Attributes That Provide Quality to Public Open Spaces for the Older Adults Walking for Leisure: A Review

Regular physical activity is essential to improve and maintain the mental and physical health of the elderly and its practice is associated with the potential of urban open spaces. In order to support design and management of these urban spaces to be attractive to the elderly the central aim of this paper is to identify, through a systematic review of the literature, the attributes that provide quality to public open spaces for the walking for leisure of the elderly. The results showed that the spaces that observe the mobility limitations of the elderly allowing better accessibility conditions and the natural aspect of the environment are attributes desired by the elderly that appeared more frequently in the analyzed studies (they appeared in almost two thirds of them). Then there are the safety conditions and the quality of the sidewalks, mentioned in a little more than half of the studies. The proximity of these urban spaces to the elderly's residence, together with the relationship with water and infrastructure consisting of a walking path and the presence of benches, appeared in third place in the analyzed studies.