Reimagining Age-Friendly Communities: Urban Ageing and Spatial Justice, edited by Tine Buffel, Patty Doran and Sophie Yarker, is part of Policy Press’s book series ‘Ageing in a Global Context’, which rethinks the complexity of population ageing beyond national boundaries. The book offers an interdisciplinary and critical exploration of urban ageing, focusing on spatial justice, inclusive strategies for diverse older populations, and participatory approaches to age-friendly policy, design and community change. Divided into three parts, the book comprises 12 chapters that investigate the theoretical, empirical and practical obstacles in designing urban spaces to meet the changing needs of ageing populations. Part 1, ‘Background to urban ageing and spatial justice’, approaches urban ageing and age-friendly research through a spatial justice lens. Part 2, ‘Age-friendly interventions to promote spatial justice’, highlights the potential and challenges of how age-friendly initiatives advance spatial justice. Part 3, ‘Reimagining age-friendly communities’, discusses future urban ageing research and practice through an emancipatory perspective. As the editors indicate, this volume originates from the work of the Manchester Urban Ageing Research Group (MUARG), an interdisciplinary collective dedicated to inclusive, participatory research on urban ageing that engages older people as co-investigators and informs evidence-based policies to enhance age-friendly urban environments and reduce social exclusion.
The opening chapter, ‘A spatial justice approach to urban ageing research’ by the three editors Tine Buffel, Sophie Yarker and Patty Doran, defines spatial justice as the intentional restructuring of urban environments to ensure that people of all ages, especially the most vulnerable, have equitable access to resources, opportunities and urban life, thereby addressing embedded inequalities and promoting broader social and environmental justice.
Chapter 2, ‘Developing age-friendly cities and communities: an international perspective’ by Samuèle Rémillard-Boilard and Patty Doran, reflects on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC), filling a knowledge gap in international perspectives on the age-friendly movement by reviewing its key achievements, such as elevating ageing on political agendas and fostering cross-sector collaboration, while outlining future challenges. The authors highlight the importance of applying a spatial lens to understand the contextual experiences of all, while allowing for more effectively tailored strategies to meet specific needs. Chapter 3, ‘Developing age-friendly policies for cities and city-regions during austerity, Covid-19 and beyond: strategies, challenges and reflections’ is written by Paul McGarry, a leading figure in age-friendly policy, serving as head of the Greater Manchester Ageing Hub. McGarry traces the evolution of Manchester’s age-friendly initiatives over three decades, highlighting key lessons from practice and underscoring the importance of partnerships, political support, evidence and older people’s involvement in advancing age-friendly work amid socio-economic challenges. The final chapter in this part, ‘Paying attention to inequalities in later life: a priority for urban ageing research and policy’ by James Nazroo, focuses on social and economic inequalities rooted in power structures. Using evidence from the UK and referring to literature examining the patterns and causes of inequality in later life, Nazroo contends that class, racism and patriarchy are core structural drivers of health inequalities in later life, shaping disadvantage across the lifecourse and persisting into old age. Addressing inequalities, thus, requires transforming institutional settings.
Opening Part 2, Chapter 5, ‘Involving marginalised groups of older people in age-friendly programmes: lessons from the Ambition for Ageing programme’ by Luciana Lang and Sophie Yarker, explores how this approach can promote social and spatial justice. This chapter suggests that advancing spatial justice requires moving beyond traditional place-based models to address diverse geographies of exclusion; adopting inclusive co-production practices; and fostering global learning through flexible, context-sensitive approaches. Chapter 6, ‘Developing age-friendly communities in areas of urban regeneration’ by Niamh Kavanagh and Camilla Lewis, notes that the integration of age-friendly principles into urban regeneration initiatives promotes more equitable and inclusive urban development by engaging with older residents early in the process to honour community histories, apply an intergenerational perspective and strengthen belonging and inclusion amid transformation. Chapter 7, ‘Co-producing age-friendly community interventions: the Village model’ by Mhorag Goff and Patty Doran, examines the importance of co-production in the Urban Villages project in Manchester to create opportunities for older adults, service providers and community stakeholders to collaboratively improve ageing-in-place services and practices.
Chapter 8, ‘Redesigning the age-friendly city: the role of architecture in addressing spatial ageism’ by Mark Hammond, Emily Crompton and Stefan White, critically reviews architects’ roles in the WHO age-friendly model, advocating for a shift from solely physical accessibility to addressing wider concerns of spatial ageism. In Chapter 9, ‘The role of community and voluntary organisations in creating spatially just age-friendly cities’, Sophie Yarker, Camilla Lewis and Luciana Lang show that community organisations played a crucial role in promoting spatial justice during the Covid-19 pandemic by supporting older adults, particularly those from marginalised and low-income backgrounds.
Part 3 of the book focuses on future directions for urban ageing research. In Chapter 10, ‘Ageing in the margins: exploring experiences of precarity in urban environments’, Miriam Tenquist, Tess Hartland and Joana Salles apply a precarity lens to examine urban ageing among three marginalised groups: the UK Chinese community, older refugees and asylum seekers, and those ageing-in-place amid gentrification. Chapter 11, ‘Dismantling and rebuilding praxis for age-friendly cities and communities: towards an emancipatory approach’, authored by Jarmin Yeh, Emily A. Greenfield and Melanie Z. Plasencia, advances a critical perspective on AFCC programmes. They analyse three aspects of WHO’s AFCC framework, emphasising its reliance on social planning, quantitative metrics and limited views of older adults’ roles, and further propose an emancipatory approach to foster greater spatial and social justice. The final chapter, ‘Conclusion: reimagining age-friendly cities and communities’ by Tine Buffel, Sophie Yarker and Patty Doran, synthesises the book’s central themes and urges future urban ageing research to reconceptualise age-friendly communities through the lens of spatial justice. The volume closes with an ‘Afterword’ by Chris Phillipson, reiterating the key principles and practices for working with older people to create age-friendly environments. A key argument of the book is that urban justice must be grounded in the principles of diversity, equity and co-production, which should guide urban policy decisions and evaluation of age-friendly initiatives. Together, the book’s chapters advocate for age-friendly cities not just as supportive environments for older people, but as pathways towards more just, inclusive and sustainable urban futures.
The main task of this book is to address the urgent challenge of how to create inclusive urban environments for an increasingly diverse ageing population. While the age-friendly movement has grown rapidly, practical knowledge on how to implement inclusive approaches remains limited, particularly in cities facing inequality, gentrification, austerity and climate change. This volume responds to that gap by providing innovative frameworks and strategies to guide the development of just and age-friendly communities. Building on a theoretical framework of spatial justice, the book integrates interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral perspectives from urban sociology, geography, anthropology, urban design, architecture and social policy. While the collection positions itself within international debates on urban ageing and champions values of diversity, equity and co-production, its empirical scope remains largely confined to Western Europe. This geographic and cultural narrowness constrains opportunities for cross-cultural exchange and limits the book’s global applicability, particularly in the context of rapidly ageing regions such as Asia. Despite its potential limitations, this volume stands as a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners across urban studies, gerontology, sociology, human geography and social policy, offering significant insights for anyone engaged in developing age-friendly cities and communities.
