Planning for an ageing society: voices from the planning profession

The population of the United Kingdom is ageing inexorably, a trend which requires policy-makers, including spatial planners, to be creative and innovative in meeting the needs of older people. The significance of place in the lives of older people has been demonstrated by many researchers (see for example Peace et al., 2006; Gilroy, 2008) and underlines that spatial planners must be age aware. This paper uses qualitative research with planning practitioners to explore the extent of their age awareness and the means by which the opportunities and challenges of an ageing population are factored into their work. This is examined in the context of the wide-ranging multidisciplinary literature on the spatial experience of older people, and concludes that a clearer articulation of the elements of older people's relationships with place would assist planners in unpicking this complex subject and building locally appropriate age-integrated solutions for our ageing population which reach beyond predominantly physical dimensions of the environment.