Egyptian framework for an age-friendly built environment

Abstract

In recent years, the Egyptian demographic has changed with an increasing number of older citizens who require special attention. The World Health Organization (WHO) identified 2020–2030 as the “Decade of Healthy Ageing” in response to the worldwide demographic changes. Many international organizations have identified the built environment features of age‐friendly communities, yet they have not been thoroughly analyzed in the Egyptian context. Today, urban designers and city planners have to establish age-friendly communities that can facilitate well-being in old age. The paper aims to provide “Egyptian framework for an age-friendly built environment E-FAB”, that can help architects, urban designers, and decision-makers evaluate Egyptian urban communities towards being age-friendly. The E-FAB is created and designed based on an analytical theoretical approach focused on active older people’s definitions, needs, their relation to the built and social environments, and previous practices of age-friendly cities and communities. In addition, a comparative analysis between previous studies in age-friendly communities. Then, the paper conducted semi-structured interviews targeting active older people, aiming to refine and rank the built environment features of the E-FAB by using SPSS. The findings revealed that the E-FAB is expected to be an initial simple evaluating framework that could contribute positively to improving Egyptian urban areas to be more friendly to older people and address their needs in the built environment.