The city has always been the theatre of special forms of aggregation, but also of specific forms off social segregation. In the course of its history the city’s growth has kept pace with the transformations of intergenerational relationships. At the same time, the forms of cohabitation within the urban space have been gradually differentiated from the models current in traditional rural societies.
The relationship between the elderly population and the city is ambivalent: on the one hand we find that cities attract an elderly population while on the other the urban environment is the source of socio-relational, residential, cohabitative, welfare and socio-regulatory problems.
In historical periods, cities often organized welfare services and issued social regulations that favoured the most vulnerable social groups, including the aged, who were placed at risk by the loss of traditional solidarity and exposed to the dangers of pauperization and marginalization. The elderly populations of the past often found in the multiple welfare institutions of the city forms of assistance that could compensate for deficiencies in primary care. Also the forms of domestic and familial cohabitation in the city expressed a range of possible solutions. The elderly in the cities, though they were more likely than those in rural areas to live in solitude, were often able to mitigate the risks of desocialization through unstructured or extra-familial forms of housing.
Urban spaces are the venues for these complex dynamics; the population of the elderly is highest in cities. The city, moreover, also has the highest concentration of other special social categories, as embodied in the A-statd concept, which underscores the special position of the urban space in coping with social emergencies.
In recent decades the relationship between the elderly and the urban world has changed profoundly. The generalized coverage offered by the national insurance and social security systems has been accompanied by an increase in life expectancy and above all the rising numbers of people who enjoy good health at the time they retire, generating new prospects and new projects in the individual path of life well into the third age. The changing conditions of life involve new psychological and social needs bound up with perceptions of urban space in terms of safety and personal fulfilment.
Social and architectural-urban issues intersect with the increasing sensitivity to the relationship between built spaces and the quality of life, particularly in connection with the development of mobility and the separation of functional spaces. Viewed in these terms, the city today is facing new challenges dictated by a demand for living spaces (public and private) compatible with the complex needs of an aging population. Numerous recent studies have shown the importance of the revival of public spaces for the enhancement of social life.
The conference, organized jointly by the Laboratorio di Storia delle Alpi (LabiSAlp) and the Institute for the Contemporary Urban Project (i.CUP) of the Academy of architecture of Mendrisio (Università della Svizzera italiana), proposes to combine a retrospective and contemporary approach in an attempt to grasp and analyze the urban models of life of the elderly population in the past and in the contemporary world, as well as the strategies adopted (in politics, planning and architecture) to manage the current demographic aging of the European city. More particularly, through the contribution of a number of different disciplines (history, geography, sociology, economics, urban planning, architecture) and in an interdisciplinary perspective, the conference intends to survey the following questions:

Birth of a category
When, in what contexts and in what forms does the elderly population become a social category with specific requirements and necessities in the city?

Choice of housing
What are the criteria underlying the choice of the place of residence adopted by the elderly? To what extent do the modes of life of the different generations in a family influence the forms of housing of the elderly?

The needs of the elderly
What kind of city would the elderly like to live in? What specific demands do they make on urban space (residential and public)? In the course of history what measures have been adopted to cope with the specific needs of the elderly population?

Psychological perceptions and obstacles
How is the city perceived by the elderly? What factors condition the sense of security (traffic, personal)? What physical and psychological obstacles reduce the use of and access to the city by the elderly population? How can these barriers be removed?

Space and quality of life
What influences does the built space have on the quality of life of the elderly? Is a city that meets the needs of the elderly a city that also satisfies the demands of other social categories? To what extent is the contemporary city compatible with the elderly?