2019-08-12 – Cities need to do more for seniors … prof says

  • Montreal Gazette, Canada
  • Aug 8, 2019
  • by: KATE­LYN THOMAS

Meghan Joy de­cided to re­search the role cities play to meet the needs of se­nior cit­i­zens while she was liv­ing in Toronto, af­ter wit­ness­ing some of the strug­gles her se­nior neigh­bour faced.

“We were help­ing her bring her garbage out to the curb, we were help­ing her get gro­ceries — do­ing a lot of in­for­mal work,” Joy said, adding the el­derly woman even­tu­ally died by fall­ing down the stairs. “It was kind of this mo­ment where I was like, you know what, how many peo­ple are liv­ing in these dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions?”

Joy, an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor in the po­lit­i­cal science depart­ment at Con­cor­dia Univer­sity who has a PhD in pol­icy stud­ies, wanted to un­der­stand the ins and outs of how cities sup­port se­nior cit­i­zens in prac­tice. She did in­ter­views with more than 80 peo­ple, in­clud­ing dif­fer­ent ac­tors in lo­cal govern­ment, the tran­sit com­mis­sion, the so­cial hous­ing com­mis­sion, non-profit or­ga­ni­za­tions and se­nior ci­ti­zen ac­tivists in Toronto.

Through her re­search, Joy said she re­al­ized peo­ple tend to view se­niors as a “throw­away” pop­u­la­tion.

“It’s com­ing from this sub­tle un­der­tone of you have to prove your hu­man worth,” she said. “I think we re­ally need to think about ageism.”

Af­ter find­ing out about the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s move­ment on age-friendly cities, Joy re­al­ized a lot of the re­search re­lated to se­niors doesn’t come from an ur­ban pol­i­tics and pol­icy per­spec­tive.

Se­niors need more time to cross streets, they need park benches in shady spots, pub­lic re­strooms and clearly marked street names, Joy said.

ALLEN McIN­NIS Con­cor­dia Univer­sity re­searcher Meghan Joy has been study­ing the ac­ces­si­bil­ity of Cana­dian cities for its se­niors, and says we must stop de­sign­ing ur­ban ar­eas with only a “work­ing-age pop­u­la­tion” in mind.

“Our cities are built for a work­ing-age pop­u­la­tion. They move and op­er­ate ac­cord­ing to the work­ing-age pop­u­la­tion.

“All things re­ally lead to ur­ban plan­ning, with re­spect to making sure that neigh­bour­hoods are com­plete, that peo­ple can walk to get their gro­ceries, to go to the com­mu­nity cen­tre, to go to the li­brary, that that’s more amenable,” Joy said.

“When we shut down side­walks for con­struc­tion or when we move a bus stop, are we think­ing about the needs of the peo­ple that are liv­ing around there?”

Mon­treal, in par­tic­u­lar has some in­ter­est­ing chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties in terms of in­creas­ing ac­ces­si­bil­ity be­cause of its bor­ough sys­tem, Joy said.

“There’s kind of that frag­men­ta­tion that hap­pens in Mon­treal. But also, the bor­oughs do of­fer more op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­ally lo­cal pol­icy-making.”

Though both Mon­treal and Toronto are in­vest­ing in making pub­lic tran­sit more ac­ces­si­ble, Joy said more could be done, like look­ing into meth­ods of trans­porta­tion such as pickup ser­vices for peo­ple with cer­tain needs.

Joy also said sup­port is needed for peo­ple who, like the neigh­bour who in­spired her re­search, can use help with day-to-day things like chang­ing light bulbs and tak­ing out the trash. Li­brary pro­grams, com­puter lit­er­acy pro­grams and check­ups on se­niors dur­ing heat waves and ice storms are needed, she added.

“It’s very im­por­tant that every com­mu­nity or every bor­ough has their own plan, be­cause every com­mu­nity is dif­fer­ent and every com­mu­nity has its own real­ity,” said Raphaël Massé, co-or­di­na­tor at the Ta­ble de con­cer­ta­tion des aînés de Mon­tréal, an or­ga­ni­za­tion cre­ated by the pro­vin­cial govern­ment to en­hance the link be­tween se­nior ci­ti­zen non-profit or­ga­ni­za­tions in the city.

Joy also noted a need for pro­grams for LGBTQI+ se­niors and se­niors from dif­fer­ent eth­nic groups.

“There might be some re­ally great pro­grams in dif­fer­ent places, you don’t want to dis­count that, but over­all we are clearly not tak­ing an in­ter­sec­tional ag­ing lens to things,” she said, not­ing that con­sul­ta­tions are nec­es­sary to de­ter­mine the needs of dif­fer­ent se­niors.

“If there’s one big mis­take that should not be made, it’s to take se­niors as one big ho­mo­ge­neous group,” Massé said. “Some­times that’s what we feel (is hap­pen­ing) in pub­lic poli­cies. Es­pe­cially in Mon­treal where there’s a di­ver­sity of se­niors … You need to al­ways take that into con­sid­er­a­tion.”

The next phase of Joy’s re­search is to ex­plore ac­ces­si­bil­ity more in depth in Mon­treal. Re­cently, she has been work­ing with Mon­treal West, which she said is in the process of de­vel­op­ing a se­niors strat­egy.

“I think part of the prob­lem is it’s not hap­pen­ing quickly enough, and es­pe­cially in big cities like Toronto and Mon­treal we think about cities like ser­vice providers and not nec­es­sar­ily pol­icy ac­tors,” Joy said.

“How do we co-or­di­nate all of these peo­ple to­gether, to re­ally change our think­ing around serv­ing se­niors?”