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

Righi, Valeria; Sayago Barrantes, Sergio; Blat, Josep

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2768545.2768552

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

Citation

Righi V, Sayago S, Blat J. Urban ageing: technology, agency and community in smarter cities for older people. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Communities and Technologies (C&T 2015); 2015 June 27-30; Limerick, Ireland. New York: ACM; 2015. p.119-28. DOI: 10.1145/2768545.2768552

Abstract

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.