ABSTRACT
The importance of bottom-up initiatives while practicing an age-friendly community is highlighted in this chapter. It is even more important when people working in planning age-friendly communities, because ‘the users’ actual needs should be elicited rather than perceived by planners’ (Yung, Conejos, & Chan, 2016). The success of age-friendly community initiatives depends on how well the local organization functions and how well local residents are involved and empowered. After the introduction, theories of empowerment from ageing society perspective are introduced, followed by an overview of the current community development achievements in Taiwan. Also, this chapter further argues that older people’s empowerment strategies in East Asian countries are distinct from those of Western countries due to culture differences. A community in Taiwan was selected as a case study to examine the empowerment approaches and older people’s involvements for the age-friendly environment planning and design in Asia. The result of the case study demonstrated that there was partnership between community leaders and members, but elders’ personal demands may still be ignored by the current process.
