In 2014, the rate of population ageing in Takarazuka City was 25.1%; one out of four is a senior citizen. This rate will be approximately 30% in 2025, which means one out of three will be a senior citizen. For older people to live safely and lively in their home community, we aim to create vigorous hyper-aging society.

In order to put it into practice, we need a whole city administration system to adapt to an aging community. Every policy the city promotes need to be developed with the point of view of senior citizens in mind. It will be necessary for each section of the city government to understand the philosophy of age-friendly and work together with a clear and unified direction.
As the average life span is increasing and the aged period is getting longer in citizen’s life, it is critical to extend healthy life expectancy and prevent care-dependence for as long as possible. We consider active senior citizens as valuable human resources who provide generous knowledge and experience. They have the ability and the willingness to support society; and are not only consumers of long-term care services. We would like to provide active seniors the opportunities for social participation in both volunteer work and jobs to help supplement fixed income.

We promote the active participation of senior citizens in their community by promoting their volunteer work and other activities so they can feel that they actually belong to the community. We also promote the establishment of a community watch system  for senior citizens who need help; and create a lively community that is supported by senior citizens themselves.

We already launched an investigative commission to promote our action plan across the city government with 23 internal sections involved. We also established the “Takarazuka City Age-Friendly City Promotional Committee” including citizens, scholars in city planning and the field of welfare and representatives of major senior groups and public offered civic committees. The committee is designed to gather direct opinions from senior citizens in many processes, such as promotion, action and evaluation of our age-friendly city plan. We also create opportunities to gather direct opinions from senior citizens and senior clubs on a regular basis to take account of their opinions with regard to the promotion, action and evaluation of our age-friendly city action plan. In this way, senior citizens can actively participate in the planning process. Participation of citizens, corporations and civic organizations and civic committees, not only city government, is critical to implement our age-friendly city creation plan.