Responding to the local impacts of baby boom aging

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Few communities have examined the adequacy of their environments for current, much less expanded seniors’ populations. This will require creating a viable planning framework that recognizes the characteristics of the seniors’ population, listens to their needs, engages the wide range of public and private stakeholders, establishes appropriate goals and objectives, provides adequate resources for implementation, and regularly reviews progress. Parameters of such an approach are provided.

I see little to argue with regarding the various prognoses of a large and extensive increase in the number of seniors across Canada beginning in barely two years. I expect the broad geography of aging by 2021 to encompass the entire country, being noticeably prevalent from Quebec to the east and even showing itself in the northern territories. Implicit in this image is further expectation that high levels of population aging will be a central tendency in the daily life in virtually every community in Canada ─ aging in place will see to that. Some have speculated that “baby boomers” could have different predispositions and values towards mobility and migration, ¹ but Longino’s work in the U.S. ² and, in Canada, the work of Moore and Rosenberg ³ and Statistics Canada ⁴ indicates that aging in place is not likely to diminish in the near future. In any case, if boomers’ mobility tendencies do differ, it will simply show up as a redistribution of seniors with new venues to age in place.

The more important, indeed insistent, issue for me is the ability of those local environments, wherever located, to sustain and promote seniors’ independence. After all, it is at the community level where a senior’s independence is actually achieved, it is here ─ in the home, yard, neighbourhood, community, and region ─ that environmental press is confronted by seniors. Before proceeding further I wish to acknowledge that it is not just the advent of aging baby boomers that makes community environments important for seniors and their independence. It is equally true for the communities in which today’s four million seniors now live. The sad fact is that too few communities have paid heed to seniors’ environmental needs up to now, to develop enabling environments as the National Advisory Council on Aging long ago called for. ⁵ That they will be faced with even greater demands to respond to seniors’ needs in the coming two or three decades further underlines the gaps yet to be considered, indeed even to be perceived. ⁶ I hasten to add that three Canadian municipalities have thoughtfully engaged this issue ─ Regina SK, Mississauga ON, and Richmond BC ─ and they do not fall in this category.

Virtually all other communities will, however, face three challenges to attain enabling environments for their seniors.  The first is to grasp the scope of the seniors’ surge and what it will mean to them.  The second is to grasp the ways in which community environments impinge ─ invoke environmental press ─ in the daily lives of seniors. And the third is to establish a viable framework and process for responding positively to the surge in seniors facing them.

Scope of the Seniors’ Surge

In the coming two decades, in particular, communities of virtually all sizes and situations in Canada will be called upon to respond to much more than just an increase in the number of seniors. What ever number of seniors the future brings, communities will have to respond to a greater diversity within that seniors’ population: in age structure, gender composition, health status, and ethnic makeup. It will be both a younger and an older population; it will have more diverse family structures which will impact seniors’ incomes and resources; and not least, there will be a surge of the very old. Policies, programs, and practice ─ especially in housing, transportation, and community supports ─  will all need to be re-assessed in light of these tendencies. Two further surges in the seniors’ population, each happening at a greater rate than that for seniors as a whole, will be occurring in the same time frame and each will have its own community orientations. On the one hand, there will be a surge in visible minority seniors which will be felt most acutely in our three largest metropolitan centres, but can also be expected to impact all urban centres to some degree and should not be unexpected even in smaller places. On the other hand, Aboriginal elders will also be experiencing a surge numbers which will be felt most strongly, but not exclusively, in communities in the four western provinces and the North. Confounding community responses to both surges will be the general lack of knowledge about these seniors/elders. ⁷

Environmental Press in the Community

Each community consists of physical and social environments that impose a unique set of challenges on seniors through demands on their behaviour in the course of daily activities. That is, each imposes its own instances of environmental press that, in turn, facilitate to a greater or lesser degree each senior’s independence. Here I draw upon the classic notion of Lawton and Nahemow to posit that every environment in a community ─ a room in a house, a dwelling’s access, park, bus, or mall ─ makes a behavioural demand (press) on each senior. ⁸ A senior responds to the press by adapting to it depending his / her competence which, in turn, is based on a combination of one’s physical health, psychological outlook, and social norms. The press in three broad community environments ─ housing, mobility in the community, and neighbourhood safety and security ─ is central to seniors attaining independence in their daily lives. The emphasis here is on those environmental features that are within a community’s area of responsibility.

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Housing environments constitute the primary source of environmental press on seniors because of the vital role the home plays in their daily activities. It is the space in which seniors spend most of their time and is the origin and destination of their activities in, around, and beyond the community. Two aspects of housing need to be considered: one is the stock of dwellings (including the type and overall composition) and the other is its spatial pattern. A senior’s dwelling exerts environmental press every day and though most seniors have sufficient levels of competence to deal with it, problems often arise when infirmities associated with aging unexpectedly occur as they so often do. Since few dwellings were designed with seniors in mind, various modifications may be needed to prevent falls etc. Less dramatically, the necessity of keeping a dwelling (and its yard) maintained and in repair may exert a press beyond a senior’s physical competence and / or income. At such junctures, the lack of choice of alternative housing by type, affordability, or location may invoke its own form of press. Here senior renters (one-third of all seniors, by the way) are most vulnerable because of their significantly lower incomes and often their lack of long-term security of tenancy. Note needs also to be made that the latter are most often older women.
The spatial arrangement of dwellings may also exert environmental press by affecting the extent of seniors’ activities and ease of mobility. Low-density, single land use suburbs tend often to require activities be conducted largely by automobile and may even preclude extensive walking. Older, denser housing districts may be subject to concerns over safety and security. And while small cities and towns may be more compact they frequently have the disadvantage that many services may only be obtained by traveling long distances.

Mobility in the Community is crucial to a senior’s independence: inherent in it is the ability to make choices about how to “get around,” “to carry out life’s activities,” “to have a degree of control over one’s life,” again quoting the National Advisory Council on Aging. ⁹ Although driving is the prime means of mobility for seniors, it is seldom the only one. Each form of mobility demands that a senior assess the environmental press it presents and his/her competence to be able to adapt to it. Take walking which is part of every activity a senior engages in. For instance, reaching a doctor’s appointment from one’s parking spot may involve crossing a busy street where there is no signal light or marked crosswalk. Or reaching a bus stop may invoke a high level of press if the distance is unduly long, up a steep grade, the weather is inclement, and/or it is dark, not to mention the presence of sidewalks and their condition.

Aspects of driving associated with visual acuity exerts high levels of press on all drivers, but especially on seniors given the sensory and cognitive changes that occur with aging. Since communities can expect considerably more senior drivers as the very-mobile boomers age and current seniors continue to drive, interventions will need to be considered to reduce press through clearer signage, better lighting, and more legible road markings. It is important to note that in both urban and rural seniors’ households nearly one-third have no one who drives thereby invoking other forms of press in this crucial area of independence. Public transit is available in most urban settings but it, too, exerts its own forms of press on senior riders: eg, limits on hours of service, high stairs on vehicles, lack of bus shelters, maintaining balance on moving vehicles. Seniors in smaller centres and rural communities may not face the same traffic or transit press as their urban counterparts, but must contend with few if any alternatives to the automobile.

Neighbourhood Safety and Security is a pervasive concern of seniors.  As much as others may debate that their fears are unfounded in light of crime statistics, seniors’ concerns over victimization, and / or their vulnerability due to age create apprehensions that exert environmental press in seniors’ neighbourhoods and communities. The sense of a neighbourhood being unsafe may be associated with inadequate street lighting, ill-located bus stops, areas of poor visibility, little police presence, and vandalism. These conditions separately and combined become magnified for seniors after dark. Broadly speaking, this realm of press falls under the rubric of community support which is a cornerstone of seniors’ independence.

Responding to Community Environmental

Press obliges a community to recognize that its facilities, services, and programs contribute to its senior citizens achieving independence. A community desiring to address instances of environmental press such as those cited above that impinge on it will need to take deliberate actions, to make plans, to do so. Any actions should flow from a perspective in which communities, their planners, other officials, and politicians expand their focus from buildings and physical infrastructure to include seniors’ wellbeing. It will need to grasp the essentials of seniors’ independence and the administrative scope of such planning, and will need to commit itself to a viable process that, not least, involves seniors throughout.

Embedding Seniors’ Independence as the ultimate goal is essential in planning for today’s and tomorrow’s aging population. As a first step we need to embed a basic paradigm of seniors’ independence comprising three essential factors ─ housing transportation, and community support ─ in all efforts. These factors are not only important in themselves but, critically, are inter-connected. ¹⁰ Thus, for example, if a community is being urged to make provision for senior housing, it needs to consider whether provision ought also to be made for transportation and support services. Or take another example: a senior no longer able to drive but lives in a suitable dwelling and wishes to remain there can turn from a transportation problem into a housing problem and/or one of community support. In effect, this model should serve as a basic checklist for planners.

The Scope of Seniors’ Planning differs from that of other community planning efforts and grasping this is crucial to its success. As implied in the paradigm just described, seniors’ planning is holistic and requires an appreciation of all facets of seniors’ activities and quality of life.

seniors’ planning is holistic and requires an appreciation of all facets of seniors’ activities and quality of life.

Establishing a Seniors’ Planning Framework at the community-wide level is necessary for providing both the context for the many efforts required (from many players) and the commitment to pursue the goal of creating and maintaining an enabling environment. It should contain a viable process that produces a seniors’ plan in which seniors and their needs are appraised, goals are articulated, means to achieve them are mobilized, and its progress is monitored and refinements made where necessary. Critical at the outset of planning is the acquisition of two information bases both having to do with what might be called “getting to know the community’s seniors.” The first is, literally, getting to know seniors personally by inviting them and their families to participate in the planning process and seeking their views and observations.  The second is about getting to know the demographic and other characteristics of seniors who comprise the aging population. Beyond this, community goals must be formulated and then articulated into actionable objectives. An example of this might be: “To provide a safe and secure environment for all seniors within their homes and neighbourhoods,” articulated into “To collect data from fire and police personnel on the location of health and safety incidents involving seniors to determine what patterns, if any, exist in frequencies and locations.”

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Carrying out the plan, as noted earlier, is the task of multiple agencies and organizations. The plan serves as a way of directing their resources more effectively to benefit seniors, but it remains to them to mount programs and carry out projects.  Both the ease and the speed with which the various initiatives can be mounted are likely to vary among the groups involved.  For example, collecting data about “health and safety incidents” may proceed fairly quickly, whereas changing paratransit bus schedules or securing new housing could take longer. Thus, crucial to implementing such a diverse plan is establishing a focal point of responsibility.  This could take several forms but, at a minimum, must give seniors a central role.

Achieving the Enabling Environment for seniors in a community will be no mean task. Among other things, it will involve a degree of integration and coordination involving agencies within and outside local governments that is not frequently seen. It will need to treat seniors as people not as a “problem” for planners to resolve. It will need to recognize that when it comes to planning for seniors, “the devil is in the details”: in the placement of benches, in street signage and lighting, in the condition of sidewalks, in walking distances to stores and services, and in transit schedules.  Not least, attention needs to be paid to the design of housing projects, private and public, to ensure they are barrier-free. And not to be overlooked, indeed encouraged, are those efforts of seniors themselves to organize and provide their own needed services, security, and social cohesion. These are the so-called NORCs ─ they turn aging-in-place from a noun to a verb.

endnotes:

1. Longino, Charles F. Jr. “Pandora’s Briefcase: Unpacking the Retirement Migration Decision,” Research on Aging 24:1 (2002), 29-49.
2. Silverstone, Barbara. “Older People of Tomorrow: A Psychosocial Profile,” The    Gerontologist 36:1 (1996), 27-32.
3. Moore, Eric G. and Rosenberg, Mark W.  Growing Old in Canada: Demographic and Geographic Perspectives (Toronto: Nelson Canada, 1997).
4. Statistics Canada, Profile of the Canadian Population by Mobility Status: Canada a Nation on the Move (Ottawa: Minister of Industry, 2001 Census Analysis Series, 2002). Cat. No.96F0030XIE2001006.
5. National Advisory Council on Aging’s report 1999 and Beyond: Challenges of an Aging Canadian Society (Ottawa, 1999).
6. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, “Impacts Of the Aging of the Canadian Population on Housing and Communities,” Research Highlights, Socio-economic Series 08-014, (Ottawa, July 2008).
7. Hodge, Gerald, “Whither Ethnic Elders?  Looming Needs in Community Research and Design,” a    paper presented at Environmental Design and Research Association Conference 36, Vancouver, 2004.; and Hodge, Gerald, The Geography of Aging  (Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 2008), 182-3.
8. Lawton, M.P. and Nahemow, L. “Ecology and the Aging Process,” in Eisdorfer, C. and Lawton, M.P. eds. Psychology of Adult Development and Aging  (Washington: American Psychological Association, 1973), 619-74.
9. Blossom T. Wigdor and Louise Plouffe, Seniors’ Independence: Whose Responsibility? (Ottawa National Advisory Council on Aging 1992), Forum Collection, 8.
10. Rosenberg, M. and Everitt, J. “Planning for Aging Populations: Inside or Outside the Wall,” Progress in Planning 56 (2001), 119-68 also note the importance of these factors but do not posit  their interconnectedness.
11. Seniors’ Education Centre, Improving Seniors’ Quality of Life: Action Plan (Regina: University of Regina, 2000), Figure 4, 8.
12. World Health Organization, Active Aging: A Policy Framework (Geneva, 2002).

A paper presented by Gerald Hodge PhD* (Former Director, School of Urban and Regional Planning, Queen’s University) to the 2008 Meetings of the Canadian Association on Gerontology, London Ontario, October 24, 2008