Strategies Of Building Comprehensive Service Facilities For Older People In Urban Community Based On Social Design

With the rapid population aging,the Chinese government strongly encourages promoting community old-age care services in cities to meet most older adults’ local needs.Therefore,the construction of comprehensive service facilities for older people(CSFOs)in urban communities has important social significance.However,there are problems in constructing CSFOs for the aged from resource allocation,people-oriented acceptance,and economic operation.Therefore,the research on the construction of CSFOs for the aged needs to jump from the single field of architecture design and adopt an interdisciplinary vision.As a design theory and methodology combining design and sociology,“social design” is committed to finding social problems and solving social contradictions,emphasizing the optimization of social situation and ecological system as the goal,and creating a dynamic balance among the needs of community groups,sustainable utilization of resources and economic value.Introduced the social design theory,this study adopts the interdisciplinary,combining various quantitative and qualitative research methods.This study explores the problems of the construction of CSFO in urban communities based on social design.It puts forward the construction strategies of CSFOs in urban communities based on the social design from two dimensions,including site selection and design.This study proposes the social-architectural design theory and framework of CSFO.Through theoretical analysis,the research states the nested social framework and stakeholder relations of CSFO.This study presents the four strategies to optimize the social mechanism of CSFO,including building the urban aging service networks,optimizing the allocation of community public supporting resources,responding to the demands of stakeholders,and connecting with families.This study surveys the design problems of CSFO to achieve multi-wins.Conducting field surveys and quantifying big data and literature,this study proposes that the construction of CSFOs in urban communities needs to solve the problems of facility planning in the urban-community boundaries and facility design in community-home boundaries.Based on social design,there are three changes in the construction of CSFOs in urban communities: from planning a single facility to promoting the layout of aging friendly cities;from building pension facilities to integrating pension resources;from an aging-centered to a community-group stakeholder centered.In the dimension of facility planning in urban-community boundaries,the study combines the theory of aging in place,national policies and Ecological Systems Theory,and then proposes the Nested Social-Ecological System Model of Aging in Place(NEMA).The NEMA model states the relationships between CSFO and its embedded national-urban-community-home boundaries.Based on the NEMA,this study presents the factors influencing the site selection of CSFO.And then,using the analytic hierarchy process(AHP),the study quantifies the index weights of each factor.Based on the NEMA and index elements,this study also proposes the steps and methods of selecting CSFOs using Arc GIS and the social survey method.In the dimension of facility design in community-home boundaries,the resource integration strategies of the CSFOs in urban communities are studied and analyzed through interviews and questionnaire surveys.The research identifies the facility design elements that different stakeholders concern with qualitative analysis.The questionnaire survey results state that in resource integration,living care and medical maintenance are prioritized for integration and intergenerational sharing,followed by the space of sports and fitness,and finally,socialization and recreation.Based on these results,this study proposes four main prototypes for designing CSFOs oriented to resource integration.Finally,taking Harbin as an example,the study analyzes the site selection strategies and design strategies of CSFO in Harbin by using the social-architecture design framework and methods proposed in the study.The purposes of this study are to contribute to the planning,programming and design of the CSFOs in urban communities from the perspective of multi-wins,coconstruction,co-governance and sharing.The research explores the siting problems of CSFO among the nested ecological systems,analyzes the resource integration problems of realizing multi-functions and resources in limited space,examines the stakeholder demands of facility design.The results can be applied to the project approval,site selection,resource integration,and design process of CSFOs in China.The research is conducive to the organic development of social design and architecture.It is expected to encourage designers,architects,investors,and policymakers to think,study,and practice CSFOs in China or international cities with similar aging problems.