Abstract
As most older Australians prefer to age-in-place, providing sustainable and age-friendly communities poses a significant challenge to urban policymakers. The naturally occurring retirement communities (NORCs) have organically emerged as a collaborative model of care to support older adults to age-in-place, but neither academic research nor government policies recognise this housing option for older Australians. This paper aims to analyse the distributions and temporal patterns of NORCs in the Greater Brisbane Region, Australia, to understand the formation and development of NORCs. The geovisualisation method was employed to identify the distribution changes of NORCs between 2006 and 2016. The Global Moran’s I and Local Moran’s I measures were utilised to analyse the spatial correlation and the clusters of NORCs. The results show that NORCs increased significantly from 2006 to 2016, and their distribution was mainly clustered or co-located along the coastline and Brisbane River areas. The evolvement of NORCs reflected the change of aggregation pattern of older population between 2006 and 2016. Understanding the distribution trend of NORCs informs government policy and decisions in addressing issues of service delivery and community cooperation, and eventually leads to sustainable urban development and successful ageing in place for older Australians.
Highlights
Most of the developed countries are ageing societies, and catering for this large proportion of the older population is becoming an important part of urban policy [1,2]
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Census data of 2006, 2011 and 2016, which include the distribution of usual residents in the households by different ages, were used
As the purpose of this study is to understand the formation trend of naturally occurring retirement communities (NORCs) over time, which focused on the population changes and the distribution features of the older population (65+), the slight differences in the number and scale between Statistical Area Level 1 (SA1) and Collection District (CD)
Summary
Most of the developed countries are ageing societies, and catering for this large proportion of the older population is becoming an important part of urban policy [1,2]. For most of the older people, ageing-in-place (remaining in their own home in the community as long as possible) is the preferred housing option, which has a positive impact on many aspects of daily life, such as feeling safe and comfortable, maintaining physical and mental wellbeing and receiving social support [3,4]. A retirement village is an older people-based community that provides a variety of accommodation, services and facilities to meet their unique requirements [7]. It is an institution and needs rules, regulations, programmes and staff to govern its residents’ daily life [8].
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