Policy handbook “ESPON ACPA – Supporting the decade of healthy and inclusive urban ageing”

Population ageing raises common challenges for cities: to adapt their environments physically and socially, so that older people’s quality of life remains unaffected. This challenge has become even more evident in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis that has affected our whole society, but older people in particular. The crisis has literally threatened their lives, and those who survived have been faced with increased loneliness. This shows once more how important it is to design our cities age-friendly and keep older people’s interest in mind in policy making.

The idea of an age-friendly city has been growing for more than a decade now, sparked by the important seminal work of the World Health Organization. The forthcoming decade has been declared by the WHO as the Decade of Healthy Ageing (2020 – 2030). It is an extremely important and promising opportunity to counteract the negative consequences of population ageing and guarantee older people’s quality of life.

This policy handbook is based on the ESPON ACPA targeted analysis, which revolves around the attempts of eight cities (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Gothenburg, Greater Manchester, Hengelo, Nantes, Oslo and Zaragoza) to become age-friendly cities. 

By presenting challenges and corresponding strategic and domain-specific recommendations in volume 1, along with good practices and practical tips in volume 2, this handbook can help policymakers and other practitioners in developing or finetuning services for older people. 

The practical guide can be used as a starting point for local authorities and policy makers that wish to learn more about successful age-friendly practices.

Further information

The ESPON ACPA Policy Handbook is available in EN, ES, FR, NL, NO, SE.

Contact our expert Piera Petruzzi

Documents

ESPON ACPA policy handbook_EN.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 8.78MB

ESPON ACPA policy handbook_ES.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 6.78MB

ESPON ACPA policy handbook_FR.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 6.62MB

ESPON ACPA policy handbook_NL.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 6.45MB

ESPON ACPA policy handbook_NO.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 6.70MB

ESPON ACPA policy handbook_SE_new.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 6.79MB