“Abitare diffuso”. Un modello sostenibile per la terza età/ “Widespread Living”. A Sustainable Model for the Elderly

The analysis of the national regulatory framework for elderly welfare reveals an uneven scenario, caused by the difficulty to deal with a demographic growing trend, both in the overall numbers of “elders” and in the symptoms associated with this condition, ranging from a complete disability to a slight decline, including selfsufficiency, physical and intellectual capabilities. Regional regulations confirm the difficulty in establishing a spread notion of assistance, resulting in multiple and uncoordinated approaches that go from domestic support to complete hospitalization. This weakness is still more relevant shifting the attention from single building to urban scale, revealing the distance of elderly assistance facilities from urban contexts, also due to their often delocalization in marginal areas of cities and their lack of consideration of local habits. Instead, an urban consideration of this issue would represent an occasion for changing the “problem” of elderly assistance in an opportunity for cities, resulting in a more articulated network of public spaces, improving social relations, increasing services, reinforcing local identity, facing gentrification and sprawl processes. This positive effect can be evaluated both at a physical level - considering new spaces for residents, also with a view of the recovery of existing - and at a social one - because of the capabilities of self-sufficient elders to provide competences, experiences, help to inhabitants (students, disabled, young artisans etc.). Various international projects are being undertaken in this direction. The paper accounts an ongoing research in Città Alta (Bergamo, Italy), aiming at defining a best practice for elderly assistance, becoming a model for many similar situations in Italy, where medium-sized cities have to deal with a rising trend of elders, gentrification processes, a growing number of underused buildings.