Urban design invitation qualities towards an aging-friendly community : case of “Ras el Nabaa”, Beirut.

Abstract

The Lebanese demography is facing an unprecedented change towards a rapidly growing aging population. Older adults, currently constituting 9percent of the population, are expected to reach 25.7percent by 2050; these form a large portion of Lebanon’s future social structure. In order to remain active community contributors, older adults require appropriate urban settings that address their physical ability limits to access the outdoor urban environments. However, in Beirut, the urban fabric lacks older adults’ required physical accessibility characteristics. Thus, if the issue remains unaddressed, older adults’ risk of losing their autonomy and community connection is anticipated. In order to overcome this issue, existing literature has addressed it through multiple separate fields, such as public health and gerontology. This study promotes an interdisciplinary approach by applying public health concerns of a healthy community design to provide older adults’ access to urban public places. The contribution of this project is a contextualized urban design solution to the existing body of knowledge as a new design strategy for older adults’ communities, which proposes the ageing-friendly community design for a case study of the “Ras El Nabaa” neighborhood in Beirut. Accordingly, this thesis follows a design through research approach, which aims at acquiring an in-depth understanding of the current neighborhood characteristics and the missing neighborhood features for older adults’ accessibility. Then, it addresses aging-friendly characteristics through urban design concepts and design models to enable the studied neighborhood to function in an aging-friendly community.