Participatory Mapping Conducted with Elderly People in the City of Pelotas / Brazil

Sirlene Sopeña (Universidade Federal de Pelotas)

This paper seeks to describe the results of the application of Participatory Mapping Workshops carried out within the framework of the project "Place-making with Older Adults: Towards Age-Friendly Communities", an international partnership between Brazil and the United Kingdom. The project focuses on how the elderly face ageing in different urban, social and cultural contexts. For the case studies, three cities were selected in Brazil (Pelotas, Belo Horizonte and Brasilia) and three cities as case studies in the United Kingdom (Edinburgh, Manchester and Glasgow). This study deals with the investigation, specifically, of the case study of the city of Pelotas in Brazil. In this city, the participatory mapping workshops were applied, in three different moments, to the residents of three neighbourhoods (Centro, Fragata and Navegantes). The objectives of the workshops were to discuss with the dwellers, the facilitators and local barriers; the sharing of experiences and experiences in the neighbourhood; and what is the sense of place for the elderly. The results were found through the content analysis of the recorded conversations with the elderly, which emerged categories of this analysis. According to the relationship with the place of residence and sense of place in the interface with the proposal of age-friendly cities, we tried to answer what the main services and amenities are necessary to create communities friendly to the ageing according to the resources available in each cut. According to the analysis, the main results pointed out where the dire need to improve local security, the elderly are very afraid to walk through their neighbourhood; revitalize the sidewalks to favour the walkability and autonomy, on the sidewalks, there are unevenness, holes and lack of maintenance. Also, improve health care, such as facilitating the scheduling of a medical consultation in the Unified Health System (SUS).