Listening to the elders: The case of a bottom-up, context-sensitive place audit in Tai Po district of Hong Kong

Abstract

This chapter revisits the Global Age-Friendly City project and its local implementation with a reference to Hong Kong, where population ageing becomes critical due to the high density, unreasonable costs for living, lack of sociable spaces, and impacts from climate variability and its extremes. We argue that it is important to maximize ways to collect their real experience in urban living and present their visions for creating an ‘absolute space’ (Lefebvre, 1991) conducive to older people’s positive social functioning and psychological well-being. A place audit was conducted in the Tai Po district of Hong Kong, in light of the key principles of the mixed methods research methodology. Accordingly, 283 residents aged 65 and above living in Tai Po were interviewed, using a 53-item questionnaire covering the eight domains of World Health Organization’s age-friendly city checklist. Besides, three focus groups were conducted with a view to capturing older people’s experience, concerns, and specific issues that received little discussion elsewhere. The quantitative analysis suggests that transportation and outdoor spaces and buildings ranked at the top, while the community support and health services, civic participation and employment scored the lowest in Tai Po. Further, we observed that older people mostly played a passive role across all eight domains, with little evidence of attempts to effect changes in their community life. Future urban planning should not only satisfy older people’s needs but also be congenial to reshaping the people–environment relation so as to enable their intrinsic capacity to pursue a healthy and active life.