Q-AGEING - Quality Ageing in an Urban Environment

Like in many cities and regions in Europe the structure of the society of the partner regions and cities of Q-AGEING project is changing radically with a relative increase of older workers (55-64), elderly people (65-79), and very elderly people (80+) and fewer people of working age. The Q-AGEING project is focuses on creating better conditions to enable active ageing by developing actions which will be concentrated on public services and urban living environment. Both aspects are interlinked. The social exclusion of ageing inactive people will increase if no actions in these fields are taken. The creation of activity/jobs for elderly will be more difficult if no innovation in public support is realized and the attractiveness of the urban environment and thus competitiveness will decrease if the changing needs of these large groups are not taken into account. Q-AGEING is a possibility for participating partners to get to know usable transnational examples and to check and adopt them in local communities. The main message of the project is that ageing provides an opportunity for the whole society and does not only generate problems.

The Q-AGEING project started with a an analysis of the everyday living environment, health, mobility and employment situation of the elderly. Based on the results of the research, regional action plans focusing on the most important development areas have been prepared. Afterwards, the project partners executed experimental programs in five areas out of which they select the most efficient case studies. Further, they prepared a program plan to be utilized by any institution or town facing similar phenomenon. Last but not least, recommendations have been formulated to support new policy-making in social politics.

The unique Q-AGEING project aimed to produce an efficient, usable Toolbox of developed and tested pilot projects and solutions:

• public service portfolio: integrated set of innovative public services;
• collection of urban solutions for communities to help quality ageing of seniors.

Based on the selection of model projects from the Toolbox, the core output will be the regional implementation plans per partner regions and a so called Transnational Ageing Resource Centre, which will be a methodological centre for community initiatives related to the elderly.