Planning age friendly neighborhoods in a high-density city: Revealing neighborhood features for healthy aging with small and big data

Keywords: healthy aging, age friendly neighborhood. built environment, older people, high-density cities, GSV
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Ageing society is a global challenge. An increasing attention has been received in urban planning and design for healthy ageing. An age-friendly neighborhood can encourage older people’s out-of-home activities and their well-being. In this study, we designed a method to integrate small and big data. We distributed a questionnaire survey and recruited older people aged 60 or above to understand their satisfaction with the natural and built environment of their neighborhood as well as their physical activity pattern and health condition. We recruited 400 samples in summer 2022. Then we built a structural equation model (SEM) to reveal the key neighborhood features influencing the physical activities and health of the respondents. With the list of natural and built environment features revealed, we then conducted image analysis using Google street view (GSV) to calculate the density of these preferred features across different neighborhoods. Our preliminary results suggested that natural features such as greenery and water bodies are regarded important to older people’s physical activities and health in Hong Kong. We also compared the neighborhood features extracted from GSV in two districts, Wong Tai Sin (an inner-city neighborhood) and Sha Tin (a suburban new town). We found that Sha Tin enjoys higher coverage of natural environment features preferably by the older people than Wong Tai Sin. Based on the analysis results, we will provide planning recommendations for age-friendly neighborhoods in Hong Kong and similar high-density cities.