The Health Services Research Centre (HSRC) at Alliance Manchester Business School and the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing (MICRA) are involved in an innovative project that supports older residents in two Manchester localities to come together to shape local services with the aim of creating a better quality of health, community life and local well-being for people over 50.

The research is being conducted, over two years, in two low income neighbourhoods – Brunswick and East Levenshulme – with the aim to better understand how local communities themselves can decide upon, and set-up, local initiatives to facilitate older people’s ageing in place. The need for strengthening communities amongst elderly populations is particularly important in the context of demographic change and the implementation of government devolution initiatives. Research has shown that many older people want to stay living in their own home and neighbourhood as they get older but there are often significant barriers to this in reality when individuals also face impairments to their health and mobility.

By working with groups of people aged 50 and over in each neighbourhood, our University researchers are developing a British version of the ‘Urban Village’ model that has been developed in the US and the Netherlands. These Urban Villages aim to allow individuals to age healthily in place by increasing community-based age-friendliness of city living in later life.