Age-Friendly Infrastructure in Canada’s Ethnic Neighborhoods (AFICEN)

Literature on place-based experiences of immigrants in ethnic neighbourhoods in Canadian cities is still developing. One critical area that requires urgent scholarly and policy attention is age-friendly infrastructure in these ethnic enclaves. By adopting the WHO age friendly cities framework, the AFICEN project will examine age-friendly infrastructure and services in selected ethnic neighbourhoods in Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton.

The AFICEN project aims to critically assess the availability, accessibility, and inclusivity of age-friendly infrastructure and services within selected ethnic neighbourhoods in Toronto, Vancouver, and Edmonton. Guided by the World Health Organization Age-Friendly Cities framework, the study seeks to understand how immigrant older adults experience and navigate built environments, social spaces, and service provision in these enclaves.

1. How are age-friendly infrastructure and services planned, distributed, and experienced by older immigrant adults within selected ethnic neighbourhoods in Toronto, Vancouver, and Edmonton?
2. In what ways does age, ethnicity, and place intersect to shape older immigrants’ access to, and use of, key urban infrastructures—including outdoor spaces, transportation, and community and health services—across different neighbourhood and city contexts.
3. What policy gaps and community-based practices enable or constrain the development of inclusive, age-friendly infrastructure in ethnic neighbourhoods?

The AFICEN project adopts a mixed-methods, comparative research design to examine age-friendly infrastructure in ethnic neighbourhoods across three Canadian cities: Toronto, Vancouver, and Edmonton. Guided by the World Health Organization’s Age-Friendly Cities framework, the study integrates qualitative, quantitative, and geospatial methods to capture both the material conditions of neighbourhood infrastructure and the lived experiences of older immigrant adults ageing in place within ethnically diverse urban contexts. Qualitative methods—including walking interviews, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and photovoice—foreground the perspectives of older immigrant adults and document how infrastructure is encountered, navigated, and negotiated in daily life. These qualitative methods are complemented by quantitative approaches: geospatial analysis, including environmental audits, transit accessibility mapping and GIS mapping of infrastructure and service accessibility.

The project is in progress.
Expected completion date: March 2028

Age-friendly infrastructure, ethnic neighborhoods, aging, urban inclusion, place-based experiences