Urban ageing: technology, agency and community in

smarter cities for older people

Valeria Righi Sergio Sayago Josep Blat
Interactive Technologies Group Human-Computer Interaction and Interactive Technologies Group
Universitat Pompeu Fabra Data Integration Group Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Roc Boronat, 138, 08018, Universitat de Lleida Roc Boronat, 138, 08018,
Barcelona, Spain Jaume II, 69, 25001 Lleida, Spain Barcelona, Spain
valeria.righi@upf.edu sergio.sayago@diei.udl.cat josep.blat@upf.edu

ABSTRACT large number of social studies show how multiple facets of the
Despite the widespread popularity of smart cities in policy and everyday lives of older people are related to their living
research fields, and the ever-increasing ageing population in urban environment, such as belongingness, social engagement and
areas, ageing issues have seldom been addressed in depth in smart community life.
city programs. The main focus has hitherto been on making In this paper, we aim to go beyond the current focus on age-related
physical environments ‘older people friendly’. We review studies changes in functional abilities in ageing smarts cities. The main
in environmental gerontology, policies and HCI that show the contribution this paper seeks to make is to present a different
multifaceted relationship between ageing and cities. We discuss portrayal of older people in smart cities research. Thus far, older
two case studies with scenarios of engagement of older people in people have been widely regarded as passive citizens. While we
urban areas we undertook in the past 4 years. By drawing upon the acknowledge that some seniors can take on this role, we argue that
results, we propose a vision of smart city that conceives of older others might, and actually are, playing a more active role, which
people as embedded in intergenerational urban communities and should also be examined if we aim to build better, more inclusive,
capable of creating new engagement situations by reconfiguring smart cities. We present two case studies of age-friendly smart
IT-driven scenarios to their interests and social practices. This communities that explore scenarios of engagement of older people
paper aims at expanding the current visions of smart cities for in urban contexts.
older people by building along three main dimensions: technology,
Over 100 active and independent people (aged 60-81) were
agency and community.
involved in the case studies, which ranged from designing a
mutual help service to co-creating routes of geo-located
Categories and Subject Descriptors information about different topics. The participants were able to
H.5.m. [Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI)]: adapt the proposed initial concepts to their interests, which led to
Miscellaneous. http://www.acm.org/class/1998/ sustained outcomes other than being able to use the technology.
We present ongoing work that seeks to scale up the two case
General Terms studies to a neighborhood context.
Design, Human Factors. By drawing upon the results of the case studies, we propose a set
of recommendations for designing urban technologies to support
Keywords older people’s engagement in cities. These recommendations are
based on three main concepts:
Ageing; Smart Communities; Smart cities; Older people; Age-
friendly cities; Agency i) a revision of the central role assigned to technology in
the smart city domain,
1. INTRODUCTION ii) an emphasis on older people’s agency in creatively
Despite the fact that urban population is ageing, there is a paucity adapting ICTs to their real interests,
of studies exploring how ICTs can support older people’s living in
urban areas. Thus far, visions of smart cities for older people have iii) a community lens that promotes design scenarios across
focused on removing architectural barriers and making physical age boundaries in neighborhoods.
environments more age-friendly, by considering age-related We discuss how the proposed dimensions can contribute to the
declines in functional abilities, especially mobility. However, a governance of cities and whether and how they could be adapted
to cater for more dependent older people in future research studies.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies
2. CURRENT VISIONS OF SMART CITIES
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for FOR OLDER PEOPLE
components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be “In the vision of smart cities, elderly people are supported by
honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or pervasive and smart environments in their daily mobility and
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior activities” [22]. Special attention has been given to indoor
specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from
Permissions@acm.org.
environments. For instance, the IBM Smarter Cities team
C&T '15, June 27 - 30, 2015, Limerick, Ireland partnered with Bolzano (Italy) to equip a group of elderly
Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to residents' homes with sensors capable of detecting dangerous
ACM. situations (e.g. CO2 levels rise) and sending data back to a central
ACM 978-1-4503-3460-0/15/06…$15.00 database monitored by city officials, who could eventually
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2768545.2768552.

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dispatch a care worker to visit the elderly person at home [11]. to grow old is for older people, Wiles [38] discovered that feeling
INTEL proposed a community home-based platform that connects attached to their neighborhood as “insiders”, because of
the elderly person to the network of people responsible for friendships, social clubs and familiarity with places, underpins the
providing care. This platform allows the older person to receive preferences of older people. These findings suggest that
integrated care while remaining fairly independent at home [12]. community environments are good promoters of well-being for
These visions are the hallmark of Ambient Assistive Living older people, and, in fact, this vision has later been adopted by
(AAL). policy makers.
Studies exploring older people’s interaction with urban outdoor We have recently witnessed the launching of policy programs that
environments are scarce, despite the fact that these environments promote the creation of age-friendly cities/communities1 (e.g.
represent another important element in the daily mobility and [40]). These policies acknowledge both the physical and social
activities of a large number of active, fairly independent, older dimensions of the communities, such as opportunities for
adults. A noteworthy exception is [19], where a geospatial service participating in social events as well as their accessibility (e.g.
that maps barriers and facilities in urban environments was adequate transportation to reach the location of an event). They
developed. It provided personalized paths for people with mobility also pay considerable attention to the governance processes in
needs by drawing upon open, sensor-gathered data and place to define and build age-friendly cities. Models of
crowdsourcing. Another exception is [36], which explored mobile participatory and collaborative governance, which recognize older
crowdsourcing of older people’s opinions on good and bad aspects people’s agency in constructing livable places and creating
of their neighborhoods to support decision-making by local conditions for their own active aging, are considered key elements
governments in planning urban environments. towards building age-friendly communities [16]. In this paper we
Common to studies supporting the mobility of older people in focus and draw on the social and collaborative dimensions in two
indoor and outdoor environments is that they zero in on removing case studies of age-friendly smart communities.
physical/architectural barriers. Achieving this goal is essential for
older people to remain independent individuals. Yet, social studies
4. TWO CASE STUDIES
Over the past 4 years, we have been exploring the design of
show that older people’s urban life also includes other important
services and technologies for older people in urban communities.
aspects, such as social engagement and civic life. To the best of
We have conducted this research in Àgora (AG), an adult learning
our knowledge, there is a lack of studies addressing these aspects
community located in La Verneda neighbourhood in Barcelona,
in the literature on smart cities and older people. We review in the
Spain. The centre developed from a grassroots initiative in the late
section that follows key studies from policy and environmental
70s. AG is deeply connected with the network of local
gerontology that shed light on how concepts of place and
associations in the local neighborhood. AG provides free
community can contribute to expand the design possibilities for
educational activities on several subjects to meet different
older people in smart cities.
interests, expertise, and cultural backgrounds of its members.
3. URBAN AGEING FROM A More than 1,000 people from different countries, Spanish regions,
age groups and educational levels participate in these activities
GERONTOLOGICAL AND POLICY each month. AG stands out for its strong participatory orientation,
PERSPECTIVE since its members take on an active role in the center decision-
The literature on the interplay between ageing and living making process and in their own formative processes. They call
environments is vast. Environmental gerontology is especially themselves participants, term which we use in the paper.
devoted to it. In the early 1980s, environmental gerontology We adopted a qualitative research approach based on participant
focused on micro-environments (e.g. private and nursing homes) observation [7]. To establish a good and close relationship with
and emphasized the role of personal competences in interacting AG participants, and develop a deep understanding of their
within these environments [15]. There was a special focus on the everyday practices, the first author participated in several activities
physical aspects of the environment, and adaptations to conducted in AG on a weekly basis over the course of 4 years. She
accommodate the physical design of the environments to match enrolled in ongoing courses and ran new ones. The courses were
the abilities of the older person were proposed. Design standards about ICTs and during them the participants were learning to use
for housing, nursing homes and furniture are remarkable results of several technologies, ranging from e-mail and smartphones to
this approach. Over time, researchers progressively began to Social Networks Sites. She also participated in neighborhood
consider also the social components of these environments. events and hanged around with participants when they met up for
Oswald et al. showed that both good accessibility at home and coffee in the local bar. She conducted hands-on sessions in which
personal perceptions of meaning and value of one’s own home are participants were using the technology developed for the research
indicators of good autonomy in later life and better sense of well- projects, as well as focus groups, debriefing sessions and
being [21]. Following up on this line of thought, researchers have participatory design workshops to gather specific information for
highlighted the relevance of transforming nursing homes into designing the urban platforms, which are described later. She took
homelike places [29]. More recently, the focus has shifted towards notes of her in situ observations and conversations with the
macro-environments (i.e. neighborhoods, cities, rural areas) and participants during or immediately after these field activities.
their impact on older people’s mobility, independence,
opportunities for social interactions and quality of life. Macro- Fieldnotes were periodically analysed by using inductive thematic
environments have been analyzed by considering two dimensions: analysis [5]. Emerging themes were used to elicit informal
the physical and the social. Within the former, accessible
buildings, safe walking paths, adequate spatial distribution of 1
benches and facilities, public transportation, among others, are Different terminologies have been used to refer to the
considered key parameters for supporting ageing in cities [18] construction of a favorable environment for older people, such
[40]. The social dimension is concerned with other aspects of as age-friendly cities, livable community and lifetime
public spaces. For example, while exploring what the ideal place neighborhood [16].

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conversations with the participants throughout the study. As the welfare innovation [20]. Our focus was on understanding the role
research progressed, debriefing sessions were conducted to share, that technologies play in promoting these scenarios, which seems
discuss and validate the results with the participants. We identified a topic largely unexplored.
different themes for each case study. In this paper, we focus on Through the platform, a user can make announcements by writing
those themes that we consider more related with the topic of which kind of help s/he needs and her/his approximate location.
ageing in urban cities, and we present them in the two case Users can also reply to existing help requests by sending a direct
studies2. In an additional iteration, we grouped these themes into message to the sender. The platform also provides typical
three clusters, i.e. technology, agency, community, in order to elements of social networking sites, such as comments and user
draw more general conclusions. We discuss them in section 6. ratings for each help offer/request. This is aimed to increase trust
among users.
4.1 Case study 1: older people as co-producers
of community services
This case study was conducted within the context of Life2.0, a
European funded project within the Smart City program in 2010.
The project aimed at designing innovative services for supporting
older people’s independent life by enhancing social interaction
among their neighbors. We describe the profile of participants
involved in the project, the technology developed, and discuss the
themes that emerged from our analysis.

4.1.1 Participants
We involved established local communities, the main one being
AG, which participated in all the phases of the project, i.e.
analysis, co-design, long-term evaluation and definition of the Figure 1. The Life2.0 interface with a list of help offers and
business model. We recruited an initial group of 20 people who requests created by the participants. By clicking on one of
had been active AG members for several years. Throughout the them, the user can write a comment or send a direct message
project, we invited new people to join the group and participate in to the author of the announcement.
the different activities organized, resulting in approximately 90
participants involved (aged 60-80). 95% of them were pensioners, 4.1.3 From care to social and learning scenarios
the rest were about to retire. All participants were autonomous and Contrary to our initial expectations, which assumed that older
independent (i.e. able to conduct daily living activities on their people would use the platform to ask and receive help for
own). They engaged in social AG activities on a weekly basis. conducting (instrumental) activities of daily living, our
Most of them had completed primary education and used ICTs on participants regarded the platform as an opportunity for engaging
a regular basis. While our participants cannot be regarded as in social interactions, requesting IT help or taking further their
‘vulnerable’, there were bereavements and some long absences knowledge. Examples of the exchanges were help to solve doubts
from people due to health problems during the project. about their Facebook account or their smartphone, or to practice
their Catalan with native speakers. The drive for social
Meetings with 8 local associations were conducted to gather their interactions often prevailed to the actual need in the help request .
feedback on the emerging service proposal and to invite them to For instance, a group of women willing to improve their Catalan
join the project and use the community platform developed. Two decided to meet every week in a cafeteria to chat in this language.
interviews with district and regional government officials were A woman volunteered to show another one how to delete friends
conducted to understand their views of the intended service on Facebook in exchange for having some company during her
towards its eventual sustainability. weekly strolls.
4.1.2 A community platform that promotes the co- The service goal thus shifted from sharing help, a scenario mostly
production of help services related with care and assistance, to sharing knowledge, in which
Drawing upon the results of the ethnography and co-design the social interactions and learning goals played a key role3.
activities conducted in Life2.0 [13, 25], the project partners
4.1.4 Self-organization and sustained benefits beyond
decided to develop a web-based community platform to offer three
types of services related with mutual help, local events and local the platform use
businesses. We focus on the first one, since it was the most Despite participants recognized the value and usefulness of the
discussed with the participants and technically operational. services offered by the platform, they did not access it or posted
messages very frequently. This low use might be due to a number
The mutual help service aimed to encourage older people to ask of technical reasons, such as: an effective notification system was
and offer help to peers. It supported the idea of older people as co- not implemented, the platform was still a prototype or a critical
producers and valid contributors of services, rather than merely mass of users was not reached. However, this low use did not
consumers - a vision aligned with current paradigms of citizens’ prevent participants from exhibiting actual mutual help behaviors.
participation in public co-production [24]. The idea has already In fact, by talking about the possible uses of the platform, and by
been explored in previous studies, with a particular focus on

3
The data analysis showed that the reasons for this shift are
2
We have left out methodological details (available in previous related to the kind of community involved which was not taken
papers and project reports of the authors [25, 27, 28, 31]) to sufficiently on board in the designers’ assumptions and
discuss further the two case studies in terms of smart cities, which conceptualizations of the older people category. We will discuss
is the main focus of the paper. this issue in depth in a forthcoming paper.

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reading the few announcements posted, participants became aware 4.1.6 The role of the community to build trust and
of needs and interests of other members and started to propose and foster the service uptake
organize group activities aimed at addressing these needs. The
Over the course of the study, it became clear that it was important
platform was not very important in these activities, though. For
to build trust among participants in order to foster their uptake of
instance, new people joined the Catalan chat group without having
the platform and share help / knowledge. Indeed, not all the
created an account in the platform. This group, which established
participants knew each other when they joined the project and all
itself in 2013 while Life2.0 was running, is still in place at the
reported that it was essential to first know the person with whom
time of writing this paper and no longer relies on the platform to,
they were going to share knowledge and practices.
for instance, set up meetings or exchange messages. Yet, the co-
design of the platform triggered this group. This result might be The weekly face-to-face meetings, organized as part of the project,
invisible if the success of a new technological development is only allowed participants to know each other and build trust. Slowly,
measured through its actual use. they started to identify themselves as a group: “we created a very
good group of friends”, a participant stated during the last
debriefing session. The group progressively gained a sense of
community and commitment to the project, as their active
involvement in dissemination activities demonstrated: “to make
the platform a success we all have to commit!”
These community-building activities turned out to be beneficial in
several aspects: (a) promoting the use of the sharing service by
fostering trust-building among potential service users, (b) creating
a sense of project ownership by making participants feel part of
something they were contributing to build. For example,
participants voluntarily took on an active role in disseminating the
project among their peers, discussed communication and
dissemination strategies, set up interviews with possible
stakeholders and wrote articles in a newspaper of a local
association to promote the project. Moreover, the social
Figure 2. Participants helping each other to use computers and interactions resulting from these community-building activities
the Internet face-to-face were considered by the participants a major outcome of the
project. In fact, the core group of participants is still meeting
4.1.5 The platform within the users’ communication weekly in AG and recently set up a self-organized group aimed at
ecology teaching each other how to use and personalize their smartphones.
When a first prototype of the platform was delivered to users and These positive results suggest that community-building activities
they started to use it, we realized that participants’ current IT- should be considered an integral part of the service, which in turn
mediated communication practices influenced a lot the way in should not be targeted at single (needed) users. Instead, the service
which they wanted to use our platform. ‘Proper’ notifications were relied heavily on a community that acted as the offline reference
key aspects of their IT-mediated communication. For example, point of the online platform.
they often access their Facebook accounts only when getting e-
mail notifications of new messages received on Facebook. Thus,
our participants asked us to include in the platform a notification
system that would be aligned with their everyday IT practices, and
made some suggestions. One was receiving a copy of the
announcements posted in the platform in their e-mail accounts,
given that they expected to be notified by e-mail when a user had
replied to their posts. Those participants who were regular
Facebook users missed an option that enabled them to share the
platform announcements in their Facebook pages. Participants
who owned a smartphone claimed that it would be easier for them
if they could receive notifications directly on their phones.
Similar comments were received when interviewing local
associations about their willingness to use the platform to promote
their events. One of their main concerns was the perceived
duplicated effort they would have to make to publish an event in Figure 3. Participants in a get-together celebrating the start of
their current communication channels (typically a Facebook page, the Christmas season.
the association website and/or printed brochures) and the
community platform. 4.2 Case study 2: Older people co-creating
These results highlight the relevance of integrating smoothly new engaging scenarios in urban areas
community platforms with the users’ and communities existing The second study explored the co-creation of geo-located content
communication tools and strategies. for informal learning scenarios. Two main activities were
conducted, one in 2012, and the other, in 2013. These activities
were not directly focused on smart cities aspects (although
learning is an important part of novel concepts of city). Yet, the
results reveal interesting ideas related to how ICTs can be used to

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engage communities in co-creating content related to their urban one part of the whole experience, don’t forget it!" Indeed, when
areas. defining the contents of the route, the participants engaged in a lot
of conversations and debates about the book and the locations of
4.2.1 Participants the questions. Our observations and conversations with the
28 people (age 60-81) took part in the case study, 20 in both participants suggest that their strong engagement in the creation
activities. They were enrolled in a book-reading club in AG, process contributed substantially to the success of the activity.
where they read and discuss classical literary books. Most
participants had little or almost no experience with ICTs and did 4.2.5 Exploring and adapting to new scenarios
not show a big interest in learning how to use them either. Only 5 The second activity took place one year later at the participants’
of them owned smartphones and were regular computer users. request. They wanted to create a new route based on a new book
they were reading. The book stories were set in a prison, which
4.2.2 Co-creating literature routes with smartphones was a challenge for creating geo-localized content. However, the
In the first activity the group of participants created routes through participants suggested creating a route on the biography of the
geo-located closed-ended questions about the book they were author, which contains numerous references to the historic center
reading, which had a lot of references to a specific neighborhood of Barcelona. Participants used books, notes and printouts
in Barcelona (Gràcia), and answered them a few days later in the containing information about the author’s life to create the route.
real locations referenced in the book using a mobile application. Each of them had voluntarily collected this material by searching
The participants were divided into two groups so that each created on the Internet, libraries and encyclopedias. During the in situ
questions to be answered by the other. There were 4 sessions: 2 for activity, participants did not limit themselves to answering
the creation of the questions, 1 in-situ activity in which questions. Instead, they discussed with each other about what they
participants explored the route with smartphones and answered the knew about the places they were visiting. For example, when
questions that popped up on their smartphone when they were reaching St. Agatha chapel, a participant commented: “did you
close to the location, and 1 debriefing session in which the results know Agatha is the patron saint of breasts? (…) “the stairs
were discussed by the participants. A detailed description of the leading to the square were built by Juan I…the character of the
activity and some its learning related results was reported in [31]. book we are reading!!”.
We highlight here some aspects, which, over time, pointed at new
urban scenarios and possibilities.

4.2.3 Good for physical exercise and an ice breaker

for getting familiar with technologies
At the beginning, participants were reluctant to participate in an
ICT-based activity. Yet, after the activity, 80% of the participants
showed a big interest in carrying the smartphone during the in-situ
session if the activity were conducted again. Participants’
engagement in the activity was also evident by their reactions (e.g.
jumps) every time they answered a question correctly. The activity
also turned out to be a good physical exercise, as this participant’s
comment confirms: “We walked for 2 hours and we did not
complain about it!”

Figure 5. Participants during the in-situ activity

4.2.6 Incorporating routes as a community practice

Since then, members of the book-reading club have organized
three routes. We were invited to one of them, which was about
unknown buildings of the historic centre of Barcelona. The
activity was quite different than the previous one we organised.
The route was created by two members of the club, who picked a
topic, the locations, and gathered information about them. They
acted as hosts during the in situ activity. There were no
questions/answers and no technologies were used. Yet, it is worth
noting that the participants incorporated the activity into their
practices and adapted it. They claimed they would like to repeat
the routes with smartphones. Yet, to do so, they considered that
Figure 4. Participants co-creating a route they would need our help. This shows that handing the technology
over to the community and assuming that this technology will
4.2.4 Co-creation adds value to the activity effectively be used is an actual challenge, which is a matter of
The in-situ activity was important but the overall process of
concern being increasingly discussed within the HCI field targeted
creating the route too, as one participant vigorously pointed out
at communities [34].
during the debriefing session: “we should not forget about the
whole process we followed to create the route! We worked very
hard and the results have been wonderful. We all now talk about
the activity on the street and the smartphones…but that was just

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5. TOWARDS REACHING THE CITY organizational issues. For instance, the group of older people
already involved reported that the time slot available in their busy
SCALE: FROM SINGLE TO INTER- agenda is on Monday morning, which is incompatible with most
COMMUNITIES job and school timetables. The negotiation of a place among the
The case studies presented above were both conducted with a different associations to host the co-creation activities we are
specific community. Working towards providing a wider vision of carrying out involves subtleties too. We are addressing these
smart cities for older people, it is valuable to expand the context issues in different ways by, for instance, making the collaboration
by, for example, moving from scenarios targeted at single scenario more flexible and involving additional groups.
communities to other ones that explore interaction within the
network of communities that make up a neighborhood or an entire 5.1.2 Exploring civic agency of older people through
city. We have recently started to work on a scenario that aims at creative activities
scaling up to a neighborhood context. There has been an initial We consider the creation of a neighborhood game as an example
consultation phase with interviews with public actors and local of civic action: the game becomes a neighborhood common good,
communities to explore the feasibility of the scenario discussed which should aid in increasing the social cohesion among visitors
below. We are currently meeting local communities to set up an and locals. By involving older people as primary creators of the
initial pool of participants. game, we aim at taking forward our understanding of older people
as civic agents (presented in case study 1 and 2), which includes
5.1 Neighborhood cohesion through co- exploring their role in collaborative IT-based civic actions. In
creation of urban leisure order to do so, we consider they should take on two main roles:
The scenario is situated in the district of Sant Andreu in informants (e.g. they provide information to young people who
Barcelona. The area is characterized by high population density, a generate the digital outputs) and makers (e.g. they actively select
quarter over 65 years old, low income and a strong associative information and produce the digital output). Within this scenario,
network. Recently, the city council promoted two new initiatives it is important to understand which technical/social skills,
intended to attract people of the Creative Industries. These knowledge and motivations foster civic engagement among older
initiatives have been bringing into the neighbourhood new people.
“visitors” who do not know much about the local area or people
living in there. The city council aims to make the neighbors more 6. AN ENLARGED VISION OF SMART
visible in these new initiatives. A strategy could be to involve CITIES FOR OLDER PEOPLE:
them, particularly the older segment of the population, in creative TECHNOLOGY, AGENCY, COMMUNITY
activities based on ICTs. Through the analysis of our case studies, we have identified a
Within this context, the pilot develops the concept of local number of factors that are not fully covered in the usual vision of
communities creating a geo-localized game about their smart cities for older people. We group them into three main
neighbourhood as a means of promoting the sharing of clusters: technology, agency and community. Our goal is to
information between the visitors and the locals. The dynamics of outline a set of key aspects to consider when designing scenarios
the game would be similar to that followed in the geo-located of ICT for older people in urban contexts; there is no aim of
literature routes presented above. According to initial discussions completeness, which might be useful to benchmark age-
with local associations, the topic of the gamified activity would be friendliness of cities, for instance.
about memories and stories of the neighbourhood, aiming at
creating a gamified collective heritage of the local area. The 6.1 Technology
participants will select the most salient memories of, and Technologies are key components and drivers of visions of smart
information about, the local area and transform them into cities. Technologies are widely considered enablers and
questions localized in specific places. Members of local facilitators of predefined scenarios based on fixed goals, which
associations, schools, libraries, and the “visitors” will be invited to include, amongst others, monitoring traffic, enabling participatory
play the game and add new content. governance, facilitating communication between older people and
public care workers. New platforms and apps are often proposed
Within this scenario, we aim to explore a number of aspects and
and developed to achieve these goals, leading to a proliferation of
related challenges, which we discuss next.
new digital tools. By contrast, in our study, urban technologies
5.1.1 Facing challenges in scaling up to a were both triggers of new community behaviors and dynamically
integrated within the ecosystem of existing technologies and
neighborhood context communication practices. These two aspects emphasize the
Conducting the study in a neighborhood invites us to consider the
importance of looking at creative use when pursuing innovation in
different groups of people that independently or jointly act in it.
smart cities.
Thus, although our focus is primary on older people, we need to
see them within a much wider daily life context. In addition to 6.1.1 Urban technologies as triggers of new
involving associations of older people, we aim to reach cultural
community behaviors
centres, associations of parents of school-aged children and
Our results show that the benefits and outcomes of the research
libraries, independently of the chronological age of their members.
activities went beyond the use of the specific technology
Our approach has been supported by the coordinator of a senior
introduced in the community. The (prototype) technologies did
centre, “it is important to foster older people to go out from the
trigger new behaviors, which did not disappear upon project
senior centres and interact from time to time in other contexts,
completion. These new behaviors persisted using or not the
with people of all ages”.
technologies developed. The members of Catalan mutual help
Working across communities presents a number of challenges too, group still meet up and the book-reading club has included routes
since the practices of each community can be disjoint and lead to as a regular activity. The prototype technologies do not play a

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special role in sustaining these new practices (which could be or gaps between the visions of smart cities targeted at older people
not supported by technology), though. and the one addressing the “rest” of the population. In this section
This urges us to reconsider what positive outcomes in IT- and we claim that in order to bridge this gap, an age-friendly smart city
community-based studies are. Rather than measuring impacts on should support a notion of agency by older people.
the basis of patterns of technology use (e.g. number of accesses or 6.2.1 From “above” to the culture of agency
messages sent), sustained offline behaviors could be considered A thread that cuts across the cases studies is the active role played
too. This might also challenge current revenue models of business- by older people: they offer their knowledge to other peers, create
driven visions of smart cities, which are based on sales or the contents of the routes or identify key aspects of their
improved services against payments relying on massive use of the neighborhood. Furthermore, their intervention went beyond
developed technology [1]. playing an active role within the scenarios proposed by
Our vision calls for shifting the focus from conceptualizing urban researchers. They adopted and adapted those scenarios to their
technologies solely as solving tools to widening our view by needs and interests. We witnessed this adoption and adaptation in
looking into how local communities creatively use the how they turned the mutual help service into a knowledge sharing
opportunities offered by ICTs to trigger new social behaviors (and service, or when they incorporated routes in their class practices.
overcome problems, of course). This ability to make decisions and alter pre-defined scenarios is
often overlooked. It is also worth noting that the results of their
6.1.2 Urban technologies within the ecosystem of actions did not simply affect the design of the product or service
communication tools and practices (e.g. choosing one feature rather than another one), but they
Through a technological lens, urban environments are often actually had significant impact on modifying their own practices.
framed in smart cities discussions as “a source of problems to be These results have implications for the design of age-friendly
resolved” [39]. This vision has driven the development of an smart cities. Designers could reflect on how older people are
increasing number of prototypes which fail to understand the fit of involved in defining smart city scenarios targeted at them.
these new developments in current cultural contexts, Researchers are increasingly acknowledging that the design of
communication practices and everyday activities of cities dwellers technologies for the older population needs to move from
[14]. Furthermore, when these systems are targeted at older discursive constructions of the older people’s needs [23,26].
people, it is often assumed that they are not regular ICTs users and Similar critiques have also been raised with respect to the specific
special and dedicated technologies need to be built for them. domain of smart cities, where researchers claim that the vision of
Contrary to these assumptions, our first case study showed that not smart cities has often been constructed and driven by corporate
only were our participants regular users of mainstream interests [33]. This approach runs the risk of ignoring the gap
technologies, such as e-mail, Facebook and smartphones, but also between the discursively constructed needs and interests of
promoters of integrating them into the platform we were citizens and the real ones – not to mention the corporate interests.
developing. Similarly, local associations were using a number of In order to overcome this drawback, empirical research on what
different technologies and showed concerns about adding a new constitutes a livable smart city from the perspective of older
one without a clear understanding of how it would integrate with people is needed.
the rest of tools. These results show that a new technology should Drawing upon our results, this research needs to go beyond a
not be considered in a vacuum. Instead, understanding how it consultation process where insights and feedback from older
evolves within an ecosystem of established (technology mediated) people about pre-defined scenarios are gathered. Designers and
communication practices in a given community is worth the effort. researchers should look into how older people appropriate and
This has two main implications for designers of smart cities. The adapt the technologies proposed to them to their needs, social
first one is that new platforms / apps should easily communicate interests and practices. In other words, conceptualize an older
with other mainstream technologies, especially social media. The person as someone who counts in the design process and, more
second is that designers should consider whether the tasks (needs) importantly someone with agency in his/her living context –
allowed (met) by the new technology can actually be performed including in the use and design of ICTs. The notion of agency
(addressed) through an effective, perhaps modified use [8] of bears some relationship to a notion of power (governance): being
existing technologies, rather than introducing a new one. Thus, a able to achieve something for themselves rather than being
future challenge for researchers and designers could be to bestowed “from above” [2]. Thus, we claim that a smart city for
understand how to foster the development of strategies for older people vision should move away from the current vision in
achieving creative use and appropriation of existing ICTs to which policies and technological experts define the ageing
accomplish individuals’ and communities’ purposes. problem and set the goals, towards developing a culture where the
ability of (older) people and local communities to solve problems
6.2 Agency and create new scenarios of living is considered, fostered and
Recently, the smart city debate has increasingly moved from a supported.
vision based on automation and sensors to one where citizens play
Agency also means that neither older people nor local
a key role in “building” the smartness of their city through
communities become an instance of reification within the
collective actions. Concepts such as human smart cities [17], smart
technological development. This seems particular challenging
citizenships [30], among others, are gaining ground and are
since it requires transferring key responsibilities of the
challenging the IT-driven approach that builds on technologies the
project/research to the community and the community willingness
smartness of the city. Contrary to these scenarios of citizens’
to take them. Our experience indicates that research should be
engagement and empowerment, the widespread vision on the older
driven by community interests rather than by seeing communities
population still sees them as passive users of (assistive)
as a research setting. How to balance this community-driven
technologies, thus overlooking their active role as citizens and IT-
approach with research objectives, or overall policies deserves
users. We consider that it is timely and important to bridge some
careful research consideration.

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6.3 Communities most importantly, the process of adaptation and appropriation
Researchers have recently started to explore how local undergone, empowered older people – at least, our participants - to
communities of neighbors, craftsmen, artists, or hackers organize engage in topics of their interests, such as sharing knowledge and
themselves to solve issues of daily living (e.g. [9]). Engaging organizing literary strolls, and resulted in sustained outcomes
established communities of older people and looking at their which were not delimited by continued (prototype) technology
everyday practices only recently emerges in design research, with use.
rare examples such as [3,4]. How does a community lens influence We have drawn upon the lessons learned in these case studies in
the vision on design for ageing in urban contexts? Our results order to propose a different conceptualization of smart cities for
suggest that seeing older people as community members rather older people that leverages on specific approaches along three
than individuals homogenized through an age-based approach can main dimensions: technologies, agency and community. The first
foster interests-based and cross-age design. dimension suggests that smart cities researchers and practitioners
could harness local communities’ creative use of ICTs (existing or
6.3.1 Communities, interests and cross-age proposed) to trigger new social behaviors. By re-positioning the
interactions primacy of technology, we can re-think what positive outcomes in
When building dedicated systems or services targeted at the smart cities research and innovation are, such as opening up
ageing population, there is an implicit assumption that older possibilities, beyond designing new problem-solving tools. The
people share similar interests, needs and life experiences, because second dimension puts forward agency as a key component of
of their chronological age. This approach is aligned with the smart cities scenarios in order to tap into the capabilities of (older)
concept of “chronologization” of life, for which the age of an people and local communities to create new scenarios of living,
individual can determine what type of activities s/he will engage aligned with concepts of citizen’s self-organization [10], effective
[37], which has been criticized for being too simplistic, use [8], civic intelligence [32], among others. Finally, the
overlooking self-identities and creating stereotypes (e.g. [6]). community dimension invites us to consider the older population
Our results invite us to think of older people as members of within the larger context of their neighborhoods, communities of
different communities, thus as people who have varying interests interests, and encourages cross-age design scenarios for building
and goals according to the specific community with which they cities for all ages.
identify. For example, in case study 1, participants were interested
in learning ICTs, while those involved in the second were more
8. LIMITATION AND FUTURE WORK
The case studies presented, and the implications drawn from them,
into sharing opinions about literature. Although both case studies
address only some of the numerous factors that characterize the
were conducted within the same (AG) community, each sub-group
ageing process and the smart city phenomenon. This may limit the
had its own practices, interests and goals impacting on potential
applicability of our findings and, at the same time, opens up future
designs. Community-based thinking led us to consider a wider
research opportunities.
pool of interests, needs and practices and propose solutions
community-focused, rather than age-focused. It also drove us from As far as ageing is concerned, the case studies were carried out
a personhood to a citizenship perspective [2] on ageing; i.e. from with active and independent older people. Other important
conceptualizing older people within their immediate micro- challenges of the ageing population, such as risk of loneliness and
environments (e.g. interaction in the home-context with mainly cognitive disabilities have not been addressed in this paper,
family members) to considering them within wider socio-cultural although they remain an important societal challenge in urban
and political contexts (e.g. interaction in neighborhoods, which cities. Whether and how our scenarios and visions can be adapted
include a varied ecosystem of actors, cultures, forces). and benefit frail older people warrants further research.
This shift in focus may promote design themes across different With respect to smart cities, the case studies have emphasized the
age groups, age-integrated4 scenarios, that benefit an entire role of older people as active citizens. We have barely considered
neighborhood (i.e. designing neighborhoods for all ages [35]). other actors who might also be involved in ageing urban cities,
However, reaching age-integration models may be a matter of such social workers and institutions. Further research is needed to
degree, and requires detailed consideration of different age group understand, for instance, how the proposed scenarios apply to and
communities, as we indicated in our ongoing work. can contribute to the governance of cities, and which technical and
human resources are needed to scale them up (e.g. from a
7. CONCLUSIONS community to a single neighborhood, and to the entire city). Our
The aim of this paper has been to analyse and expand the current ongoing work is geared towards this direction.
vision of smart cities targeted at older people.
We have discussed that the current (IT-driven) visions of smart
9. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We cannot thank Àgora participants enough. We thank P. Santos
cities for older people could and should be widened by
and M. Balestrini for their key roles in case study 2, A. Rosales, S.
considering social aspects of ageing in urban environments and
M. Ferreira and J. Tirado for their contributions throughout our
participatory governance processes.
research activities, and the programming team in WorthPlay and
We have presented two case studies that, by drawing on concepts Life2.0. We also thank C. Giovannella, coordinator of the Master
of co-creation and social engagement in community contexts, in Design of People Centered Smart Cities, for inviting us to
contribute towards outlining new scenarios of active urban ageing. present our research and prompting us to write this paper. This
The results have shown that the urban technologies developed, and work has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science
and Innovation (TIN2011-28308-C03-03), the EU through Life2.0
4
(CIP ICT PSP-2009-4-270965), FGSIC and OSC through
According to Uhlenberg an “age-integrated structure may be WorthPlay and supported by the A-C-T (Ageing-Communication-
defined as one that does not use chronological age as a criterion Technology) network funded by the Canadian SSHRC.
for entrance, exit, or participation.”[37]

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