Sustainable, age-friendly cities: An evaluation framework and case study application on Palo Alto, California

The aging population has a tremendous impact on our community and resources. Planning age-friendly cities is a sustainable solution toward healthy aging and health resources allocation. Our research team developed a framework to systematically evaluate the age-friendliness of cities. The framework encompasses multiple criteria and includes assessment using web-based geographical information system (GIS) tools. The analytical framework was applied to Palo Alto, California as an illustrative case study. The study site was chosen due to its unique characteristics (overall rich community but high income disparity; proportion of senior 30% higher than US average, 80% of whom expressed the desire to continue living in this community) and its proximity to the research team allowing easy site visits and data access. In this paper, we discuss the results of our analysis, as well as ongoing development and preliminary results of an Age-Friendly Cities Scorecard to translate WHO guidelines into tangible and measurable action items.