University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA.
J Appl Gerontol. 2021 Nov;40(11):1527-1532. doi: 10.1177/0733464820978000. Epub 2021 Jan 17.
Ensuring accessibility to necessary services is critical for older adults. However, there often exist spatial disparities in the levels of accessibility to services. Because the application of Geographic Information System (GIS) has gained attention in the gerontology field, we used spatial analysis to identify communities of concern for older adults from the perspective of accessibility. We defined the communities of concern based on the proportion of older adults and the level of accessibility to health, social, and daily services via two specific modes of transportation-walking and public transit. Our findings show that newly developed communities tend to have less accessibility to necessary services, and aging communities are randomly distributed across the city. Our results call for interdisciplinary collaboration, between urban planning and gerontology professionals, to better understand the spatial pattern of aging communities and its implication for properly addressing the mobility needs of older adults in the communities.
确保老年人能够获得必要的服务至关重要。然而，服务的可及性水平往往存在空间差异。由于地理信息系统（GIS）在老年学领域的应用受到关注，我们从可及性的角度使用空间分析来确定老年人关注的社区。我们根据老年人的比例以及通过两种特定的交通方式（步行和公共交通）获得健康、社会和日常服务的水平来定义关注社区。我们的研究结果表明，新开发的社区往往难以获得必要的服务，而老龄化社区则随机分布在城市各地。我们的研究结果呼吁城市规划和老年学专业人员之间开展跨学科合作，以更好地了解老龄化社区的空间模式及其对适当满足社区中老年人的流动性需求的影响。
