Access to Public Spaces by Elderly - A Bibliographic Review

A public space is a social space such as a public park, garden, town square, etc., that is open and accessible to all, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age or socio-economic level. Public space is commonly shared and created for open usage throughout the community. Accessibility to public space is very important in enhancing the quality of life of elderly by promoting elderly to participate in socio-cultural and economic life and ability to meet their own Physical, Socio-economic and other essential needs. This enhances the process of active ageing of population. Deprived of getting access to the public spaces especially for aged effects on inclusiveness and will lead to the situation opposite to the livable cities or sustainable cities.

      The present work emphasizes to review the scholarly research works carried out by various scholars on the issue of Access to public spaces by elderly and to identify the evolving research trends over the last five decades. This helps in understanding the concept of public space and its role and importance for promoting the process of Active ageing of the population and development of inclusive and sustainable cities. In order to review, the web resources such as Google scholar, Scopus and Web of science platforms are used with the key search words such as Public space and elderly, Access to public space by Elderly. Mobility and Active ageing, for the time frame 1977 to 2022. The entire review has been reduced to some important aspects like the concept and importance of public space, accessibility, factors of access, Measuring accessibility, etc. The study has revealed the access to public space plays a very significant role in increasing the life quality of people especially when the world is transforming rapidly towards urbanization and population ageing in the current times. It is observed that a greater contribution in this direction has obviously came from the western scholars as the process of ageing is much advanced there. A very few attempts are made by the scholars of Afro-Asian countries on these issues but in Indian context no such scholarly investigations are made. As the issue of access and urban sustainability are core geographical aspects there is a wide scope for Urban Geographers to work on access to public space by elderly in Indian context in order to plan for inclusive cities for aged population which enhances the process of active ageing of population and also contributes for the development of sustainable cities.