Content area
Abstract
To improve the living standards of its residents, China is currently implementing an urban renewal program for old communities. Community public space is a place for residents to carry out daily outdoor activities and is one of the focuses of community renewal. Since most middle-aged residents in the community go out to work during the day, the main users of community public spaces are retired elderly people. However, a large number of elderly people do not rest after retirement but take on new responsibilities. In recent years, the busy work schedules of parents and the high cost of babysitters in urban families have led to caring for grandchildren becoming a new responsibility for grandparents. As the elderly are considered vulnerable, the physical fragility and reduced mobility of older adults compared to middle-aged adults means that caregiving can place a significant burden on them. As a result, grandparents often face new demands when caring for their grandchildren. However, current standards for the design of public spaces in communities only consider the general population of society and do not meet the needs of older residents who take on intergenerational care matters.
Therefore, exploring the behavioral characteristics and patterns of the elderly population in the process of intergenerational caregiving is a key topic in constructing a community public space design model. In this study, Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, China's Xiamaling neighborhood was selected as the research object. The Xiamaling neighborhood completed the state-promoted renovation from 2021 to 2022. Although the renewal and renovation solved some of the problems of universalization, the interviews with the elderly who need to take care of their children revealed that their needs were not considered. Therefore, this study combines the interview results with field research to obtain the behavioral patterns of older adults with grandchildren by studying the intergenerational caregiving process. By summarizing the patterns of grandparenting behaviors, the common and different needs of the different stages are explored. The gap between the current situation and the needs was then analyzed, and conflicts and problems were identified. Then, the problems are categorized and summarized into street problems and public activity space problems, which are mapped to the venue space. Based on the problems, corresponding strategies are proposed, and the main specific design measures are listed based on the feasibility of actual implementation. Ultimately, a design toolkit based on the needs of grandparenting was derived. This toolkit can be replicated in the future renewal process of older neighborhoods.
