Built Environment Amenities, Accessibility and Ageing in Place at Neighbourhood Scale: South Australia

As population of older adults continues to grow, significant challenge for many countries is to provide housing options and support services for the ageing population. There is a growing interest in the concept of ageing-in-place amongst both policy makers as well as researchers to address these societal changes. Older adults are generally confined to their home and neighbourhood. Therefore, amenities available in their neighbourhoods are likely to be important for them to age in place. To promote ageing in place governments often have focused on improving care delivery models and less attention on how the built environment amenities of neighbourhoods can enhance the wellbeing of aged people. The aim of this paper is to assess accessibility of older age cohorts to amenities at the fine-grain neighbourhood scale in Metropolitan Adelaide, South Australia to understand the feasibility of ageing in place. The result demonstrated a big gap in the provision of amenities and facilities to promote ageing in place. The approach developed in this study to measure accessibility to amenities could be generalised in various contexts. This will help stakeholders to figure out opportunities to understand the gap in the provision of amenities to enable ageing in place.