We talk about sustainable communities as places that can survive climate change, use fewer resources and remain economically viable for decades. But there is another test we apply far less often: can the people who live there continue to use them as they grow older?
Australia is ageing. In 2022, 17% of the population was aged 65 or older. The Australian Bureau of Statistics projects that this could reach between 25% and 27% by 2071. The proportion aged 85 and over is projected to rise even more dramatically, from 2.1% to somewhere between 5.2% and 6.4%.
That shift has implications far beyond healthcare and aged care. It affects the way we design houses, streets, transport, public spaces and entire neighbourhoods.
A community can have solar-powered buildings, efficient waste collection and extensive green space and still fail its residents if losing the ability to drive makes everyday life impossible, a few front steps make homes inaccessible, or cognitive changes make the surrounding environment difficult to navigate.
A truly sustainable community should not have an unofficial expiry date for the people who live in it.
Ageing Does Not Create One Predictable Set of Needs
One of the problems with designing for an “ageing population” is that older people are sometimes treated as though they form one homogeneous group. They do not.
Many people remain physically active and independent well into later life. Others develop changes in mobility, vision, hearing or balance. Some people need substantial assistance with everyday activities while others need almost none.
Cognitive needs can change too. Alzheimer’s disease, for example, progresses rather than producing one fixed level of impairment. Understanding Alzheimer’s symptoms by stage helps illustrate why someone may be largely independent at one point but later need increasing assistance with navigation, everyday tasks and personal care.
The wider scale of dementia makes this an important planning issue. The World Health Organization estimates that 57 million people worldwide were living with dementia in 2021, with nearly 10 million new cases occurring each year. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form and may account for 60–70% of dementia cases.
Dementia is also not simply an individual medical issue. The WHO estimates that its global economic cost reached US$1.3 trillion in 2019, with roughly half associated with care provided by family members and other informal carers.
In Australia, Dementia Australia estimates that around 446,500 people are living with dementia in 2026, while approximately 1.7 million people are involved in their care.
Those numbers change what “future-ready” communities need to mean.
Design for Change, Not a Perfectly Able Resident
A surprising amount of our built environment assumes that people will remain capable of doing the same things throughout their lives.
Homes have stairs at the entrance. Bathrooms contain narrow doorways and slippery surfaces. Storage is placed overhead. Essential services are clustered around roads. Shops are surrounded by car parks rather than footpaths. Public transport may require long walks or difficult interchanges.
For decades, a person may barely notice these design decisions. Then something changes.
A bad knee turns three entrance steps into an obstacle. Reduced vision makes a dim stairway dangerous. Giving up driving turns a ten-minute trip to the supermarket into a logistical problem.
This is one reason WHO’s work on age-friendly communities encompasses much more than healthcare. Its framework considers transportation, housing, outdoor spaces and buildings, social participation, communication, civic participation and community services together.
The important idea is that independence is partly created by the environment.
A person does not suddenly become dependent purely because their body changes. Sometimes the surrounding infrastructure turns a manageable limitation into a serious barrier.
Our Homes Need to Be Capable of Ageing Too
For many people, remaining in their existing home is preferable to moving into specialist accommodation. Familiar homes can preserve routines, relationships, memories and neighbourhood connections.
There can be an environmental advantage as well. As explored in our guide to ageing in place as a sustainable housing strategy, adapting an existing home can preserve structures and materials that have already been built rather than creating demand for entirely new housing.
But ageing in place does not simply mean staying put and hoping for the best.
A home that can adapt over time might include:
- step-free or easily adaptable entrances;
- wide and unobstructed circulation routes;
- good natural and artificial lighting;
- stable, non-slip flooring;
- accessible switches, handles and storage;
- bathrooms that can accommodate grab rails or seating;
- a bedroom and usable bathroom on an accessible level;
- comfortable indoor temperatures during heat and cold; and
- layouts that remain easy to understand and navigate.
Some of these features are associated with ageing, but there is little reason to reserve them for “old people’s houses.” A step-free entrance also helps someone pushing a pram, carrying luggage, using crutches after an injury or moving furniture. Better lighting benefits almost everyone.
This is a recurring advantage of universal design: building for a wider range of human abilities often creates better buildings for everybody.
Families already considering this transition can also see our practical guide to building ethical support for ageing in place, which looks at home safety, care arrangements, caregiver boundaries and preserving independence.
But Ageing in Place Is About More Than the House
You can retrofit a home beautifully and still leave its occupant isolated.
Imagine a person who can comfortably move around their accessible house but cannot safely walk to the nearest shop, reach public transport, attend community activities or visit a doctor without someone driving them.
Technically, they are ageing in place. Functionally, their world has become much smaller.
That distinction matters.
WHO describes physical, social and economic environments as important determinants of healthy ageing. An effective age-friendly community therefore needs to work beyond the property boundary.
A neighbourhood that supports people through different stages of life might offer:
- safe and continuous footpaths;
- frequent pedestrian crossings with sufficient crossing time;
- benches and places to rest;
- shade and shelter;
- accessible public toilets;
- shops and basic services within reasonable distances;
- reliable public and community transport;
- accessible parks and public buildings; and
- places where people can meet without needing to spend large amounts of money.
These are not luxury additions. Together, they determine whether someone can participate independently in everyday life.
What Happens When Someone Stops Driving?
Car-dependent development presents an obvious problem as populations age.
For many people living in suburbs, regional towns and rural communities, driving provides access to practically everything: groceries, appointments, friends, recreation, banking and community activities.
Losing the ability or confidence to drive can therefore mean losing far more than transportation.
The WHO Age-friendly Cities Framework specifically highlights transportation as one of eight interconnected areas of urban life. It notes that inadequate affordable public transport can leave older people who no longer drive isolated at home and make participation in community life more difficult.
The sustainability connection is hard to miss.
Communities designed around walking, cycling, accessible public transport and nearby services are usually discussed in terms of emissions, congestion and land use. But those same design choices can determine whether people retain independence later in life.
A fifteen-minute neighbourhood is therefore not merely a climate concept. Done well, it can also be an ageing strategy.
Dementia-Friendly Design Can Make Places Better for Everyone
Cognitive accessibility deserves the same attention as physical accessibility.
A confusing environment can become significantly harder to navigate for someone experiencing memory or cognitive changes. Complex junctions, poor signs, identical corridors, excessive noise and a lack of obvious landmarks can all add difficulty.
Dementia Australia argues that communities can make practical changes that allow people with dementia to remain connected and independent for longer. Its Dementia-Friendly Communities program focuses on improving accessibility, understanding, connectedness and inclusion rather than simply separating people with dementia from everyday community life.
Useful design principles can include:
- simple and predictable routes;
- clearly identifiable entrances and exits;
- recognisable landmarks;
- good lighting without excessive glare;
- clear signs using understandable language and symbols;
- places to sit and rest;
- reduced unnecessary noise and visual clutter; and
- safe access to familiar shops, parks and community facilities.
Again, these changes do not exclusively benefit people living with dementia.
A visitor who has never been to a building before appreciates clear wayfinding. A tired parent appreciates a bench. A person who does not speak the local language fluently may find clear symbols useful. Someone who is neurodivergent may benefit from calmer spaces.
Accessible design is often described as catering to a minority. In practice, it tends to remove friction for a very large portion of the population.
Social Infrastructure Is Infrastructure
Roads, pipes, electricity networks and buildings are easy to recognise as infrastructure because they are physical. The systems that keep people socially connected can be less visible but no less important.
Libraries, neighbourhood houses, parks, public squares, community gardens, sporting clubs, cafés and local shops all create reasons for people to leave home and interact with others.
That becomes particularly important when retirement, bereavement, mobility changes or stopping work disrupt established social networks.
WHO’s age-friendly framework includes social participation, respect and social inclusion alongside housing and transportation for precisely this reason. A functioning community is not simply one where a person can physically survive. It is one where they can continue to participate.
This changes how we should think about preserving local amenities.
A neighbourhood shop may appear inefficient compared with a large supermarket kilometres away. A small library branch may look expendable when measured purely by transactions. A bus route with modest patronage may seem uneconomic.
But their value changes when we account for independence, access and social connection.
Sustainability requires us to consider these wider systems rather than optimising every service in isolation.
The Hidden Infrastructure of Unpaid Care
There is another part of ageing that urban design cannot solve by itself: care.
Much of the world’s care for older people is provided informally by spouses, adult children, relatives, friends and neighbours.
The burden is substantial. According to the WHO, informal carers account for around half of the estimated global economic cost of dementia. Women provide approximately 70% of care hours for people living with dementia.
A society that assumes families will simply absorb growing care needs has not created a sustainable care system. It has transferred the work elsewhere.
That work can involve preparing meals, cleaning, providing transport, managing appointments and medication, handling finances, helping with personal care and remaining available when something goes wrong.
It can also affect carers’ employment, finances, relationships and wellbeing.
This is why the question of ageing cannot end with “Can we keep people out of residential care?” Staying at home may be an excellent outcome, but only if the support around that person is workable too.
Our earlier examination of eldercare as a sustainability and human-rights issue makes the same point from another direction: dignity, safety and care are not secondary considerations in a sustainable society. They are part of what sustainability is supposed to preserve.
Residential Care Must Change Too
Ageing in place will not be appropriate for everyone.
Some people eventually need continuous assistance, complex medical support or an environment that cannot reasonably be provided in their existing home. Residential care will therefore remain necessary.
The goal should not be to treat residential care as a failure.
Instead, we should ask whether care environments can combine human-centred design with environmental sustainability.
There is considerable overlap.
Good insulation and passive design can improve thermal comfort while reducing energy demand. Natural light can reduce lighting requirements while making interiors more pleasant. Gardens and accessible outdoor spaces can support wellbeing while improving biodiversity and reducing hard surfaces.
Durable furniture and repairable equipment can reduce waste. Efficient laundries and kitchens can reduce water and energy use. Renewable electricity can lower operational emissions.
But there is an important hierarchy here: environmental efficiency cannot come at the expense of the people who live in the building.
A facility is not sustainable simply because its electricity consumption is low. If it is understaffed, inaccessible, isolating or unsafe, it has failed another equally important dimension of sustainability.
Extreme Heat Makes Age-Friendly Design More Urgent
Climate adaptation and population ageing are also beginning to collide.
Older people can be especially vulnerable during extreme heat, particularly when existing health conditions, medications, reduced mobility or social isolation make it harder to respond.
That means climate-resilient communities need homes that remain safe during heatwaves, shaded public areas, accessible cooling options and systems for checking on people who may otherwise be isolated.
Tree canopy, shaded walking routes, passive cooling and well-designed public spaces can therefore perform several roles at once: reducing urban heat, encouraging walking and making neighbourhoods safer and more comfortable for older residents.
This is the kind of overlap sustainable planning should seek deliberately.
Older People Should Help Design Age-Friendly Communities
There is an obvious danger in any discussion about designing for older people: everyone else gets to decide what older people need.
That is exactly the wrong approach.
The WHO’s guidance for developing age-friendly cities and communities emphasises meaningful engagement with older people themselves. Dementia-friendly initiatives similarly work best when people living with dementia participate in identifying barriers and developing solutions.
That can reveal problems a conventional planning assessment misses.
A bus stop may technically be accessible but lack somewhere to sit. A public toilet may exist but be too far from the main pedestrian route. A crossing may meet engineering standards yet change too quickly for some residents to cross comfortably. A community centre may run suitable activities but provide information primarily online.
Designing with people rather than merely for them turns accessibility from a checklist into an understanding of how places actually work.
We Should Build Communities That People Do Not Age Out Of
The ageing of the population is sometimes presented principally as a looming cost: more healthcare, more pensions, more care workers and greater pressure on government budgets.
That framing is incomplete.
Older people are residents, neighbours, volunteers, carers, workers, friends, customers and members of families and communities. The question is not simply how society will support a growing older population, but whether the environments we create allow people to continue participating as their abilities change.
There is a useful test for almost any supposedly sustainable neighbourhood.
Imagine living there without a car. Imagine walking more slowly. Imagine needing somewhere to sit every few hundred metres. Imagine finding stairs difficult. Imagine having poorer eyesight or hearing. Imagine occasionally becoming confused about where you are.
Does the community still work?
If the answer is no, the problem is not necessarily the person.
It may be the design.
We routinely ask whether a building will still be useful in 50 years. We should be equally interested in whether the people living in it will still be able to use it.
Because a community that works beautifully when its residents are 35 but becomes hostile to them at 75 was never designed for the long term.
And sustainability, if it means anything, is about designing for the long term.