Explaining the Physical pattern of Age-Friendly City (Case study: District 2 of Tehran Municipality)

One of the most prominent demographic features of the twenty-first century can be "rapid urbanization and population aging", therefore, it is expected that cities in the world will have readiness, knowledge and sufficient flexibility to accept this wave of population and facing its challenging effects. The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the needs and phisical problems of aged population in district 2 of Tehran Municipality in the framework of a comparative analysis of this district based on the Age-Friendly City indicators of the World Health Organization (2006).

383 structured questionnaires consisting of 38 variables were designed in the form of three indicators of urban open space - housing - and buildings, public and religious places; and distributed among the aged population (more than 60 years old) in the studed area and the collected data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

The findings indicate that the conditions are only partly satisfactory in the housing index, while the indicators of urban open spaces, buildings, public and religious places show lower scores than the average grades. Also, the obtained data based on the gender of the respondents in the housing index show a significant difference in such a way that women have a more unfavorable situation than men.

the partly satisfactory score of housing index can be considered as the result of citizens' participation and their power and authority in this field, which reflects the importance and necessity of addressing the issue of participation in other indicators. Hence, the provision of the possibility of participation of the aged population in various dimensions of urban planning, improvement of access to urban open spaces, creative design and provision of housing in line with the needs of the aged population have been proposed as suggestions of this research.