Cities Becoming Age Friendly

By Ann Hardie

Jim Abu-Staiti remembers when he was a child and people young and old romped and moseyed in Macon’s Tattnall Square Park. With major improvements in recent years, the 16-acre green space in this quaint city is once again the playground for Maconites of all ages.

Where Abu-Staiti once hunted for Easter eggs and splashed in the park’s wading pool is now the place he shops for fresh vegetables at a farmers market on Wednesdays and takes yoga classes on Saturdays.

“If you want to have a joyous life, hang around joyous people,” said the 71-year-old retired critical care nurse who volunteers for AARP Georgia, teaching fraud prevention classes. “There’s a lot of joy in the park.”

Tattnall Square Park is among the most visible initiatives of Macon-Bibb County’s commitment to becoming an age-friendly community.

With an eye on the globe’s rapidly aging population, the World Health Organization developed the designation and a blueprint for communities to follow to improve quality of life for all ages. AARP joined the WHO effort, and in 2012, Macon-Bibb became the first U.S. community to sign on. Today, more than 170 jurisdictions nationwide belong to the AARP Network of Age-Friendly Communities. View the entire list at aarp.org/agefriendly.

This spring, Macon-Bibb became the first jurisdiction whose age-friendly status was renewed for another five years.

Atlanta, whose 65-and-older population is expected to nearly triple by 2040, is also committed to becoming an age-friendly community. An advisory council of volunteers and representatives from government, business and nonprofits spearheaded by AARP Georgia spent several years developing strategies designed to allow Atlantans to age in place.

WHO and AARP approved the council’s goals this spring. Among them are upgrading Atlanta’s public transportation system through train and paratransit service, making the city’s nearly 4,000 acres of green space more accessible to people with disabilities, and collaborating with community partners to provide and promote better health care.

“Atlanta respects its aging population, and the age-friendly initiative is a tangible way to act on that,” said David McCord, special projects staffer in the Mayor’s Office of Constituent Services. He also serves as one of the city’s liaisons to the advisory council.

“The age-friendly project is advantageous to the city because it connects us to an international network of people who are doing best practices in working with seniors. It also gives us a bully pulpit from which to advocate for seniors,” he said.

Augusta is a more inviting place to live than it was when it received the age-friendly designation three years ago, said Bill Lockett, 78, a former county commissioner who heads the initiative there. “We are making considerable progress,” he said.

Improvements include replacing old buses with ones that comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act, reconfiguring streets so they are safer for pedestrians and developing guidelines to make the parks accessible to people of all ages.

“Age-friendly Augusta has brought attention to so many things that we never really noticed before,” Lockett said.

Macon-Bibb’s age-friendly action plan included identifying the need for better pedestrian walkways and signage, encouraging developers to incorporate universal design into their buildings and securing an accessible location for a new senior center, all of which have been met. The plan, now in its third iteration, is very much a work in progress, said Myrtle Habersham, an AARP volunteer who has been at the forefront of the age-friendly efforts there.

Progress does not happen in a vacuum, Habersham stressed, but instead relies on input and cooperation of many partners, including government officials and business leaders, residents and community groups. This seamless approach ensures that Macon-Bibb is and will continue to be a community of cohesion and economic prosperity, she said, a place where residents and their employers want to work, raise their families and retire.

Many of the improvements that have been made benefit multiple age groups, from the pop-ups lanes around town that accommodate bikes and motorized wheelchairs to the increased street lighting that creates a safer environment for everyone.

And then there is Tattnall Square Park, the place of choice for people who want to get some exercise or watch a movie under the stars. After witnessing decades of the park’s decline, Friends of Tattnall Square Park, a grassroots organization, decided in 2011 to try to revitalize the space.

The local government, AARP Georgia and other partners got involved to also improve the sidewalks and other features in the community surrounding the park. Today, upgrades include Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant gateways that define the park’s boundaries and entrances, new benches, wider and smoother sidewalks and a roundabout that slows traffic around the park. Buses have been rerouted so people can get dropped off at the park.

“Tattnall Square Park is not an AARP initiative per se,” Habersham said, “but it is what happens when we all work in concert to make our community age-friendly.”

Abu-Staiti, who volunteers with AARP teaching fraud prevention classes, is glad Tattnall Square Park has been revitalized and is accessible to everyone.

“I like being around people of all ages,” he said.

Ann Hardie is a writer living in Atlanta.