The Right to an Age-Friendly City: Redistribution, Recognition and Senior Citizen Rights in Urban Spaces

You are warmly welcome to attend the book launch and lecture of Meghan Joy's The Right to an Age-Friendly City: Redistribution, Recognition, and Senior Citizen Rights in Urban Spaces (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021).

About the book

A context of aging populations and urbanization has sparked a global movement to make urban spaces age-friendly. The Age-Friendly City program, developed by the World Health Organization, aims to improve local environments for all population groups, promote a positive aging identity and empower local policy actors to support senior citizens.

Despite growing enthusiasm and policy work by local governments worldwide, considerable gaps remain. These lacunae have led scholars and activists alike to align age-friendly city work with the concept of the right to the city.

In The Right to an Age-Friendly City Meghan Joy zeroes in on the intricacies of developing an environment that promotes social and spatial justice for the elderly in Toronto. Weaving together the stories, struggles and victories of local activists, government staff and front-line service providers, Joy maps this complex policy area and examines the ways in which age-friendly work successfully enhances senior citizens’ access to services and support in the local environment, recognizes the diverse needs of senior citizens in the city, and empowers policy actors from local government and the non-profit sector to support senior citizens.

About the speaker

Meghan Joy is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Concordia University. Her research interests include the politics of population aging, theories and practice of progressive politics and policy in cities, and the political economy of the nonprofit sector. Recent publications include her book The Right to an Age Friendly City: Redistribution, Recognition, and Senior Citizen Rights in Urban Spaces, and Beyond Neoliberalism: A Policy Agenda for a Progressive City (with Ronald K. Vogel).