Age-friendly Outdoor Space Renovation Design Combined With Tactical Urbanism: An Example of A Highly Deprived and Ageing Community in the Walkley Area of Sheffield, UK

Age-friendly outdoor spaces are one of the eight areas identified by the World Health Organization as needing attention for age-friendly communities. Outdoor spaces can have a significant impact on the physical and mental health of older people. Traditional approaches to urban planning tend to produce ‘unplanned products’ or ‘consequences of deliberate neglect’ in built-up areas. Tactical urbanism tends to address the problems faced by citizens in urban spaces through bottom-up tactical action, and ultimately seeks to perpetuate and legitimise the results of tactical action. The research site is located in the Walkley area of Sheffield, UK, a community with high levels of ageing and deprivation. Based on tactical urbanism, the study, with relatively expert authors working with local residents as a programming team, explored the barriers that older people in the area may encounter when using outdoor spaces and developed relatively low-cost designs and actions. The study found that tactical urbanism appears to be more effective in addressing some of the barriers to outdoor space encountered by marginalised older people, but that there are still some limitations.