Research on the types of old community public spaces of elderly-young interaction – Take Hebei Province of China as case study

Abstract

Community public spaces carry the residents’ everyday life. The elderly and children, who have more leisure time, are frequent users of public spaces (almost 85%). With the aggravation of China's aging degree and the opening of Third-child policy, the number of these two groups is further increasing, and the phenomenon of young and elderly accompanying each other is increasing. However, the activity area for the elderly and for the young are relatively independent and scattered, mainly for their own needs. At present, there are few studies on the demand and design research of community public spaces shared by the elderly and the young. This study selected two old residential communities (Lian Meng Community and Hebei Normal University ‘Danwei Compound’ Community) in Hebei Province which is the representative area of severe aging in China. Behavior observation, behavior notes and other methods were used to conduct continuous observation and periodic recording of 10 public space samples for no less than 4 hours. Then the behavior data of the elderly and the young in the space were obtained, the sharing activities and interactive relations of these two groups were also sorted out. This paper put forward two public space sharing modes for them, named as ‘the care sharing’ and ‘the participatory sharing’ from three dimensions: function organization, space layout and environment design. After this, based these two modes, this research contained ‘1-to-1’ interactive space and ‘many-to-many’ interactive space types through perspective of spatial scale, spatial directivity, spatial enclosure and seat layout. The research results provided a reference for the future renovation of old residential community public spaces and building a community friendly to both the elderly and the young.