Remodelling Community: Adapting Suburban Housing for Ageing in Place

Abstract

With a booming national and international elderly population, the next 10-20 years will feature a large number relocating from homes they own into retirement villages. These feature unfamiliar environments with shared amenity, foreign to the individualism of the suburban home. Notwithstanding, the overwhelming number of elderly people prefer to age in place.

With the increased construction of new housing in New Zealand, the role of the ageing population is notably absent in literature on the existing suburban situation. For a population with increasing impairments, walkability and accessibility to important amenity are increasingly important considerations in the design of public space.

The challenge exists for the suburban and urban environments to better support ageing in place and fully utilise the potential to contribute positively to neighbourhood and public amenity. This thesis examines a series of sites of divergent land-use in Mount Cook, Wellington, New Zealand. A site which is primed for elderly inhabitation with close proximity to Wellington Hospital and adjacent green and recreational amenity, but peculiarly does not feature in its design framework.

This thesis argues that problem is the outdated suburban sprawl in residential zones, which focuses intently on the scale of a single plot. It argues that the examination of the urban scale is imperative for accommodating community and enabling ageing in place. It argues that through increasing densities with additions to the existing housing, it fosters support systems and interdependence that can benefit the entire population.

This thesis proposes this can be achieved through a strategy of incremental adaptive re-use for facilitating change. The ageing process can be navigated by careful integration of a mix of support care and public amenity within existing buildings that retain familiar aesthetical, historical, and place-making properties of the urban context and public open space.

Overall, this research proposes the reinvigoration of static suburban and urban environments for a greater audience that forms the logical urban design framework for informing change for multiple suburban sites.