Les Dolega (p)

Carolina Foglia

The population of England is ageing. By 2041, approximately 26% of the UK’s population will be aged 65 and over, with those aged 50+ likely comprising around half the adult population. This demographic change represents a significant challenge and as such developing places that are suitable for residents to ‘age in place’ will be one of the principal goals for policy makers over the coming decades.
In this project, the researchers create a bespoke multidimensional geodemographic classification of the older population in England (those aged 50+) and demonstrate its utility. The study employed a robust clustering algorithm, called ‘k-means’, to organise small geographical areas (Lower Super Output Areas) into categories (clusters) that share similar attributes across space. The results of our bespoke and multidimensional ‘Ageing in Place Classification’ (AiPC) comprised 5 main clusters and 13 nested sub-clusters. The distinctive features of all clusters have been examined and given descriptions and names (Pen Portraits). Based on previous successful applications of general-purpose geodemographic classifications to provide evidence-based policy guidelines, the utility of AiPC classification was investigated through a series of research questions related to service accessibility, housing satisfaction and loneliness. By applying the 20-minute city concept to ageing population we provide an alternative understanding of how the accessibility for essential services varies geographically and how it ‘narrows’ when limited mobility/walking pace amongst older citizens is accounted for. We also use AiPC classification to model housing satisfaction and enhance the existing estimates of the levels of loneliness amongst older people and explore their variation across space.
By combining traditional and novel data sources, the AiPC geodemograhic classification provides a unique policy resource that captures the social and spatial heterogeneity of the older population in England and as such its application to better target interventions and allocate resources is beneficial.

Carolina Foglia (p)

Juan A. Piedra Peña

The city of Cuenca, in Ecuador, ranked in 2019 as one of the best places to retire abroad, furthermore, it is one of the fastest growing city of the country since the beginning of the twenty-first century. The reasons behind this surge were manyfold and mostly related to a better quality of life, the existence of amenities and both the city’s build environment and its surrounding.
This news item could be related to some of the theoretical model which explain the agglomeration of older people in cites, without analysing the reasons for this to happen. The model by Naito and Omori (2017) shows that an increase in longevity promotes agglomeration, leading to a greater proportion of the elderly population in urban areas. It also impacts the spatial distribution of economic activities, shaping the spatial variation in the availability of goods and services, especially amenities, in each region or city (Takahashi, 2022). Moreover, the theoretical work by Gaigné and Thisse (2009), shows that the gradual migration of retirees toward cities endowed with more amenities raise the level of urban costs in these cities and/or decrease their consumption of local services, thus making the working cities more attractive to manufacturing firms.
The aim of the paper is to preliminary analyse whether the perception of living in a city that is suitable for the elderly and/or the young is correlated with the share of such age groups living in the city. Then, the research would comparatively consider the characteristics of cities and whether they lead to differences or analogies. The empirical analysis consists of two steps: the first is based on data retrieved from the 2019 Perception Survey on the Quality of Life in European Cities, with more than 58000 interviewees living in 83 European cities. The second accounts for Nuts 3 data on urban characteristics like green spaces, amenities, pollution and services provided by local governments. The comparison of the results allows a better understanding of the direction towards which cites are shaping themselves, according to the age groups they host, and can inform policymakers how and where to allocate investment projects. Therefore, this analysis would take into account the impact of being a so-called “Silver city” or “Young city” on its potential in terms of growth, innovation and entrepreneurial performance and whether cities under the same heading display similarities or differences to this concern.

Juan A. Piedra Peña (p), Julie Le Gallo, Marie Breuillé

Les Dolega

This paper provides evidence of the role of spillovers in the efficiency of French municipalities. These spillovers are apprehended through four levels of municipal equipment and we investigate municipal efficiency changes both for cities including a certain amount of equipment and for cities located closer to those that host high-rank functions. Based on a database pertaining to French municipalities with over 3,500 inhabitants in 2018, we develop a two-stage approach. In the first stage, we estimate municipal efficiency through a robust order-m approach while in the second stage, we run a truncated bootstrapped regression to disentangle the effect of the distance of an observed municipality to each of the four equipment levels. Our results provide evidence of spillovers where the less-endowed municipalities benefit the most from higher efficiency due to their geographical proximity to larger equipment centers.