A Study on the Impact of Infrastructure Accessibility and Transportation Nodes on Shaping the Spatial Congregation Pattern of Older Adults in Urban Shanghai

Urban ageing concentrates older adults’ daily activities into spatial hotspots that affect service equity and station-area planning. This study tested the Observed Presence Node and Accessibility model (OPNA), linking Older-Adult Congregation Intensity with Opportunity Accessibility and Transport Node Attributes in urban Shanghai. Anonymised activity counts were analysed for 98,400 250-m grid cells, including 42,800 core and 55,600 peripheral cells. Congregation Intensity was computed for weekday and weekend periods and smoothed with a 500-m bandwidth. Accessibility to healthcare, parks, daily retail, and aged-care services used 10 min and 15 min walking thresholds and a 30 min transit threshold. OPNA was tested using analysis of covariance, Bonferroni contrasts, and robustness checks. Global Moran’s I was 0.412 on weekdays and 0.386 on weekends, both p = .001. High-high hotspots were higher in core than peripheral areas. OPNA shows that accessibility and transport-node hierarchy jointly structure older-adult activity concentration for targeted age-friendly urban intervention.