Image: A library in Sydney, Australia. Nov 2019. Photo credit: Scott David.
A few weeks ago I met Susan Nash, a former Fellow at Stanford’s Distinguished Careers Institute, who is now helping San Jose develop their age-friendly strategy. During our wide=ranging conversation she said something that stuck with me, “an age-friendly city is also a green city”. She was pointing out that the hallmarks of age-friendly, such as being walkable, having dense urban living, multiple generations living in the same house and others were also attributes of an environmentally sustainable city.
What this idea brought home to me was that while Aging2.0 has always treated ageing holistically (international, intergenerational and interdisciplinary), we need to think beyond ageing and take account of other things that impact quality of life, for both individuals and communities.
For example, the fact that air pollution cuts life expectancy globally by almost two years is an ageing issue – it’s having an outsize impact on older people but also impacting the future quality of life of today’s babies.
This new approach opens up a whole new set of questions, and I’ll be exploring that more in coming posts.
