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Our Everyday. Our Borders

Our Everyday. Our Borders

Summary

Organized by the Jockey Club Institute of Ageing, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and funded by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the program encouraged older people to expand their daily routine and to explore the opportunities of built environment in their community, together with students and professionals from the built environment and healthcare. Through series of lectures, experiential tour to Green Hub (located in the revitalized old Tai Po Police station for promoting sustainable and low carbon living in the community), place audit to the Tai Po Market and workshop in February 2019, the program aimed to encourage participants to appreciate, understand, review and improve the urban and architectural design in public spaces for elders in Hong Kong.
Our Everyday
Apart from the demographic shift, Hong Kong has the world’s longest life expectancy since 2016, the program aims to create opportunities for older people to learn and appreciate the city in a personal and intimate way. It is hoped that this will become habitual activity for older people, so that they will be more physically, socially and culturally involved in the community and society.
Our Borders
The concept of “Aging in Place” requires the built environment to provide a variety of choices in living arrangements. This includes enabling older people to be able to independently enjoy their living environment, and in and around the city, instead of being restricted by potential physical, social and mental barriers in their living space.

The program provided a first-hand experience of meeting end-users to reflect on their needs in public spaces in the Tai Po community. In the long run, it could be inspirational for architects and planners to help build our city in an even more humane and thoughtful way.

Key facts

Main target group: Older people in general

Other target group(s): Students from the built environment and healthcare

Sector(s): Health, Housing, Information and communication, Urban development

Other sector(s): Outdoor space and building; Respect and social inclusion

Desired outcome for older people:
Learn, grow and make decisions

Other issues the Age-friendly practice aims to address:
  • Ageing in place
  • Intergenerational activities
  • Inclusion
  • Participation

Contact details

Name: Chun-ho AU

Email address: tpdcadm@tpdc.had.gov.hk

Age-friendly practice in detail (click to expand):

Engaging the wider community

Project lead: Research institution

Others involved in the project:
  • Local authorities
  • Social or health care provider
  • Volunteers

How collaboration worked: Although cross-disciplinary research is not a brand new approach, it is not often to have cross-discipline between social science and medicine. The topic “ageing” is normally linked to medicine or health services instantly, however, the project team believes it is best to tackle a problem with an all-rounded and holistic approach. That needs to involve collaboration between different faculties. The program aims to promote knowledge exchanges from disciplines of medicine, public health, architecture, urban planning and landscape design, to the targeted participants of older people and students. Careful thoughts had been put into potential collaborations or guests for invitation. Invited ones are those who are passionate and devoted to the study topic, and they are connected through personal networks and contacts. Most of these collaborations / invited guests has offered help on pro-bono basis. These intangible connections has become a major and valuable convergence and deposit of the project.

Older people’s involvement: Older people were involved in the age-friendly practice at multiple or all stages

Details on older people’s involvement: The program provided a good opportunity for elders to voice out their needs and aspirations about our built environment in Hong Kong. It encourages older people’s social participation by having them to speak their minds directly to urban planners, designers and architects.

Moving forward

Has the impact of this age-friendly practice been analysed: Yes

Was the impact positive or negative:
Positive

Feedback:
Participants generally have very positive feedbacks about the overall programme design. Most of them have expressed that they have learnt a lot on the topic not only in the classroom, but also being able to explore specific places in the city with the presence of the project architect and urban planner/ designer. This allows them to experience the place on the spot by understanding the designer’s vision. Besides, their feedbacks about the place has become an invaluable contribution for the design professionals, as a user-led evaluation, which helps to facilitate as a user-friendly space for all in the long run. Throughout the program, each older person is to pair up with a student who studies architecture or urban studies. Participants have frequently commented this had been a very joyful mix where they are learning much from each other with a common study topic. Some of the pairs have maintained close contact after the completion of the project. The intergeneration pairings has proved to be an effective learning process, while social bonding has been naturally developed as part of the value or sense of belongings to the project.

Looking back

Challenges:
Whole day events appear to be energy-consuming for some older people. Duration can consider to be shortened or broken down to separate days. Otherwise, sufficient breaks and refreshment should be provided. Social media and cross-messaging platform (e.g. Facebook and Whatsapp) are used to disseminate event announcement and news to participants. However, some older people might not be very comfortable for using these applications, while others might not have enough data flow for online communication. For these situations, dedicated staff will contact individuals by phone.