International Challenges, local Dilemmas: ‘Age-Friendly Cities’ Models in Quebec and Wallonia and the practices of social participation of seniors

Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC) have become an empirical application of the notion of “active ageing” and an applied field for “environmental gerontology” (Phillipson 2004) or, more broadly, for a community-building approach. At the core of its process, social participation of seniors appears as a challenge for most concerned stakeholders (researchers, local actors, older people representatives, elected politicians). Adopting a comparative perspective, this communication explores how actors from two contrasting areas facing AFCC (Province of Québec, Canada and Walloon Region, Belgium) locally organize such social participation. Supported by a comprehensive research methodology, the local Quebec “voices of the seniors” are integrated in local steering committees with different actors. In Wallonia, the presence of “local advisory councils of seniors” has been a positive factor. While local players produce different types of collaborative partnership in Quebec (Garon et al. 2014) and Wallonia, such partnerships might be influenced by common practices and the recurrence of actors playing the role of “intermediaries of active ageing” (Moulaert 2012). Similarly, the role of communication and social marketing appears as a common (international) challenge to be discussed