MICRA holds International Symposium on Age-Friendly Cities
20 January 2017
Professor Chris Phillipson convened the first MICRA Symposium on Age-Friendly cities: Research, Policy and Practice, held on 16 and 17 January 2017.
The Symposium welcomed students, researchers and academics from universities and organisations across the UK, Germany, Finland and Japan to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing age-friendly cities, and how research can help tackle this important topic.
Speakers at the event included Paul McGarry, Senior Strategy Manager at Manchester City Council, who spoke about ‘Developing Age-Friendly Manchester’; Prof Outi Jolanki from the University of Tampere discussed: ‘Housing Alternatives in Later Life’; Dr An-Sofie Smetcoran reviewed work in Brussels developing ‘An Active Caring Community’; and Dr Stefan White from the Manchester School of Architecture, who gave a talk on ‘Designing the Age-Friendly city’ with illustrations from work in Manchester.
The attendees also visited Southway Housing Trust to hear from Cathy Ayrton, Naturally Occurring Retirement Community Project Officer at Southway Housing Trust, who spoke about Developing an Age-Friendly neighbourhood. Southway Housing Trust is a not-for-profit local housing company who manage almost 6,000 properties in Burnage, Chorlton, Didsbury and Withington. The have worked extensively with MICRA and the Manchester School of Architecture on developing age-friendly neighbourhoods.