Studies show that most people want to live in their homes as long as possible. However, our homes were not designed to adapt as we age, especially as we get older, lose our autonomy and need to stay at home longer. This was also a lesson we learned during the Covid 19 pandemic.

There is an urgent need to look at homes and see them as an appropriate place for people to develop interactive connections between the home and the public sphere throughout their lives and existential circumstances, thus ensuring their citizenship and right to participate.

This third session of the InterActions Symposium starts by examining the state of lifecycle housing models, focusing specifically on what is happening in Europe and in the USA. Some community projects that seek to strengthen the approach to ageing in place will also be presented.

Today, one of the greatest signs of prosperity is the increase in average life expectancy. However, the prospects of ageing are not the best: older people, even when active, are seen worldwide as fragile, sick and dependent, fostering cases of disregard for their rights, exclusion, marginalization and often situations of crime and violence. Against the backdrop of this reality, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Portuguese Victim Support Association (APAV) have developed a project from January 2019 to June 2020, which was published as a Report: “Portugal an older country”, highlighting some of the gaps in public policies and legislation regarding violence against older people and proposing some recommendations to tackle them.

The second session of the InterActions Symposium presents this report and invites organizations to promote its dissemination and qualify their representatives to prevent and expose this social suffering.

By 2050, approximately 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas. The European Commission foresees that by 2070, 30.3% of the population will be 65 years or older (compared to 20.3% in 2019) and 13.2% will be 80 years or older (compared to 5.8% in 2019). The phenomena of urbanization and ageing are interconnected. Healthy cities are critical to ensure well-being throughout the life cycle, in terms of physical, mental and social health.

The Covid 19 pandemic is a warning to highlight the vulnerability of older people and the importance of good planning of our cities to reduce the impact of loneliness and social isolation. This first thematic session of the InterActions Symposium will begin by addressing the theme of senior-friendly cities and look at ageing from a lifecycle perspective.