The Generation-friendly City

Project description

Exclusion and ageism (prejudice or discrimination based on age) affect both older and younger people. Research focuses either on the age- or child- and youth-friendliness of cities or public spaces; a multi-generational perspective is usually absent. Little research has been carried out on the mutual perceptions of age or on the needs of young people and older adults with regard to their participation in public spaces. The physical environment has a significant impact on how and to what extent people participate in social life. It can both facilitate and hinder participation, and the needs of different groups can be conflicting. The aim of this project is to investigate the intergenerational friendliness of a city from the perspectives of both young students and older adults, using the city of Wiener Neustadt as a model. The aim is to gain a transdisciplinary and in-depth understanding of how young people and older people perceive the opportunities for participation in public spaces in the city. On the one hand, this entails intergenerational relations and relationships, and on the other hand, it is about exploring the specific ways in which young people and older people interact with their social and spatial environment.

The guiding questions are: how can public spaces in cities be designed to be intergenerational? What are the social and spatial opportunities and barriers for young and older people regarding participation in public spaces? How are these perceived by young and older people?

The research design is an action-oriented, participatory citizen-science approach involving both young students and older adults. Research methods include storytelling cafés, the ACT-OUT tool to assess participation outside the home, and visual participatory research methods (shadowing, photovoice or go-along interviews). The students can choose the methods and are involved in all steps of the research process.

The school partner is the Caritas School Wiener Neustadt, HLW which specializes in social management. The scientific partners are the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt, Department of Occupational Therapy (project lead); the University of Vienna, Institute of Nursing Science; the TU Wien, Institute of Architecture and Design and the University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland, Department of Occupational Therapy. Community partners are the City of Wiener Neustadt, the Wiener Neustadt Central Library and Alzheimer Austria.

The project is funded by the BMBWF (Federal Ministry Republic of Austria - Education, Science and Research) as part of the “Sparkling Science 2.0” program and is implemented by the OeAD.