Project Overview

Most people living with dementia (PLWD) live in the community supported by informal care partners. Continued access to public spaces is not only a human right, but is linked to better physical, mental, and social health. Many PLWD experience spatial disorientation, making it difficult to find their way even in familiar places. This is made worse by certain built environment features in their neighbourhoods, like poor signage, overwhelming streets, and lack of accessible infrastructure.

We aim to improve the built environment of neighbourhoods for PLWD and their carepartners from a planning perspective. We will examine factors like wayfinding in the built environment, infrastructure availability and access,and health/social services. We will do the research in small, mid-sized, and large Canadian municipalities to examine differences between them. We will adapt existing participatory planning research methods to carry out the study, and amend existing policies and plans to reflect our findings.

We will recruit 5 PLWD+carepartner pairs and a ‘control’ older adult who lives in their neighbourhood in three municipalities: Meaford, Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge, and Toronto. We will collect data using go-along interviews,sketch/social network mapping, travel diaries/GPS tracking every 6 months for 3 years, while also tracking dementia-related changes. This will be the first study to clarify changes in neighbourhood access and experiences of PLWD+carepartners over time with a control group.

We will use our findings in a co-design workshop with each municipality to make their existing planning policies more accessible to PLWD and their carepartners. Each workshop will include people with lived experience,planners, urban designers, municipal staff, and our Advisory Committee. We will also examine how our workshop process can be made more accessible to PLWD so municipalities can use it to increase PLWD’s future participation in the planning processes that shape communities.

The built environment influences our ability to access our neighbourhoods. This study will significantly change existing planning policies, practices, and guidelines that literally shape the built environment, creating communities that are easier to navigate and are more supportive to PLWD and their carepartners. It will also change how municipalities public engagement by making it more accessible to PLWD. Finally, it will influence future investment decisions and planning, in addition to changing planning practice.

Principal Investigator

Samantha Biglieri , Toronto Metropolitan University

Partners and Donors

Alzheimer Society of Canada