In February 2021, a Feature Paper Special Issue entitled "Age-Friendly Cities & Communities: State of the Art and Future Perspectives" was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. This special issue features 30 contemporary contributions which relate to the Age-Friendly Cities and Communities initiative launched by the World Health Organization in 2007.
The key focus of this Special Issue is to provide a critical assessment and overview of the state of the art within the Age-friendly Cities arena. Published papers include an editorial, sevenpapers focusing on age-friendly neighbourhoods, cities, communities, and societies, three papers explore innovative approaches to housing, two papers concentrate on age-friendly transportation,four papers focus on innovative practices in the domain of cure and/or care for older citizens, four papers relate to respect and social inclusion, and nine papers focus on and consider the use and implementation of technology in an age-friendly city or community.
As a take home message, the guest editors, Prof Joost van Hoof (The Hague University of Applied Sciences and Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences) and Dr Hannah R. Marston (The Open University, Milton Keynes) would like to emphasize the need for greater collaboration between disciplines in order to create a truly multisectoral actions for making our cities age-friendly for all generations. According to Prof Van Hoof, who also serves as the chairperson of the Knowledge Platform Age-friendly The Hague, “the contents of this Special Issue is one of the ways to expand and disseminate knowledge and to facilitate the actual age-friendly agenda and narrative further. Therefore, the contents of the total special issue may help other cities and communities on their way.”
All papers are published as open access papers, which means that they can be read and downloaded free of charge. Direct access to the special issue: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/special_issues/Age_Friendly_Cities