The Application of the Elderly-Friendly City Approach in Urban Transportation Planning (Case Study: Mashhad Metropolis)

In recent years, due to the growth of the elderly population, the concept of an elderly-friendly city has become one of the most basic concepts in urban planning. In the elderly-friendly city, several tools and solutions have been considered to measure and optimize urban and social structures, especially by the World Health Organization. This organization has presented a set of eight indicators to measure the status of an elderly-friendly city in metropolitan cities. Many researches have been conducted in different cities of the world according to these indicators, and in this research, the transportation index of the eight indicators of the elderly-friendly city with ten main components has been examined in the metropolis of Mashhad. The research method is descriptive analytical with survey technique. The statistical population includes the elderly of Mashhad metropolis, whose samples were randomly selected from two areas: district one (high-income) and district three (low-income). The research data has been collected using the standard questionnaires of the World Health Organization. The results of the research show that the components of abundance of public transportation, quality of public transportation, driving conditions, safety and information in public transportation have a significant difference with the average standard. On the other hand, the investigated components are ranked in terms of importance for the elderly. Then, the status of the implementation of the transportation index components in the elderly-friendly city in urban projects has been investigated. In creating the target community, urban managers were involved in urban planning in the last five years. Data were collected and analyzed by random sampling from 40 managers using a researcher-made questionnaire. The results of this analysis indicate that in recent urban projects, no attention has been paid to the ten components of the elderly-friendly city transportation index.