What Women Want in a City

Photo by Simon Marcus/Corbis

Ruth Wilson, 62, hopes she never has to change residences again. Her 1960s-era condo in southwest Washington, D.C., is filled with plants and samples of her needlework. From her balcony, she can see the city’s brand-new baseball stadium. A grocery, a bank, a pharmacy and public transit are just a block away. She can walk her little dog in the large courtyard behind her building, where she encounters other dog-walkers.

But on a tour of her neighborhood, Wilson encounters obstacles that threaten her safety. These include sidewalks, curb cuts and a grocery parking lot that are all badly in need of repair. She notices that the traffic signal on M Street, a wide thoroughfare, changes before an older man with a walker can make it across. A widow, Wilson adds that she, like many older women, doesn’t feel safe going out alone at night.

Wilson says she would feel better about the neighborhood if it had a senior center where she could take exercise classes, go on group excursions and do volunteer work, as she did when she was living in the nearby suburbs. She also hopes a new commercial project will bring more retail shops and cafes.

The needs of older females like Wilson are increasingly on the minds of city planners, public health practitioners, architects, housing and transportation agencies. Professionals are reaching across disciplines to consider how this large segment of the urban population can be better served by changing the design of communities. Of course, neighborhood improvements that benefit older women also benefit older men.

“We focus on women because they tend to be survivors in terms of being longer-lived,” says Eugénie Birch, chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design in Philadelphia. Women comprise 60 percent of people over age 65 who live in cities, and older women are three times more likely to live alone than men.

Among older women’s concerns: safety, both in terms of crime and hazard-free walkways; transportation options; a housing mix that meets their changing needs; convenient access to health services; and proximity to shops, churches and community centers.

“We need to design with the notion that we are responsible for providing a safe haven for women,” says Afaf Meleis, dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in Philadelphia and co-organizer of an urban women’s think tank held there in September 2007.

Some older women, such as Wilson, are relative newcomers to the urban setting, while others are deeply rooted in their communities. Many are poor. According to the Women’s Research and Education Institute, a woman age 75 or older is nearly twice as likely to be poor as her male counterpart.

While wealthier women can afford to take taxis, those who depend on public transportation face challenges. Older women are less likely to drive than older men—over age 65, nearly 90 percent of men have driver’s licenses, compared to less than 69 percent of women. By age 75, only 55 percent of women have driver’s licenses, according to a University of Southern California study. Some never learned to drive, but “most give it up much earlier than comparable men, even if they are safe drivers,” says Sandi Rosenbloom, professor of planning at University of Arizona.

Some transit agencies are taking measures to encourage older riders, says Rose Sheridan, a vice president of the American Public Transportation Association in Washington. In Las Vegas, for example, the Silver Star program buses residents of senior housing complexes to shopping or entertainment destinations twice a week. In Grand Rapids, Mich., the Rapid Senior Mentor Program gives older passengers one-on-one orientation to the transit system, rewarding participants with free fare cards. In Benicia, Calif., some buses offer flex routes, with helpful drivers and door-to-door service for older people.

But the transit agencies are doing very little to address the particular needs of women passengers, according to a national survey by Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, professor and chair of UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning. Only three of 131 agencies were focusing on women riders—although two-thirds acknowledged that women have distinct safety needs.

“Women are more afraid and feel more vulnerable” than men and often become isolated, Loukaitou-Sideris says. Planners are urging that bus stops be situated in well-lit areas where women will feel safe.

Walkable neighborhoods are also key. Women fear not only crime but tripping and falling, especially if they have osteoporosis, gait problems or poor vision.

“If you’re older, the absence of sidewalks and safe places to walk is a real challenge,” says Georges Benjamin, M.D., executive director of the American Public Health Association. APHA promotes better street lighting, large-print signs and plenty of benches. Planting shade trees along the sidewalk and other forms of shelter from the sun are ways the “built environment” can enhance walkability.

Another improvement to the built environment is better design of parks, small parks being preferable. According to Loukaitou-Sideris, women over 45 are underrepresented among park users. “I found a community where women were very much interested in gardening. You could have parts of a park with gardens,” she says.

Older people also benefit from walking to neighborhood destinations, says Ethan Berke, M.D., assistant professor of community and family medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, who researches the built environment and health. In Seattle, he found an association between walkable neighborhoods and physical activity levels in older adults. “That’s where a well-designed built environment shines because you don’t have to seek out opportunities for exercise,” he says.

What types of destinations entice older women to walk to them? For one, they want stores that sell food that allows them to eat healthfully, says Eileen Sullivan-Marx, associate dean for practice and community affairs at Penn’s School of Nursing. And in focus groups in West Philadelphia, she says, older women indicated that they want one-stop health centers nearby, with doctors, labs and pharmacists under the same roof.

But most of all, Sullivan-Marx says, the focus groups revealed that women “want to remain connected to people they know.”

Despite the rapidly aging population, researchers are only beginning to tackle the complex, interrelated challenges of older women’s needs and their environment. “This is a journey of a thousand steps,” Rosenbloom says. “You have to start doing it now.”

Beth Baker is author of Old Age in a New Age: The Promise of Transformative Nursing Homes.