City&Co – how to build an age-friendly city

• The Hague University of Applied Sciences is the leader of the international project involving scientists from the UPWr
• Researchers will analyse the quality of life of the elderly in Wrocław, Kraków, Bucharest and The Hague
• The project goal is to create tools to support policies for the elderly at the level of local governments and NGOs
• The three-year research is part of the cooperation of JPI Urban Europe with the National Science Centre.

The National Science Centre has been cooperating with the JPI Urban Europe network since 2015. A result of this seven-year cooperation is the financing of international teams carrying out interdisciplinary research on the problems and challenges faced by modern cities and urbanised areas. In the last EN-UTC Call 2021 competition, the submitted applications concerned building and developing competences related to the transformation of cities and urbanised areas, and their subject matter covered aspects such as: Urban circular economies, Community-based developments and urban innovation ecosystems, Robust and resilient urban infrastructure and built environment. International consortia consisting of at least three teams of scientists from at least three countries participating in the competition could compete for the money.

The city and its aging inhabitants

152 applications were ultimately submitted to the competition (scientists from Poland were to participate in the research work in 50 of them). 16 of them received EUR 16.8 million in funding. Polish researchers will participate in five of the projects, with combined funding of PLN 4.8 million (NCN almost 4 million).

Among the awarded projects was "City&Co: Older Adults Co-Creating a Sustainable Age-friendly City", in which a team of scientists from the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences, led by Prof. Jan Kazak from the Institute of Spatial Management, is taking part. The team leader on the Polish side is the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Prof. Jolanta Perek-Białas). The project will be implemented with the participation of partners from the Netherlands and Romania.

– The leader of the whole project is Prof. Joost van Hoof from The Hague University of Applied Sciences, who is also affiliated with our university and the Leading Research Team: Sustainable Cities and Regions (SCR) – says Prof. Jan Kazak, adding that the winning project will be implemented by scientists from the Netherlands, Poland and Romania, focusing on four cities: The Hague, Wrocław, Krakow and Bucharest.

What is of interest to the international research team is the topic of ageing societies and the challenges associated with this process.

Professor Jan Kazak: – The cities we live in have a diversified spatial layout. Particular housing estates were built in different periods, with different dominating concepts of spatial development. The common feature of these various parts of the city is the fact that they were designed and built at a time when the average life expectancy of inhabitants was much lower than today. According to World Bank data, the life expectancy in 1960 was 52 years, while in 2020 it was almost 73 years. For this reason, city planners over the years did not take into account the needs of the ageing society that now lives in it. Today it is common knowledge that in Wrocław alone people over 60 make up over 1/4 of the inhabitants, and nearly 20,000 of them are over 85 years of age.

Four cities, different contexts

In the Polish-Dutch-Romanian project, each university, using its experience, is scientifically responsible for a different area of the project, although the activities carried out in each of the four cities will be identical. Researchers from the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences will create an IT tool to support local authorities in the decision-making process regarding local policy for the elderly.

– This standardised tool will be designed for each of the four cities. The technical implementation and coordination of its implementation is on our side, but with such experts as Grzegorz Chrobak, Dr. Małgorzata Świąder and Prof. Szymon Szewrański, I feel comfortable about the substantive part of the project – says Prof. Jan Kazak.

The four cities in which the research will be conducted are in three different countries with different historical, cultural and civilisational baggage. Until 1989, three of them: Bucharest, Kraków and Wrocław, were behind the Iron Curtain. At the same time, however, the communist system in Poland and Romania differed in terms of oppression, despite the introduction of martial law in the former. The collapse of the system was also different – in Romania, Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were shot.

– In Poland itself, the context is also extremely interesting. Krakow is a city with solid social roots, while the population of Wroclaw underwent a major change after the Second World War – says Prof. Kazak, adding that this is why one of the most important elements in the research will be cross-cultural validation. – For while in the case of Poland we can speak of ethnic homogenisation, in The Hague we have a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society, which of course stems from its colonial history, but there is also a large Polish minority. In addition, the Netherlands are a Protestant country, while in Poland, according to official statistics, most of the inhabitants are associated with the Catholic Church. Romania, on the other hand, is a country with a dominant Orthodox population. We are very interested to see how all these elements affect the position of the elderly in a city – emphasises Prof. Jan Kazak.

A tool not only for local governments

The project will be implemented for three years and will use so-called citizen science. These are research studies in which volunteers collaborate with professional researchers. It is not only the scientists themselves, on the basis of analysed data, who are to identify solutions. Their task is to create conditions for the local community to be able to formulate its needs, challenges and directions of future activities to create a friendlier city on the basis of properly designed methods of conduct. The project covers research conducted in four cities, but also the exchange of information between them, not only between universities, but also local government officials, representatives of NGOs that work with and for the elderly and the elderly themselves. In this way, another of the project's aims can be achieved – the mutual learning of local ambassadors for changes in policies for the elderly, so that they can build up their networks and exchange experiences.

– Our aim with this project is not only to produce further scientific publications on the subject of the ageing society in cities, as we are already very active in this area, but also to have a real impact on shaping policies for the elderly in cities. The World Health Organisation has created a network of Age-friendly Cities, and Wrocław has been part of this network since 2018. This shows that local government authorities see the need to act in this area, which makes me very happy. I hope that the conclusions of our research will help to better identify the real problems of the elderly in Wrocław, and that cooperation with the Wrocław Centre for the Elderly during the implementation of the project will lead to practical results – explains the scientist from the Institute of Spatial Management of the UPWr.

Professor Kazak admits that the key to shaping a sustainable urban policy is a change of mindset. A good example of this could be the city's approach to bicycle traffic. A dozen or so years ago, potential clients of newly built investments frequently asked whether bicycle parking facilities were planned. Now clients usually ask where they will be, not if they are planned.

– If we manage to achieve a similar approach when it comes to creating age-friendly cities, where senior citizens are one of the obvious recipients of our work in sustainable spatial management, then this will be a mindset shift we really need – says Prof. Jan Kazak.

European Research Network

JPI Urban Europe, under which the research project "City&Co: Older Adults Co-Creating a Sustainable Age-friendly City" will be carried out, was established in 2010 to address today's global urban challenges by creating a European research and innovation centre that will create solutions for European cities through coordinated research. Currently, 20 countries belong to JPI Urban Europe, of which 14 are members and five are observers. The former are Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The latter are Estonia, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. The European Commission is also a member of JPI Urban Europe, which in 2008 launched so-called joint programming. This is an instrument designed to implement the European Research Area (ERA), which aims to promote strategic cooperation between EU Member States and associated countries. Its aim is to reduce the fragmentation of research, while strengthening research and innovation projects through the voluntary cooperation of European countries and entities, and aligning their national interests. So far, JPI Urban Europe has allocated EUR 116.8 million to 111 projects, bringing together 765 beneficiaries from 35 countries in Europe.