Manchester launches five-year plan for Age-Friendly Manchester
The strategy, ‘Manchester: a city for life 2023- 2028', builds on the foundations of age-friendly work ongoing in the city and sets out the vision and priorities for Manchester as an age-friendly city where people can age happily with equality, respect and independence and where they have a voice in the life of the city.
Taking the eight key features of an age friendly city (opens new window) as defined by the WHO as their starting point, Manchester has set four key themes for its work, with that for housing being 'Age-friendly neighbourhoods where we can all age in place'. This sets out how people can age well in the neighbourhoods they choose, with access to the right services, housing, information and opportunities, and aims to embed age-friendly working and an equalities approach to support a better understanding of older people’s needs, particularly among diverse communities with differing experiences.
A key aim as part of this theme is to broaden Manchester’s age-friendly housing choices, including by:
- building new housing that supports people throughout their lives, especially as their needs change;
- adapting existing homes to enable people to age in the place of their choice (and addressing the impacts of climate change);
- developing a range of specialist housing choices, such as extra care schemes and the LGBTQ+ majority extra care scheme.
The report details how Manchester already has strategic plans to build 15,000 new homes over 20 years in Victoria North, adopting age-friendly design principles, and that its Housing Strategy 2022–2032 commits to building 36,000 new homes by 2032, a third of which will be affordable and contribute to addressing inequalities across the city, with the aim of creating neighbourhoods where people want to live and can live well.
For more about developments in Manchester, check out the guest Housing LIN blog by Pozzoni Architecture’s Nigel Saunders.