Healthy Aging in Cities: The combined role of built environments and socio-spatial networks – HANC

The way people are connected to each other and the way our cities are built have both been shown to influence healthy aging. Yet, we do not understand exactly how built environments, daily mobility, and social interactions either favour or hinder healthy aging. Although a body of work has explored links between healthy aging and social networks, built environments, and mobility, such work has mainly been done in silo. Comprehensive studies looking at the complex interplay between these dimensions are still lacking. Yet, gaining a better understanding of this interplay could guide interventions to build cities favouring healthy ‘aging in place’ and how older adults succeed to maintain their social network in this optimal environment.
Novel wearable sensor devices including Global Positioning System receivers or accelerometers make it possible to gather precise information on people's daily mobility and physical activity. In addition to considering urban environments and spatial mobility patterns as determinants of healthy aging, the HANC (Healthy Aging and Networks in Cities) project will analyse social processes using innovative techniques from other disciplines from network analysis and graph theory which are still largely underused in the study of social relationships and wider public health. Statistical methods will be used to identify which features of the built environment and what characteristics of one's social network influence healthy aging (social participation, active mobility and well-being).
This proposal builds on an existing project that was funded through the Joint Call for Research Applications in Aging from the European Research Area in Ageing 2 (ERA-AGE) program. The funded project was rated very favourably and was one of six international teams that received funding to assess determinants of healthy aging. Canada and Luxembourg teams obtained specific funding while France participated with contributions from the existing RECORD Cohort without additional novel data collection. With this proposal, we specifically propose to add a French component that will connect to the existing project, with a data collection on the mobility, physical activity, social activity, and health of older adults (with particular innovations compared to ERA-AGE in the collection of spatialized social network data). We will collect and study new social network measures by modifying existing protocols and we will analyse multi-modal and multi-layered networks, that is to say creating multidimensional networks in order to study nodes (human beings and/or locations) in time and space, and assess precisely how urban topology impacts mobility and emergence/establishment of social networks. This will allow us to examine how these three different components (built environment, daily mobility, social network) influence health ageing. The present project will conduct to the development of an original French consortium of teams with complementary expertise that will be built on and expand an existing international project on ageing. This project aims to generate evidence about how characteristics of urban environments and social networks, as also determined by the mobility behaviour of people, may impact the way older people experience urban place and the potential links with mental, social and physical well-being. Findings from the HANC project will help guide interventions to improve urban contexts linked to social activities and promotion of healthy ageing through social networking. Results will also serve to guide policy-makers and urban planners to provide adapted services for ageing populations.