August 16, 2015
Why are a few communities, like New York and Portland, Ore., working to become more age-friendly for their residents but so many others aren’t? Is it due to political leadership and canniness (or a lack of it)? Do the age of the residents, the workforce and the local customers have an effect? Does it come down to whether there’s money in a city’s budget?
Consider:
- There are only 60 U.S. communities in the AARP Network of Age-Friendly Communities
- Mayors in just 136 of the nation’s 19,000 cities signed the Milken Institute’s 2014 Best Cities for Successful Aging Mayor’s Pledge, “committing to make their cities work better for older adults and to enable older adults to strengthen their cities and improve lives for all generations through purposeful work and volunteerism”
- The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Age-friendly Cities and Communities list has merely 258 cities and communities in 30 cities around the world
- The National League of Cities 2015: State of the Cities Report is silent about efforts to make cities more age-friendly
Aging Nation, But Few Age-Friendly Communities
Clearly, there aren’t many age-friendly places at a time when the United States is looking at a doubling of its older population in the next 20 to 25 years. The Milken Institute’s Successful Aging report said overall progress “remains too slow” fostering age-friendly policies and practices in the U.S….