Ageism Awareness Day: Building a Community for Every Age

What comes to mind when you hear the word “aging”?

For many of us, the images and assumptions arrive almost automatically. Older people are frail. They resist change. They cannot learn new technology. They are dependent rather than contributing.

Those assumptions may seem harmless, but they are examples of ageism.

Ageism includes the stereotypes we hold about people because of their age, the prejudice those assumptions can create, and the discrimination that can follow. It can affect people at any age, but older adults experience it in particularly persistent ways.

October 9 is Ageism Awareness Day, a national opportunity to notice those assumptions and consider what they mean for the communities we build.

Ageism matters because our expectations about aging influence more than the way we talk about older people. They can influence decisions about employment, health care, housing, transportation, recreation and public spaces. They can even affect the expectations we develop about our own lives as we grow older.

At Age-Friendly Olmsted County, we start from a different premise: longer life is not simply a problem to be managed. It is a normal and increasingly common part of life, and our communities should be designed accordingly.

Age-Friendly Olmsted County, led by Family Service Rochester, is part of both the AARP Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities and the World Health Organization Global Network for Age-Friendly Cities and Communities. Its work is aimed at making Olmsted County a place where people can live safely, actively, independently and with dignity throughout the life course.

That can sound abstract until we look at what it means in practice.

It means asking whether sidewalks, crossings and transit stops work for someone who walks more slowly or uses a mobility device.

It means thinking about parks as places for people of every age, not just children and young families.

It means considering whether housing choices allow people to remain connected to their neighborhoods as their needs change.

It means making information and services easier to find and use.

And it means inviting older residents into planning and decision-making rather than simply making decisions on their behalf.

Much of AFOC's work has followed that approach. Community members have participated in walk audits, park assessments and planning conversations that give local decision-makers direct information about how our built environment works for people as they age.

That work also illustrates something important about ageism: sometimes the problem is not intentional discrimination. Sometimes older adults simply were not considered when a street, park, building, program or policy was designed.

Age-friendly work asks us to consider them from the beginning.

There is another reason to challenge ageism. Older adults are not a single group. People in their 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond differ in health, income, interests, abilities, family circumstances and aspirations just as people at younger ages do. Even well-intended images of “successful aging” can become stereotypes if they suggest that everyone should remain endlessly active, healthy and independent.

An age-friendly community makes room for the full range of later life, including people living with disability or needing assistance.

Ageism Awareness Day gives us a useful question to ask:

Are we designing our community around assumptions about older people, or around the lives people actually live?

The answer affects all of us.

Every generation hopes to live in a community where people remain valued, connected and able to participate as they grow older. Creating that community does not begin when we reach a certain birthday.

It begins with how we think about aging today.

To learn more about Age-Friendly Olmsted County and its work, visit familyservicerochester.org/Age-Friendly-Olmsted-County or call Family Service Rochester at 507-287-2010.