ABSTRACT
Recently, Hong Kong has become enthusiastic to promote the campaign of the Age-Friendly City initiated by the World Health Organization. As the economy of Hong Kong is characterised by ‘property-led’ development, the Age-Friendly City projects are focused only on the construction of barrier-free public facilities and the promotion of health services. In collaboration with an elderly association and some social workers, we have undertaken a participatory action research (PAR) project to initiate a paradigm shift and to encourage elders to make design suggestions regarding their living environment. The project is based on the theory of empowerment-oriented social work practice. In this paper, we will report on the project by focusing on the case of a design workshop, which was created so that the elders could improve the quality of the neighbourhood’s hiking routes. We wish to see how the participants with local knowledge are good candidates to propose design suggestions to their living environment. For the workshop, we designed a set of visual tools to make the design process achievable for all participants. The workshop enabled the participants to offer suggestions in a democratic forum. We concluded that it was successful enough to motivate the elders to take further action and effect real change.
