How longevity is reshaping cities and urban lifestyles
A growing focus on healthy aging is driving changes in urban design to reflect the impact of environmental factors on our long-term well-being.
There are five so-called “blue zones” around the world where people disproportionately live to the age of 100. These are Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula, Ikaria in Greece and Loma Linda in California.
Attempts to study what it is that enables the residents of these places to live longer and more healthily have been criticized as “fairly unscientific in their approach,” acknowledged Tina Woods, Executive Director of the International Institute of Longevity and Healthy Longevity Champion for the UK National Innovation Centre for Ageing.
There are plenty of theories rooted in scientific evidence, however, including moving more, eating unprocessed food, cultivating meaningful social connections, and having a sense of purpose and belonging that are getting increased attention. “It’s really simple things that enable people to thrive in their environment,” said Woods.
Policy-driven healthy aging
Rajiv Ahuja, Executive Director of the On Aging Institute at the American Society on Aging, said that these blue zone traits emerged organically from local geography and culture. “Now the challenge is to intentionally replicate those conditions through policy — especially in areas that lack the natural design features that promote long, healthy lives,” he said.
One forward-thinking city that is doing so in earnest is Singapore, which was named recently as a sixth blue zone by the man who identified the original five.
Singapore’s mission to improve its citizens’ healthspans — that period of their lives during which they are healthy — involves a coordinated approach by government agencies, community-based organizations and the healthcare sector, said Ahuja. Measures include the Healthier SG preventive care initiative, housing grants to encourage adult children to live with or near their parents, and subsidies given to employers who take on workers aged 60 or above.
Walkability
There’s another important factor that makes Singapore conducive to healthy aging: its walkability and strong public transport infrastructure, which make it easier for older people to not only access vital facilities, but also get more steps in.
“The broader goal is to design communities where people can easily access healthcare, work, and social spaces without overly depending on car-centric infrastructure,” said Ahuja.
He added that “improving walkability and access to local services doesn’t just enhance mobility — it strengthens social connection, supports mental and physical health, and makes it easier for older adults to stay meaningfully engaged in their communities.”
Crucially, walkable cities also help older people maintain their sense of agency. Upali Nanda, Global Sector Director, Innovation, at design firm HKS, said that when older people in less walkable cities lose their ability to drive, “the impact is not just physical — it’s emotional and cognitive. It takes away your incentive to thrive.”
“Independence is the biggest need to feel empowered and healthy,” said Nanda, who is also a Board Member of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture and Professor of Practice at the Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. “When we take away independence in a city, we directly impact longevity,” she said.
In addition to providing easy access within 15 minutes to healthy eating options and green spaces to move in and breathe clean air, cities that support healthy aging should also offer easy access “third places” outside homes and workplaces. These might include cafes, libraries, galleries, parks, indoor and outdoor gyms, and theatres, where people are surrounded by others, but don’t necessarily have to engage with them.
Merely being surrounded by people can fulfil a primal human need. As Nanda put it: “Why do people want to take their laptop to a coffee shop to work? They love the buzz of knowing that there are people around them. There's a social fabric that makes them feel like they’re part of a community. Third places are even more vital as we age, and need to be inclusive for physical, sensory and cognitive changes we experience over time.”
Rethinking cities
The first step to creating cities that support healthy aging, according to Nanda, is to “reframe the image of a city.”
She explained that when most people are asked what comes to mind when they hear the word “city,” they might respond with words like movement, hustle, energy and busyness. “They don’t necessarily think it’s a place that supports social, emotional and cognitive thriving,” she said. “I’d start there: asking people what kind of city they would thrive and flourish in. What would it look like?”
Healthy aging depends on a complex interplay of individual behaviors, environmental factors, and social dynamics. Woods calls for a more rigorous, data-driven approach to measuring the impact of these factors, which she says can be described collectively as the “exposome.”
Woods is a Steering Committee member of the Exposome Moonshot Forum, which is hoping to drive a global effort — the Human Exposome Project — to map the combined impact on human health of all environmental factors, from pollution to psychological stress. The diversity and variety within cities means they provide an ideal laboratory for this kind of study and what will work across the population.
It's perhaps also worth looking at how giving older people positive stimulation through meaningful work or arts and culture could support healthy brain aging.
The end goal, said Woods, is “to really understand what drives human healthspan, resilience and flourishing, so government policy and investor funding can be directed there, rather than waiting until it’s too late, which is what we do now.”
Radical change, or incremental?
Today’s city-building activity around the world is an opportunity to incorporate emerging insights on what factors individually and collectively drive improvements in human healthspan. Futuristic cities, such as NEOM in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia’s new capital, Nusantara, can implement radical new concepts from the ground up.
But arguably a bigger opportunity is to make incremental changes to existing cities and infrastructure, said Nanda.
She provided the example of a neighborhood in the city she lives in, Ann Arbor, Michigan in the US, where there is a grocery store, library, senior living center and bus stop all within a one-mile radius, but which aren’t accessible by foot because of the way the streets are laid out.
“Each of those land parcels were designed and built separately. Connect them creatively, and you may have a thriving neighborhood with very little new investment needed,” she said.
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