How to redesign Hong Kong for its growing elderly population
With the city's median age on the rise, a Hong Kong Jockey Club-backed institute has launched a project to make the city more liveable for the growing ranks of old people
At the Toyoshikidai housing estate in Kashiwa, a city 30km from Tokyo, the old apartment complex built in the 1960s – ageing both in physical structure and residents – is being replaced with barrier-free 10- to 14-storey apartment houses designed to make life easy for single people living alone.
In the heart of the neighbourhood will be a “Community Eatery”, a dining hall that serves nutritionally balanced meals to the elderly as well as younger residents.
Among the priorities of the community is to provide workplaces for the elderly. Many successful corporations in the agriculture, food preparation, day care, and livelihood support sectors have set up new businesses to hire old people. The agricultural sector, for example, offers jobs ranging from full-scale farming of previously fallow land, to relatively light work in a “vegetable factory” using indoor shelf-style hydroponic cultivation, to a roof garden accessible to the wheelchair-bound.
Redesigning Kashiwa to be more elderly-friendly is a project led by the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Gerontology that began in 2009 in response to the shifting needs created by population ageing. It’s something Hong Kong needs too, says Professor Jean Woo, director of the Chinese University’s Jockey Club Institute of Ageing.
In response, the institute has recently launched the “Help Build Hong Kong into an Age-friendly City Project”. It aims to reach out and gather opinions of citizens from all 18 districts in the territory through questionnaires and focus groups, to understand the desirable age-friendly features in day-to day living. It’s hoped that this would lead to the creation of long-lasting programmes and initiatives that will benefit all as the city’s population rapidly ages.