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Ramsden Marston, Hannah; Shore, Linda and White, P.J.
(2020).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17218276
Abstract
Covid-19 has not only impacted upon the health of citizens but also the various factors that make-up our society, living environments, and their ecosystems. This pandemic has shown that future living will need to be agile and flexible to adapt for the various change in needs for societal populations. Digital technology has played an integral role during Covid-19, assisting across various sectors of the community, and demonstrating that smart cities can provide opportunity to respond to a many future societal challenges. In the decades ahead, the rise in aging populations will be one of these challenges, and one in which the needs and requirements between demographic cohorts will vary greatly. We need to plan future smart age friendly eco systems to meet these needs, yet technology still does not feature within the World Health Organizations eight domains of an age-friendly city. This paper extends upon Marston and van Hoof’s ‘Smart age-friendly’ framework, and explores how digital technology, design hacking, and research approaches can be used to understand a smart age-friendly ecosystem in a post-pandemic society. By exploring a series of case studies and using real-life scenarios from the standpoint of Covid-19, we propose the ‘Concept of Age-friendly Smart Ecologies (CASE)’ framework. We provide an insight into a myriad of contemporary multi-disciplinary research which is capable to initiate discussions and bring various actors together, having a positive impact on future planning and development of age-friendly eco-systems. Strengths and limitations of this framework are outlined, with advantages lying in the opportunity for towns, regions/counties, provinces, states to take an agile approach and work together in adopting and implement improvements for the greater benefits of residents and citizens.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
