World Cities Day 2021 and the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing
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This Sunday, 31 October 2021, is World Cities Day! This day is an opportunity to emphasise the importance of our rural or urban environments in shaping how we experience ageing and the opportunities that ageing offers.
Ensuring communities foster the abilities of older people is one of the four action areas of the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing. By removing physical and social barriers as well as implementing policies, systems, services, products, and technologies that enable people of all ages to do what they value, we can create age-friendly environments: better places in which to grow, live, work, play, and age.
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Healthy ageing is not possible without healthy cities and a healthy planet
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This year’s World Cities Day theme is ‘Adapting Cities for Climate Resilience’. The day also marks the beginning of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26).
Responding to the climate crisis is crucial to making the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing a success. The World Health Organization’s recently published COP26 Special Report is clear: climate change leads to poorer health outcomes and worsening health inequities, with disproportionate impacts on more disadvantaged populations such as older people.
However, this World Cities Day is also a chance to recognise that older people are and can be part of the solution. Cities and communities can play particularly powerful roles not only by taking action on climate change at local levels, but also by enabling older people to contribute to decision making, problem-solving processes, and climate action.
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The WHO Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities
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Some great examples of the key role that age-friendly cities and communities can play in finding solutions and enabling older people’s participation can be found in the WHO Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities (GNAFCC).
With 1,329 members across over 51 countries, the GNAFCC stimulates communities around the world to become increasingly age-friendly by inspiring change through showing what can be done and how; connecting with others to exchange information, knowledge and experience; and supporting others to find innovative and evidence-based solutions.
Members of the GNAFCC and beyond also contribute to a Global Database of Age-friendly Practices, which provide examples of what cities and communities around the world are actually doing to become more age-friendly by placing older people at the centre of lived environments.
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Learn more at Age Friendly Ireland’s International Webinar Series
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DATE: 2 November 2021 (Webinar 1 on Housing)
TIME: 12:00 - 14:00 IST (find your timezone)
LOCATION: Online event (Zoom)
To explore how age-friendly environments can be taken from policy to practice, Age Friendly Ireland, a Network Affiliate of the WHO Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities, is organising an International Webinar Series.
The online webinar series begins on 2 November 2021 (Tuesday) with a session on housing and will cover the 8 interconnected domains of the Age-friendly Cities framework over 8 months.
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