How can an aging population shape our cities?

A twelve year old study from the RIBA holds up extremely well.

Patrick Vale from Silver Linings

While searching for old Treehugger posts on the RIBA House of the Year, I stumbled over Cities and Baby Boomers: Made for Each Other, which discussed a 2013 RIBA (the Royal Institute of British Architects) report, Silver Linings: The active third age and the city. It looked at how cities might adapt to the "the active third age," of which I am a member, twelve years older than when I first read the report. It imagines how we might live in 2030, which is getting awfully close. While it was written for the UK in a more optimistic time, it holds up well and can be applied anywhere.

The report assumes that the active third agers are relatively well off- “people aged over 50 today (who currently only account for a third of the population) own 80% of the wealth. This presents a heady mix of potential political and economic power.” An example of how this wealth might be used:

Members’ Club Mansion Block: A New Urban Lifestyle.- “an international network of residences replaces home ownership, balancing privacy with sociablity and liberating third-agers to explore the world in style.”

I love this idea, where do I sign? Why hasn’t anyone done this?

“In 2030 Third-Agers are travelling more, and travelling light. Over the course of their lives their possessions have dematerialised, with music, movies, photographs, books, magazines and correspondence becoming digital rather than physical assets. Where previously such collections were the amassed clutter of an active social and cultured lifestyle, they can now be slipped into a pocket or simply projected as part of a digital persona. The life lived has come to be defined as a collection of experiences, not things.”

A dozen years ago that sounded pretty wild, but my life is pretty much in the iCloud these days. Spouse Kelly used to travel with a suitcase full of books, and now just takes her Kobo. But conventional travel is expensive, high carbon, and tiring; better to take it slow and stay in one place for a while.

“The active Third Age typify this experience-seeking, light-travelling group and roam the globe, prompting networks of members’ club mansion blocks to emerge that allow such itinerant, uncluttered and unencumbered lifestyles to flourish. Increasing numbers of Third-Agers no longer require,or desire a fixed residence, and new ways of encouraging and incentivising them to free up much needed housing for younger families has become a key priority area for Government and policy makers.”

At last, a way of getting boomers out of their houses and unlocking them for Gen-Z: essentially these would be time-share retirement homes around the world.

Reinventing the Family Home: “an increase in mult-generational living has begun to shape new accommodation, offering independence for, and codependence between third-agers and their families.”

Don't have the dough for that mobile lifestyle? A lot of houses are under-occupied once the kids grow up and move out. If they were designed to be divisible in the first place, then they could easily be adapted to multi-generational home. I did this in our house, with my daughter’s family living upstairs while we occupy the ground floor and basement sorry, lower level. Homes should be designed for flexibility so that everyone can do this.

“Drawing on and expanding the ideas explored within the co-housing movement, new multigenerational communities are widespread; with shared facilities and flexibility of accommodation as defining characteristics. Families are able to expand and remain within the same location rather than moving on, or ‘up’ the housing market ladder. By mixing multiple extended families into one block, there are new opportunities to offer adaptability (as family circumstances change) while living close enough to your loved ones and responsibilities, but at a distance to allow family co-dependence with personal independence.”

The High Street (or Main Street) Revived: “The active third age have reclaimed the high street, acting as a catalyst for new public amenity, private enterprise and intergenerational exchange to complement existing retail.”

This is such a great opportunity. We are losing our main streets to residential conversions because commercial taxes are so high and small businesses are so challenged in the online world.

“This cluster of expertise with both the time and technology to innovate, led to new enterprise and local business taking root locally, from small scale manufacture and 3D printing workshops to specialist consultancy; plenty of the active Third Age now work part-time, with the flexibility and proximity to continue to watch over their grandchildren. Reasons to visit daily, for a variety of purpose, have helped reinstate the high street at the heart of the local neighbourhood.”

3D printers didn’t turn out to be the next big thing as we all thought they would a dozen years ago, but there is no question that a lot of skill and brainpower could be put to work. My older daughter does blacksmithing in a cooperative workshop; this kind of thing could happen everywhere with experienced help from the third-agers.

City Networks: The Pop-up University: The city has become a university, utilizing existing infrastructure to support learning and skill sharing between generations.

I love Patrick Vale’s illustration with the pub turned into Pop-Up-Uni. After I started teaching at Toronto Metropolitan University I would complain that this was so stupid, dragging students downtown to stare at their phones and computers while I stood and did lectures, a teaching method that hasn’t changed since 1233. Then the pandemic hit and I got the chance to see what my idea of electronic teaching would be like, and I was proven dead wrong- we need contact and connection. I have been back in the classroom for three years but the system hasn’t recovered.

The Silver Linings proposal of turning the city into a pop-up university might be an interesting third way with active third-agers involved in a new multi-generational form of teaching.

“The active Third-Agers have become the vanguard of this new work-learn-play lifestyle – liberated from being exclusively preoccupied with any one pursuit… The boundaries between work, education and leisure have blurred and the city has started to respond to this opportunity. new city educational networks have become a valuable piece of social and financial infrastructure, giving purpose and employment to those seeking to learn or teach for enjoyment or enrichment.”

City Networks: Healthy infrastructure: “a network of third-age health hubs, connected by routes promoting exercise in public spaces, now encourage active aging and wellbeing in the city.”

I didn’t even write about this idea in my original post, but it is so important. It’s why we need wider, better sidewalks, safe and separated bike lanes (both for the use by older people like me but also to keep bikes off the sidewalks). But even in the last dozen years we have learned more about how important exercise is, and how walking is the miracle pill. Our cities should promote walking and biking instead of making it impossible to cross the streets and ripping out the bike lanes. And we need public washrooms along the way!

“Staying healthy is of increasing importance to Third-Agers in 2030. The determining factor of whether you will lead a fulfilled and varied later life is now widely acknowledged to be the degree to which you can remain active; a member of the active Third Age. Public and private bodies were slow to react to the poor levels of exercise in older people but now endeavour to encourage fitness – both physical and mental - as part of daily routine. A new culture of public exercise is now perceived to help keep national health costs down and ensure active Third-Agers can remain part of a reliable and productive workforce.”

Much has changed in a dozen years; the UK got Brexit, and we all got the pandemic and its aftermath. The members mansion block sounds out of touch with the reality of stretched finances and the problems of over-tourism. Housing affordability has declined so much that just finding a place to live is a stretch, let alone building multifamily homes. The boomers may control 80% of the assets but it is not evenly distributed and they are not necessarily liquid. I thought zoom and working-from-home would lead to a revitalization of our main streets as people would be more likely to shop in their neighbourhoods but Amazon killed that.

But there is still much to admire in this optimistic and prescient report that holds up after a dozen years.

So much of this sounds like the 15-minute City, or Gil Penalosa’s 8-80 city, or many other ideas that have become accepted in the last dozen years. The difference here is the recognition of the demographic shift as the baby boomer generation ages. Yes, these changes are aimed at the third age cohort, but it is good for everyone who isn’t behind the wheel of a car. As Gil Penalosa of 8-80 cities notes, “if everything we do in our cities is great for an 8 year old and an 80 year old, then it will be better for all people.”

I may complain about the RIBA awards programmes, but they do some things right. Download the report here.