordances that fit with older people’s characteristics and needs that are offered by the attributes of neighbourhood outdoor spaces have excellent potential to support older people’s usage while they are ageing-in-place. The concept of affordance has been applied mostly in relation to children’s, rather than older people’s, activity environments and thus this study is one of the first to develop the concept in the context of older people’s environments. Current Chinese age-friendly environment research is still at a very early stage, just starting to move from a broad planning perspective to relatively more detailed aspects. This study applies theories of person-environment relationships and affordances in the context of research into age-friendly environments to inform improvements in the planning, design and management of neighbourhoods and communities that support ageing-in-place. The study uses multi-method research methodologies including interviews with older people living in the two types of residential community (work-unit residential community and commercial residential community), behavioural observations of older people in outdoor settings, and stakeholder interviews. NVivo was used to analyse interview data to reveal older people’s experiences of ageing-in-place, identify the factors that influence their experiences and use of outdoor spaces, as well as stakeholder’s perceptions. The interviews revealed that older people’s personal physiological, mobility, mental, and financial status are the premise factors that determine how they use outdoor spaces and whether they can age-in-place independently and well. Their relationships with children, partners, responsibilities for grandchildren’s care, as well as relationships with neighbours, wider social engagement, and access to community services constitute the social factors. Older people’s attachment to the natural environment and satisfaction with the community's physical environments constitute the physical environment factors. Among the physical factors, community retrofitting in the old residential communities is identified as an opportunity to increase older people’s satisfaction, engagement, and attachment to their community. Most importantly, by integrating the analysis of older people’s outdoor activities and environmental attributes, personal agency is developed by this study as environment related agency and social-related agency. Their sense of agency could influences their personal status, social and physical environment, and in turn influenced by those factors. It determines whether older people have positive ageing-in-place experiences rather than feeling stuck in their residential communities. GIS mapping was used to analyse the observation data to present older people’s outdoor activity characteristics. The spatial and temporal analysis of this data revealed a rich diversity of activities and temporal patterns of usage. By integrating data from these different methods, ten environmental attributes were identified as supportive to older people’s environment-related and social-related agency. The attributes are convenience, comfort, safety, multifunctionality, attractiveness, qualities of good maintenance, exercisability, restability, sociability, and identifiability. Overall, this provides a granular and nuanced explanation of how environmental attributes and design elements in different behaviour settings support older people’s environment-related and social-related agency. Based on these findings, corresponding policy and practice suggestions have been made. This research will help researchers and policymakers to understand the factors that influence older people’s experiences in their communities and use of outdoor spaces. It presents the complexity and diversity of older people's outdoor activities in their residential communities and neighbourhood outdoor spaces. It provides a framework of factors influencing older people’s ageing-in-place from Landscape Architecture to Environmental Gerontology perspectives; explored a way to apply the concept of affordance in age-friendly environment research; identified older people’s sense of agency in relation to neighbourhood outdoor space; and made relevant suggestions that can be used to improve Chinese urban neighbourhood outdoor space to ensure it can be more age-friendly in the future and to support older people’s ageing-in-place.