A social movement, the language and the course of a social movement, evolves over time, and this is true in the case with the movement to make society more Age-Inclusive. Where do we find the origins of this term? As with most other terminology, you usually find it sprouts from more than one place, but here I choose to lift from the world of architecture and the term “Universal Design”, first credited to architect Ronald Mace in the mid-1980’s.
Mace’s description of Universal Design (UD) reflects the concept that considers the design of all products, buildings and environments accessible to the fullest extent as possible for all people regardless of their age, physical ability, or situation in life.
In a wonderful multifaceted 2013 study – Designing Collective Access: A Feminist Disability Theory of Universal Design – Aimi Hamraie, (Director of the Critical Design Lab and Associate Professor at the Center for Medicine Health and Society, Vanderbilt University), writes in one section about Universal Design and aging:
“Aging is a fundamental concern of UD and related strategies, such as ‘transgenerational design’ or ‘aging in place’ (Pirkl and Babic 1988). These strategies advocate for the flexible design of buildings (such as homes) that can accommodate people from childhood through old age… Both aging and disability are stigmatized identities that confront medicalization, structural inequalities, and language that defines them as problems to be ‘solved’ (Wiles and Allen 2010, 228).”
Aging as a problem to be solved, as opposed as aging to be an appreciated reality. Therein lies the sticky issue with trying to shift perspectives on aging – is our aging not a life course journey for everyone? As another linkage to architect, Ronald Mace, we should also recognize an essential quote about design thinking from Bernard Isaacs, Professor of Geriatric Medicine who once said; “Design for the young and you exclude the old; design for the old and you include the young.”
As to how the movement sprouted further, in 2002 the United Nations held the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing. Here the UN recognized the global increase of older populations in the demographics over the previous twenty years and that we had marked “a turning point in how the world addresses the key challenge of ‘building a society for all ages’.” – in other words an age-inclusive world.
Morphing along into the mid-2000s the term Age-Friendly became prominent when the World Health Organization (WHO) published its 2007 Global Age-Friendly Cities Guide a framework with eight themes, a companion piece to the Madrid document one might say. From that – the Age-Friendly World, which in 2020, proudly proclaims 1000 member communities participating in the global movement.
In 2018, the WHO Guide had a reboot – The Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities: Looking back over the last decade, looking forward to the next.
Along the way, the term Age-Friendly (AF) has attached itself to everything from AF community to AF workplaces, AF businesses, AF marketing and AF design; and with that we are back to Universal Design, and yes, if you polish wording again for a far-reaching diversity of people – Inclusive Design.
Looking to the future of AI – Age-Inclusive, the term I prefer, we are not finished. Let us now become Age-Forward as the think tank Milken Institute Center for The Future of Aging has moved us in 2019. As the institute declares, “Our work challenges communities to advance inclusive economic development, resilience, age-friendly innovation, technology solutions and civic engagement.” The builds on and owes a lot to the work of the UN and the WHO.
A short design history with a wink to the future of this AI is what I have laid out here. But as I think of the popularized term age-friendly as attached to community, or workplace, or business, I twitch sometimes because not everyone on the street has heard of it and when if they have, often it risks sounding like lightweight tokenism- a dialogue of a movement in a seniors-centric bubble.
As we message the universal relevancy of a global AI society for the generations who are fast becoming the future beneficiaries of the design choices we make today, (in community, homes and healthcare, gerontechnology and such), we need to encourage input from those beyond current older populations. Those who by 2030 will be turning fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty… you get the drift.