Abstract
An important and basic strategy for facilitating the inclusion and daily life of elderly in accordance with those living in public rental housing buildings is to allow their circulation to be barrier-free and self-supported. Therefore, the provision of a handrail guide could improve their living standard. This paper develops a universal design guide for handrails focusing on the needs of elderly. Fifteen routes with mostly elderly were selected and targeted for evaluating the existing problems with handrail provision. Surveys and informal interviews with elderly, adults, and children were also conducted to further investigate their needs, their ease of existing facilities, and possible future implementation to improve their ease. From the survey results, it was found that most of the existing problems with handrail layouts exist within the community. In addition to standardizing, modifying, and suggesting the ideas on handrail design and layout, the promotion of the ideas from universal design was the emphasis on this investigation in order to make a barrier-free city into a barrier-free but universal community for a better international city. The guide focuses on the standardization of synthetization of the scope in terms of design and layout. Simultaneously, an advanced part of design also regards the improvement of technological, environmental, and self-support features to improve Hong Kong’s international friendliness with tailor-made ideas such as Elderlysteady.
Highlights
Pursuing convenience and reasonableness, people always wish to utilize limited urban spaces; environments become complex and dense
This paper provides recommendations for a suitable provision of handrails to the passage route between existing public housing and the nearest train stations for the elderly at the local level, which allows a first step in the alternation and modification of existing handrails toward a practical age-friendly community
To achieve the aim of this paper in developing a universal design-based guide with barrier-free ideas for the provision of handrails targeting the needs of the elderly living in public rental flats, two main issues were investigated: (1) to develop a standardized and fine-tuned design based on the Universal Design Style code of handrails regarding design, shape, material, color, diameter, distance from wall, load resistance, additional requirements, and layouts with advanced and tailor-made ideas; and (2) to make suggestion for handrails in between circulation routes of public rental housing estates and the nearest Mass Transit Railway (MTR) stations in terms of their layout
Summary
People always wish to utilize limited urban spaces; environments become complex and dense. A fast-changing environment results in a gradually departure from the original picture of a city of elderly. To understand and get used to the environment, regulations, guides, or codes should be amended and improved according to physical characteristics and needs of the older generation around the world; otherwise, geniality would be lost along the way [1]. In an age-friendly community, the environment is livable for the “white-haired” population; that is, the design, facilities, services, and policies support the lives of the older generation by enhancing affordability, health, safety, convenience, and quality of life [2]. At the same time, changing the role of the elderly from passive to active is a major objective of age-friendly cities through the promotion of opportunities for older people to “live spontaneously” in a better way
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