Creating Age-Friendly Developments: A Practical guide for ensuring homes and communities support ageing in place

To mark International Day of Older Persons (October 1st), the GM Housing Planning and Ageing Group released ‘Creating Age-Friendly Developments’ - a new guide for architects, planners and residential developers, which aims to the development of more ‘age-friendly’ urban developments.

The guide provides guidance to industry professionals about how to embed age-inclusion into all new housing schemes. It highlights a series of considerations for designers and developers to consider, ranging from how older people's voice should be included in the planning process, how neighbourhoods can support ageing in place, and features of age-inclusive housing.

The guide also builds off existing policy initiatives, supporting designers and developers to consider how the diverse requirements of older people might be integrated into the planning process for new residential communities.

Although written with reference to Greater Manchester policies, the guide should resonate with policy-makers and professionals much further afield.