Ageing in your place: Envisioning healthy, happy, and safe ageing in a neighbourhood with citizen science methods

The number of older people living independently at home is expanding. This brings often the need for more assistance or adjusting the environment, in particular the home itself. There is no shortage of more or less futuristic visions and concepts for adjusting homes to older age. However, futuring old age is largely done by others – developers of welfare technologies, public sector actors, or by family mem-bers and older people’s personal networks. In a project of TOPFIT Citizenlab, a Dutch regional initiative to experiment with forms of citizen science for health and wellbe-ing, we explored needs and priorities for age-friendly living in a neighbourhood, building on three diverse methods. We started with three meetings and a photo-voice method to explore research goals and methods. Then scenario-building workshops served to explore visions for healthy ageing and living in the neighbourhood, and fi-nally, personal experiences and perspectives were discussed in relation to statistical health data of the neighbourhood, in order to explore how the structural data relatesto the lived experience of the inhabitants. Each method had a different contribution regarding the effectiveness of the process, the findings, and the engagement of all stakeholders. Our findings show that citizens took a holistic approach as to what matters for age-friendly living: not only the inside, but also the surroundings of homes, physical, mental and social health are seen as interrelated, and possible solutions include and often merge technical, social and ‘green’ elements.