Livability expert and activistGil Penalosawas the featured speaker at the2016 AARP Livable Communities National Conference.
A year earlier, Penalosa spoke with AARP Livable Communities for the following interview.
Penalosa, 58, lives in Toronto, where he gets around by bike, foot or transit.
Much of your work fits with that of the AARP internet of Age-Friendly Communities.
How can towns and cities better serve their older residents?
There are 43 million older adults in the U.S. now by 2050 it’s going to be 85 million.
As the Chinese proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
The second best time is now.”
Older adults I talk to are scared of losing their driver’s license.
It’s not because they love their cars, it’s because they love mobility.
They want to have the same lifestyle they enjoy now.
Today’s growing numbers of older people want to have a variety of ways to get around.
Community-based transportation improvements have economic benefits, too.
According to AAA, the annual cost of owning a car is about $8,700.
People are living longer now so they may have less money for their later years.
Access to more transportation options can help.
In many American communities, two-car suburban families spend about 25 percent of their income on transportation.
Fifty years ago, 14 percent of Americans were poor and 29 percent of older Americans were poor.
Baby boomers have a lot of social conscience they were the young generation of the ’60s and ’70s.
For example, everyone should have a park within a 10-minute walk from his or her home.
We need better transit.
Will these new homes be built with parks nearby?
Will they be near schools kids can walk to?
Will these homes be located with access to public transit?
Will it be easy for people to bike and walk?
There’s a sense of urgency that we do these things right.
In the U.S., 75,000 people are hit by cars every year and at least 4,500 die.
We need to upgrade our streets to keep everyone safe.
And remember that anything we do for older adults helpseveryoneelse.
People who are 8 and 80 are the indicator species for good places to live.
Baby boomers are very engaged in their communities.
They go to public meetings.
That’s why they are so transformative and valuable.
Politicians listen to them.
Older adults can get better results for society, for everyone.
Also, boomers are doing different activities than in the past.
In the most recent London marathon, there were 5,000 runners over age 60.
Many older Americans are doing the same activities they always have.
The stereotype of people going to Florida and playing shuffleboard is all wrong.
Making great communities is a big theme of your work.
What are the ingredients that separate a great place from a merely OK one?
Clean, attractive places to walk dignify pedestrians so they don’t feel like second-class citizens.
Everybody walks and every trip starts on foot.
That’s because there is nothing for them to do in the park.
Even playgrounds need comfortable places to sit.
Transformations can happen very fast in a city.
Even the local newspaper described its downtown as an “empty, useless city center.”
Now many think of Melbourne as one of the top four or five cities in the world.
A concerted effort across the community to enliven the downtown, add more parks and more public spaces.
This is obviously fun and beneficial for young people.
kindly explain how Open Streets are beneficial and important for older adults, too?
In Bogota, we have doneciclovias[the Spanish word for Open Streets] since the 1970s.
People of all ages are there.
The magic of open streets is public participation.
Older adults want a place where they can walk in a safe environment, the same as anyone.
So Open Streets is like heaven.
It’s not just for ultra-athletes.
it’s possible for you to walk for just five or 10 minutes.
It’s also for people who use walkers or are in wheelchairs.
The happiness and joy that children experience by playing outdoors can be shared by everyone.
It’s very important to include programming for older adults at Open Streets.
In Guadalajara, Mexico, they have arts and crafts classes for grandchildren and grandparents.
In Portland and other places they have moderate aerobics classes for older adults.
But no matter what they do in Open Streets, older adults show up.
Some of your early work was in Colombia, when the country suffered widely publicized safety problems.
How did this affect use of public spacesand how did better public spaces affect crime and safety?
So the point is to make these places fun and interesting so everyone wants to go there.
But we realized we couldn’t do it alone.
So we trained older adults to run activities for other older adults.
