Creating Adaptive Sensory Public Places

Accessibility to the street should be considered as a right to the city for everybody. That means all citizens with limited physical abilities should be able to use sidewalk, public transportation, and public spaces as the integral urban infrastructure to implement their needs and instrumental activities of daily living. Recent studies by author on 14 sites in Washington, United State, and 30 neighborhoods in Beirut, Lebanon, indicate that lack of appropriate pedestrian infrastructure and neglecting older adults’ ease of access to the street deny their right to the city. It is predicted that accessibility issues would be significant concerns for the city of Mashhad, which accommodates a large local population and a great number of visitors every year, due to its centrality of being a national and international religious touristic attraction. The current study is particularly interested in obtaining cutting-edge knowledge about available technology and health related studies on aging to design responsive sensory environmentsaccording to the users’ essentials. By transforming technology to adaptive urban environments and creating responsive sensory places, designers of the built environment will be able to address healthy community design for vulnerable groups of people. Fostering this discourse needs an interdisciplinary research to engage urban planners/designers, landscape architects, human geographers, sociologists, public health professionals, stakeholders, and decision makers. Accordingly, the intention of this interdisciplinary study is to offer design solutions to the existing neighborhood features by understanding the level of required interventions for older adults’accessibility in assessed neighborhoods. Reflecting appropriate interventions entails questions, such as 1) how different neighborhood settings affect the occurrence, type, and frequency of older adults’ public activities (physical and social) as form of IADL (Instrumental Activities of Daily Living); 2) how different types of older adults urban public activity arrangements might influence their social well-being and public health; and, 3) how public health considerations might be related to the outdoor built environment design features. Therefore, results of this study will be able to offer a system of adaptive healthy community design solutions and contextualized urban design strategies for local urban designers/planners, landscape architects, and public health policy makers toward future design guidelines for aging friendly communities in Beirut, Lebanon and the region.

Keywords:

Healthy Community Design , Adaptive Sensory Places , Responsive Urban Environment , Older Adults , and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living