Evaluation of elderly people's requirements in public open spaces: A case study in Bornova District (Izmir, Turkey)

The aim of improving the quality and quantities of public open spaces used by each group of people who are in different ages, genders and occupations, is upgrading the users' life quality by equipping these places with various functions and to make the urban life more attractive and meaningful by creating livable environments. The starting point of this research is our confidence on the presence of the elderly people in public open spaces, their freedom of using these places and also the necessity of having equal rights with other users. In this research literature on old age and requirements of elderly users in public open spaces were studied and factors which affect elderly people's use of physical places were determined at the first stage of the study. After the literature study about the topic, some observations on elderly users have been done and depending on the method, questionnaire forms have been applied to 68 users over 65 yr old. By the results of questionnaires, the problems which elderly users frequently meet in public open spaces were found as pavements and roads (21.1%), pollution (21.1%), safety (18.4%), insufficiency of maintenance and management (9.5%), traffic (8.2%) and sociocultural problems (6.1%). As the result of the observations in the main research area, design properties (83.15%) had the highest and maintenance-management services (9.46%) had the lowest success percentage. Also the boulevards in the research boundary had been found as the most successful accessibility components to the main research area. At the end of the study, solutions were suggested for designing new public open spaces and correcting mistakes in existing spaces in the light of these determinations. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.