Age-friendly Neighbourhood Post-implementation Toolkit

This toolkit on post-implementation review is one of ten deliverables from the MND-NRF Land and Liveability National Innovation Challenge (L2NIC) research project – Innovative Planning and Design of Age-friendly Neighbourhoods in Singapore (2017-2019). In a radical departure from the usual disciplinary research, this project seeks to integrate research, practice and policy by fostering collaboration between research and tertiary education institutions, industry and the public sector and promoting stakeholder participation in research and development solutions for planning and designing age-friendly neighbourhoods in Singapore. The project has a comprehensive scope, covering research to understand the connections between the neighbourhood built environment and older adults’ health to developing broad planning guidelines, context-specific design strategies, temporary prototypes and toolkits (environmental audit, post-implementation review) to increase the potential for age-friendly neighbourhoods.

We have been encouraged by what we learn from older Singaporeans and from other cities in how neighbourhoods can be more age-friendly. With lifespan increasing and population ageing rapidly, age-friendly neighbourhoods are important for ageing in place. They can promote healthy ageing – emotionally, physically, socially and cognitively. By removing barriers and enhancing enablers in the built environment, involving and considering how older people experience their everyday outdoor environments, planners and designers can help cities become more inclusive and vibrant places for growing old successfully. As the World Health Organisation (WHO) urges, helping cities to become age-friendly is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Even though the global database of age-friendly practices is growing, most of the practices  are from the WHO European, Western Pacific and Americas Regions. We hope in sharing our research outputs – toolkits and guidelines – we contribute a resource that facilitates the implementation of age-friendly neighbourhoods in Singapore and Asian cities. This is a major strategic direction of our research under the Lee Li Ming Programme in Ageing Urbanism at the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities, Singapore University of Technology and Design where researchers from diverse disciplines actively collaborate to address the built environment-healthy ageing nexus.

For ease of reference, the age-friendly neighbourhood toolkits and guidelines are published separately. They touch on 3 main stages of age-friendly neighbourhood project – planning (environmental audit), implementation (planning and design guidelines) and evaluation of progress made (post-implementation review). This toolkit describes the post-implementation review methodology. Post-implementation review is an essential step in the effectiveness of age-friendly design modifications at the neighbourhood level.