Promoting Ageing-in-Place: Design of residential buildings for older people in China

Abstract

Ageing-in-place is the most common ageing model in China. Therefore, design of age-friendly residential buildings and neighbourhoods becomes an important factor leading to improvement in older people's health and quality of life. This paper presents the current situation of the ageing population in Chinese cities by qualitatively analysing existing literature, design standards and conducting stakeholder interviews to understand older people's housing choices as well as establish physical design factors, challenges and potentials of residential design for older people. The findings will fill the knowledge gap of age-friendly residential models in China and guide better design to meet older people's needs.Keywords: ageing; age-friendly design; residential building; spatial design Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. https://doi.org/10.21834/e-bpj.v2i6.965 eISSN: 2398-4287© 2017. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of IntroductionThe global population is undergoing a marked demographic shift, where older people will soon outnumber youth populations owing to increase in life expectancy, falling fertility rates, and lifestyle changes. The number of people aged 65 or older is projected to grow from an estimated 524 million in 2010 to nearly 1.5 billion in 2050, with most of the increase in developing countries. (World Health Organisation, 2011) In China, people aged 60 and over are defined as 'older people' and this population is rising rapidly due to an overall increase of life expectancy of 29.8 years since the 1960s to 2010 (OECD, 2014). The number of Chinese people over the age of 65 are likely to grow from 123 million in 2011, 200 million in 2026, 300 million in 2038, to 330 million by 2050, with around 100 million over the age of 80 (World Health Organisation, 2011; United Nations, 2013; OECD, 2014). According to China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, the number of people aged 60 and over is currently 222 million, which comprises of 16.1% of the total population and has already surpassed the above prediction (CIIC China, 2016).In tandem with demographic change, China is also undergoing massive social and economic transitions. The country is witnessing key changes in family structures, urbanisation, educational advancement, technological development and increasing participation of women in the labour market. These shifts are challenging the traditional family-based care arrangement for older people. In the future, for every younger couple there will be four or more older family members who require daily care and assistance. (Feng, 2014) This will have direct consequences in terms of access to s...

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“…In the field of community elderly care, Chinese government statistics show that the number of community-based elderly care institutions grew from 19,000 in 2014 to 29,000 in 2017, while the number of community mutual aid facilities increased from 4000 to 8300 and the number of beds for elderly day care only increased from 187,500 to 338,500 [28]. Presently, China concentrates on infrastructure development [33] and locally based elderly care [34]. For example, Shanghai's elderly care service construction in 2020 included 729 elderly care institutions, 204 community care service institutions, 17 elderly combining various factors, such as the movement of the elderly, supporting facilities, the degree of openness after the epidemic, and convenience of research, 13 cases in Shanghai and 11 cases in Florence were selected for field research.…”