A Salutogenic Approach to Age Friendly High Streets

In the design of the public urban realm older people have been often considered a vulnerable group and their needs frequently narrowed to issues of physical mobility. Yet, due to the population ageing this demographic sector is no longer a minority in cities, and their use of urban space cannot be seen only from a physical accessibility perspective. In UK the variety of urban settings used by older people includes the main commercial streets, the so-called high streets. Despite their perceived decline these places have continued to cater for the everyday needs of a wide sector of the population providing access to shops and services at local level. Informed by Aaron Antonovsky’s salutogenesis theory, the paper articulates a salutogenic approach to discuss the findings of a study carried out in three local high streets in Edinburgh. Taking pre-COVID data as baseline, the paper will discuss the findings and recommendations also considering recent changes to the streetscape such as social distancing interventions like the “Space for People” promoted by the local authority triggered by the pandemic, which temporarily moved away from the previous laissez-faire approach to streets design