Aging is one of the most important challenges of our times (Attias Donfut et al., 2005; Moulaert and Paris, 2013). “Policies to meet the challenge of a growing, healthier and more active seniors population – based on the view of the ageing of society as an opportunity to be utilized – automatically benefit the individual ageing person, materially and otherwise. Similarly, any effort to ameliorate the quality of life for the seniors, and to meet their diverse social and cultural needs, enhances their capacity to continue interacting with society” (United Nation, 1983, p. 16). Aging society provides not only a new context, but a new opportunity to rethink our traditional views of age. Even going beyond these. As clear from many decades “our society is changing in many ways that relate to age. Perceptions of the periods of life are being altered, as well as role transitions, social competencies, and the ages that mark their boundaries” (Neugarten and Neugarten, 1986, p. 32). The growing number of seniors people will soon make the majority of overall population. As noticed by reports of international organizations (WHO, 2007; OECD, 2015, UN AGENDA 2030), cities will play a more important role in dealing with these quantitative and cultural changes, mostly because it is expected that a quarter of the population over60 will be concentrating in the central areas of compact cities. In brief, cities are at once growing and aging at an incredible speed. Although aging process represents a fundamental and structural phenomenon with very deep consequences at economic, social and political level, and with an impact on the individual one as on the society as whole, our cities seem not to be ready to deal with this process and to prevent possible issues.

Progressive increment in share of older adults population increasingly raises the question of how governments will respond, in terms of public health and social care (Galasso, 2006; Bruggencate et al., 2018), to needs of older people, and especially to those that will experience a loss of autonomy. It is important to note that there are a greater heterogeneity within older population in terms of conditions and demands, which depend on their specific personal, social and familial context (Neugarten and Neugarten, 1986; Pavolini, 2001, 2004; Ranci, 2001; Ranci et al., 2019). These differences and multiple images of age groups make every label and every bounder very fluid. “Older persons are very heterogeneous in social, political and economic terms” (Neugarten and Neugarten, 1986, p. 42). Understanding needs of older citizens should not be limited, however, to health plans. Today more than ever before the prevention and care plans must include a positive impact on the quality of life for these people starting from the need of a cultural change from “cure” to “prevention” of social isolation across the life-course (Cotterel and Buffel, 2018, p. 1). In this perspective cities and their choices about urban age policies and urban habitat plays a very important role.¹

The role of urban welfare is, therefore, increasingly crucial to address and respond to such needs, as well as to the new and more complex demands of fully independent older people. These entail a range of requests, from mobility, care, safety, and proximity, to an environment tailored to their changing needs and an equipped public space, but also urban green spaces, leisure and sociality opportunities, what can be summarized with Henri Lefebvre’s notion of an all-encompassing “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1967; Harvey, 2016). The unprecedented centrality of older people in urban space helps us to conceive of this right to the city as something more than a differentiated and personalized use of the city itself giving them a full centrality in defining policies and socio-urban interventions.

The recent Agenda 2030 of the United Nations has fully acknowledged this new political and social centrality of older people among its objectives, which include a focus on their right to an inclusive and accessible city and recognize urban spaces as physical structures that can deeply affect their daily life. It’s a focus goal to make social and/or physical environments more conducive to older adults’ health, wellbeing, and ability to age within their places and their communities (Greenfield et al., 2019). To use an expression of Nigel Thrift (2016), the built space is “actively passive,” because it is made and, simultaneously, capable of making, in other words, it is a structured and structuring entity. Once built, our cities continue to influence social relations, different levels of power and inequality. In this perspective, city, considered as meso level, can influence the highest macro level of society (Greenfield et al., 2019). As Giandomenico Amendola points out, the shape of the city has an impact on the structural conditions of everyday experience:

“As a structuring device, the built space organizes and defines practices, thus contributing to the reproduction of social relationships. Both the purely physical dimension of spatial organization and the symbolic one, therefore, contribute not only to “suggest” certain uses of space and specific social relationships, but also to give concrete form to the life that takes place there. (...) The physical environment is linked to the knowledge and the dominant powers in the society by a mutual connection” (Amendola, 2009, pp. 39, 43).

The demand for a high-quality urban space is a key point in the process of re-signification of status of third and fourth ages. For their strategic value in relation to issues of safety and accessibility for seniors people, city should increasingly be in the focus of public policies (Zajczyk, 2000, 2018) without thinking yet at “societal resources invested in betterment of the ageing as a drain on the economy more than a productive investment having both tangible and intangible benefits” (D’Souza, 1993, p. 342). Also, organization of public space and suitability and availability of infrastructures for mobility across the city are crucial in defining quality of life, social relations and sense of community for different types of citizens, especially for those more socially fragile and vulnerable, like older adults (Esping-Andersen, 2000; Zajczyk, 2000, 2018; Pavolini, 2001; Emerijck, 2002; Bonoli, 2004).

In view of aging process that our societies currently face, and will be facing more pressingly in the coming years, cities and urban policies play a decisive role in achieving the conditions for sustainable, inclusive and age-friendly city, pursuing the guiding principle that cities must become more and more friendly for all ages (WHO, 2007; Whal and Oswald, 2010; Settersen and Angel, 2011; Handler, 2015).

In line with a European and world trend, Italy is becoming an increasingly old country. At the beginning of 2022, seniors people over 65 years-old were more than 14 million, which amounts to 3 million more than 20 years ago. Current forecasts for the 2042 confirm this trend, as this number is expected to grow up to 19 million by then. Besides, the aging trend appears to be growing strongly in the demographic projections that indicate an average of 41.9 years in 2002, 45.7 in 2020, at least 47.2 years in 2030, 48.2 in 2040 and even 48.6 in 2050 (Istat, 2020). As in the other European countries, the curve of incremental aging of the Italian population is influenced by both the declining birth rate and the rising life expectancy. According to Istat projections, the share of over-65 s in Italy could increase of 9 or 14 percentage points in 2050, depending on more or less optimistic assumptions. However, these figures do not differ significantly from the European averages reported by Eurostat, which shows evidence of a widespread and structural process that needs to be addressed. These important quantitative changes have to be combined with substantial qualitative ones in social representations of third age and, therefore, in meaning that being seniors comes to assume. “In recent decades, being seniors has begun to be considered no longer as a mere residual condition against the active role of adult workers, but rather a completely new phase full of opportunities and possibilities, but also of limits and difficulties” (Carrera, 2022b, p. 3). Lidia Ravera writes: “third half of life” is a good time to practice changing” (Ravera, 2023, p. 12), reflecting on the possibility, referring above all to women, of valuing third age as a moment of fullness and self-esteem. Urban policies and responses to life changes that they enable are responsible to determine the ways in which old age can be experienced. In absence of structured plans with clear objectives to secure the conditions for an active aging and a meaningful life for seniors people, quality of life is almost exclusively dependent on resources owned individually, in terms of economic, cultural and social capital. The risk is to deny some citizens, the poorest ones, right to a substantial equality of opportunities and capabilities (Sen, 1986, 1992; Nussbaum, 2002).

It is equally important to stress that a discussion of aging implies an awareness of the huge variety of meanings that can be found under the label of the “old age” in social, political and economic terms (Neugarten and Neugarten, 1986; Gilleard and Higgs, 2002). The reference to defined time intervals, in fact, shows how old age, or rather aging, should be considered more as a process. And it involves a wider notion of well-being, both experienced and perceived, and less as a circumstance linked to health in the strict sense (Caradec, 2001a,b; Bai, 2014; Carrera, 2020). The boundaries are becoming fluid and some age events are ceasing to represent a marker of social age (Moulaert and Biggs, 2012). There are the “young old” (65–74 years old), the “old” (75–84 cohort) and the “old old/seniors” including people over the age of 85, but also the “oldest old,” that is, over 90 years-olds, the over centenarians and the super-centenarians (one hundred and ten years-olds and over) (La Pierre and Keating, 2013; Greenfield et al., 2019). These categorizations show the need to recognize the great diversity of subjectivities among older people and their internal difference in terms of lifestyles, experiences, needs, desires, projects (Börsch-Supan and Jürges, 2005; Croda and Gonzáles-Chapela, 2006; Alwin and Hofer, 2011). Third age can be indeed characterized either by a feeling of fulfillment, new plans and a renewed search for meaning, or by fragmentation, loss of the self, loneliness and isolation, and even marginalization and social exclusion.

Socio-economic and cultural resources, including those offered by the urban space, can have a profound influence on the outcome of the gradual and inevitable deterioration of physical health. Individual and contextual factors are deeply interrelated and can heavily determine the quality of life of seniors people. Among the individual factors beyond age and more than this, there are very heavy factors such as the state of health, the level of autonomy, the endowment of economic and cultural capital, the quality of personal relationships with family and friends. The contextual factors, on the other hand, concern the provision of services across different urban areas in terms of quality and accessibility of public spaces, plans for public transport and mobility, safety and availability of green spaces and equipped parks, the perceived level of safety in the city, places for culture, leisure and socialization opportunities. We cannot forget the importance and the potentialities of technological innovations in order to create new relational spaces and occasions for the older people. “Such interventions have successfully alleviated social isolation by connecting older adult to their friends and the family online, whilst increasing younger adults’ self-esteem and confidence” (Cotterel and Buffel, 2018, p. 5). There is no doubt that advances in and increasing usage of social technology among older people highlight the potential of this medium for combating social isolation in later life. Equally important is the specific technology designed for the older people such as dedicated apps and home automation.

The experience of the third age, then, can be summarized as the complex outcome of the interrelation between these factors and the city features.

The aging process, thus, represents an additional and more complex level of challenge for urban policies because it puts to the test their effectiveness in securing opportunities and services, beyond the usual requests wishes of the citizens and perceiving a new and more complex goal of wellbeing connected to physical functioning (Moran et al., 2014); social and physical functioning (Bowling, 2007); social participation and volunteering (Dury et al., 2016) and mental health (Gale et al., 2011).

This generates an ongoing need for integrated territorial welfare services aiming at enabling the conditions for an active life, which means not just free from disease, but with plenty of opportunities available. Older people claim for needs that go far beyond the wish of keeping a good health. They look at the cities to fulfill their desires of sociality, cultural activities and leisure.

Urban welfare and good management of urban spaces are strategic aspects to secure an extensive right to the city for older adults, and anticipate new and unthinkable needs, its goal being a full implementation of their social and urban centrality.

The urban space and its organizational models are key factors to interpreting phenomena and changes and dealing with them (Gieryn, 2000) and to cope the challenge of ageing process related with urban space (Greenfield et al., 2019), time plans (Elder et al., 2003), and the consequences of regeneration of some specific urban environment as the process of gentrification (Lees et al., 2015).

In this perspective, urban spaces and its policies acquire a growing political relevance focusing on the aim of “describe, explain and modify/optimize the relationship between the ageing person and his/her physical environment” (Whal and Oswald, 2010, p. 112). They can be defined either in relation to a material morphology (the territory, in its practical-physical sense) and in relation to the symbolic value attached to the opportunity for practices and possibilities that they open up (Ikas and Wagner, 2008). A key turning point was the launch, in 2007, of an international network of ‘Age-friendly cities and communities’ (AFCC), a strategy of the World Health Organization, which is now a leading policy approach in many countries and cities (WHO, 2007, 2018; OECD, 2015). The attention due to the ageing process started to be related to the older people wellbeing more than to their capability to continue to work. Their active ageing ceased to be connected with job becoming a cultural, social and relational issues.

The awareness around the centrality of urban space in supporting a functional ageing process lies at the heart of the WHO’s choice to start the program of age-friendly cities with a twofold objective: firstly, to support the exchange of information between cities in order to speed up their transformation into suitable centers for seniors people, and secondly, to provide guidance for the development of related policies at regional and local level (Carrera, 2022a,b). The initiative began in 2006 with a preliminary analysis of various cities around the world and an evaluation of the facilities and services that make a city really age-friendly. The first step of the program was to set up a commission with representatives from 33 cities in 22 countries around the world, which produced a guide and a checklist, aimed at collecting senior citizens’ testimonies. For several years, the data so gathered highlighted the changes that would make cities more suitable for people over the age of 60 (Dehan, 1997; Bellanger, 2000; American Institute of Architects, 2004).

Within this strategy, the achievement of well-being involves an active role of public institutions at different territorial levels in securing the necessary material conditions of these new goals (Amendola, 2018). As noted, for older people as for any other groups of citizens, the variables affecting the quality of life are both personal and contextual.

Starting from recognizing the significant individual differences within the category of the older, is essential to ensure that the urban space can providing appropriate opportunities and a life of quality implementing differentiated urban welfare policies (Baltes and Mayer, 1999; Lalive d’Epinay et al., 2000; Caradec, 2001a,b; Gilleard and Higgs, 2002). The features of the spatial context – the built environment in particular – are extremely powerful factors that can either amplify or counteract frailty itself (e.g., allowing or preventing accidents at home or outside); they can either support or hinder wellbeing (e.g., feeling comfortable and safe at home or outside), they can increase or diminish material and social isolation (e.g., the feeling of loneliness and difficulty in going out and nurturing social relationships; Arlotti and Cerea, 2021).

The built environment and the residential context at large are fundamental conditions of the quality of daily life in view of the full right to an active aging and to aging in place (Golant, 2013). The former is important to protect the citizens, and among them the older ones, from the risk of social isolation and feeling of loneliness² and help them to preserve their relationships with family, friends and neighbors.

The quality of the city is not the only key factor in shaping the citizens’ daily practices. The specific characteristics of the areas in which they live can also be decisive if there are problems of access to mobility. The demands of the older are particularly concerned with proximity, even when they live in an age-friendly urban habitat. To maintain a good level of life quality in the different neighborhoods of the city, it is essential to ensure the right to a high-quality aging process that implies the right to aging in place (Pani-Harreman et al., 2000; Moreno, 2020).

For older people, more than for other groups of citizens, proximity is a strategic aspect that includes both functional and relational features (Sennett, 1992a,b; Murray et al., 2010; Manzini, 2021). These are fundamental to ensure a urban habitat and networks of quality, but they should also be integrated with the model of diversified proximity “that offers many different opportunities and that allows to find (almost) everything a person needs to live” (Manzini, 2021, p. 15).

In order to achieve the goal of a full urban and social citizenship for older people, space must be considered and used as a strategic tool. If public space is a fundamental key to build a socio sustainable environment, private spaces also play an important part in this aim and should, therefore, be included in urban spatial policies.

Urban space policies are important tools to address the complexity of the aging process and to deal with its challenge. Space, or rather urban spaces, are not just neutral scenarios of the citizens’ practices but essential conditions that can facilitate or hinder those practices. It is necessary to re-conceptualize the quality of life in terms of an interrelation between urban spaces or, more in general, urban habitat, and the principles of social justice and territorial democracy (Carrera, 2020), starting with the transformation of social representations and self-representations of seniors people. Both the principles underpinning the Lefebvrian “right to the city” for every citizen, acquire a special significance for older subjects. Cities that are organized around the use of vehicles, with undersized and often technically unsuitable public transport, long streets for the shopping, not well-equipped squares, narrow and bad maintained pavements that increase the risk of falls, the lack of attention to pedestrianism and pedestrianization, the scarcity of social, recreational and cultural facilities and services often concentrated only in a few areas of the city, especially the central ones, places lacking a diversified offer and not always free, all these mentioned are not “places for all,” and surely not suitable for the older citizens and city users (Iwarsson et al., 2007).

The right to an urban high-quality habitat is strictly linked with an adequate level of differentiated functional and relational proximity and social connections (Evans et al., 2002; Iwarsson et al., 2007; Herbers and Mulder, 2017). “Inclusive or excluding social processes find an effective materialization in the way the city and its public spaces are built, in the distribution of urban space, in the characteristics of services location and public places” (Ciaffi et al., 2020, p. 66). And, as Secchi writes: “the main features of the city and the territorial project are, at the same time, the main virtuous or perverse devices of well-being” (Secchi, 2013, p. 24). The increasingly differentiated and pressing demands of older citizens are focused on accessible public spaces, territorial medicine centers, home services, proximity, mobility, evenly distributed throughout the urban territory. In view of achieving the goal of an inclusive and age-friendly city, the strategies just outlined should become a priority for public policy makers. The need to create, activate and coordinate a wide network of different territorial subjects becomes central political issue to pursue the goal of projecting a material and social urban habitat adequate for older people’s needs and desires.

This analysis opens to later studies to analyze how urban policies could be able to support the age-friendly cities and, even more than this, to enhance the conditions for age-friendly communities.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

LC: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft.