Planning for population ageing: Ensuring enabling and supportive physical-social environments – Local infrastructure challenges

Ensuring enabling and supportive environments is a key global priority in planning for population ageing. This paper examines the challenges local governments face in creating age-friendly physical-social environments. Findings from a recent study of local government and ageing in New South Wales, Australia and subsequent research are reported. The analysis reveals that local councils have differing abilities to provide age-friendly local infrastructure. Challenges are greater overall for regional, rural and fringe councils compared to metropolitan. Timely provision is greatly constrained by insufficient resources, the large scale of the task and the low priority accorded, despite the immediate need for action. A pressing requirement is demonstrated for local councils to give primacy to population ageing in their long-term strategic, asset and financial planning, and to engage in reform measures to assist in financing the cost.