The Global Age-friendly Community Movement ― A Critical Appraisal

The age-friendly community movement is a global phenomenon, currently growing with the support of the WHO and multiple international and national organizations in the field of aging. Drawing on an extensive collection of international case studies, this volume provides an introduction to the movement. The contributors – both researchers and practitioners – touch on a number of current tensions and issues in the movement and offer a wide-ranging set of recommendations for advancing age-friendly community development. The book concludes with a call for a radical transformation of a medical and lifestyle model of aging into a relational model of health and social/individual wellbeing.

Philip B. Stafford is Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University in Bloomington, and was Director of the Indiana University Center on Aging and Community until 2017. His research, primarily ethnographic and participatory, has focused on aging and sense of place. He has received the Blackburn award from the Indiana chapter of the AIA for contributions to architecture by a non-architect and is a member of the board of the American Society on Aging.