Exploring urban ageing: a narrative review of emerging insights

As there is a global demographic transition, it is important to understand policy-level initiatives, the challenges that older individuals and society may encounter in addressing urban ageing, and how to plan accordingly to address the needs highlighted by the derived themes from the literature. A narrative review approach is adopted, drawing on bibliometric and thematic analyses of peer-reviewed articles indexed in Scopus from 2007 to 2025. The keywords cluster helps derive four major themes, representing the area’s broad knowledge structure. The thematic analysis helps derive four interconnected themes. Although studies on age-friendly policies and their adoption have evolved, their implementation remains inconsistent. Many challenges and opportunities have also been put forth as findings of this research. The review offers a detailed and comprehensive overview of recent research on urban ageing. Since the domain is derived from the interdisciplinary integration of gerontology, health policy, and urban planning, bridging the gaps here is imperative. The studies’ findings underscore the need for and importance of proactive, equity-oriented urban planning that accommodates the ageing population and empowers them.