The Challenges of Ageing and Urbanisation in the Czech Republic for the QoL in Higher Age
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
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| Description | In recent decades there has been what some call a “senior friendly boom” : an increase in interest in the strategies, practices, services, products, and processes that reflect the specific needs of ageing people and which should help to increase their quality of life. The environment, a factor mediating the experience of aging and a key component of a positive approach to managing the challenges of population aging at the aggregate level, is also a prominent feature in such a list. The presentation introduces the Age-friendly City Index as a way of measuring the age-friendliness of urban environments. The proposed index assesses the dimensions of outdoor spaces and transportation as they are perceived and evaluated by older people, residents of the fourteen biggest towns in the Czech Republic. The dimensions and items included in the index are constructed upon the theoretical framework proposed by the World Health Organisation Global Age-friendly Cities Project. Validation of the results of the index is based on experimental open-ended question analysis. The resulting categories confirm the importance of greenery and aesthetics for the age-friendly concept, and confirm the rankings of cities obtained via the composite index. In addition, comparison with similar measures tested in Canada and Hong Kong are discussed, and the necessity of backing up index measures with policy analysis and general structural support is argued for. |
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