IN-PERSON: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

We often assume that when we get older and retired, we would stay mostly within the residential neighborhood boundaries, walking around enjoying leisure activities near home. Recent researches, exploring the elderly themes, such as aging in place, active aging, age-friendly community, etc., sensibly confirm some of those assumptions. However, as many of the retired old people confront different social conditions, such as those of finance, health, time, emotions, as well as those of different public services, including near-by public facilities and transportations, their neighborhood activity and socializing patterns have diverse spectrums, which require in-depth examinations. This paper, for example, investigates the elderly’s neighborhood activities with two by two variables, comprising must-activity or leisure-activity and inside-neighborhood or outside-neighborhood, which are respectively combined with activity content, time, and place, as well as utilized transportation mode, average walking amount, and socializing ratio. The data were partially drawn from the research, “A Pilot Study for Spatial Welfare and Street Revitalization, based on Elderly’s Walking and Purchasing Patterns in Residential Areas,” conducted in 2017, in which 54 elderly residents provided their travel logs, daily records of emotions, interviews, and GPS records. Research findings, among others, inform that while leisure-activity (64.4%) exceeds must-activity (35.5%), and inside-neighborhood activity (65.6%) exceeds outside-neighborhood activity (34.3%), average walking amount counts two third more in outside-neighborhood area, and socializing ratio appears similar between inside-neighborhood (64.9%) and outside-neighborhood (66.1%). Other findings imply a bit more sophistications, as visiting destinations of markets, parks, churches, and sports relate to different socializing patterns, and as transportation modes of walking, biking, bus, and metros also draw different activity patterns.