Urban Morphology and Lifestyles: What You Were, What You Are and What You See

Michel Després (Urban Planning Faculty, Montréal University)

The metropolitan area of Montreal, just like many urban areas in North America and Europe, will see a large increase of its aging population in the coming years. This upcoming surge in the elderly population brought in large part by the aging of the baby-boomer generation, drew a renewed attention in research to the difficulties of daily mobility in different urban environments for a more vulnerable population. While an enormous amount of scientific literature has already been produced on the subject, one problem remaining is the lack of documentation of the influence of urban form, namely in metropolitan areas, beyond the classic urban/suburban opposition. Aiming to go beyond that opposition, the paper presents a mixed method approach using GIS data on urban morphology and qualitative analysis of the practice of mobility, proposing an close examination of the opportunities and stress of urban environment for older adults of two generations. Information on environmental perception and lifestyles collected with in-depth interviews (n=37) and go-along trips (n=27) is crossed with geometrical and topological information on streets networks, showing how various types of urban morphologies are experienced first-hand by individuals of different profiles. The communication address the hypothesis that aging individuals will experience differently the opportunities and stress presented by various kinds of urban environments depending on their lifestyles. To this end, the communication present the example of two cases, that of Mr. Lafond, classified as an individual with a “Dispersed” lifestyle and Mrs. Labelle, classified in the “Diversified” profile. The results show how issues like car-dependency take various meaning in the context of various lifestyles and how elements of urban morphology, like street patterns and thoroughfares proximity, can be viewed in different lights regarding the opportunities and challenges they provide to aging in place.