Cities and Demographic Change: space reconsidered and the future of social housing estates in Trieste

Significant ageing processes are affecting many regions across Europe and are changing the social and spatial profile of cities. In Italy, the increase of the elderly population is remarkable in urban areas and specifically in council housing estates. Generally, solutions provided by planning and design oversimplify the complexity of this problem in terms of a re-orientation of public action at the local level. In Trieste, a joint initiative by the public Health Agency and the Social Housing Agency has been developing a program targeting conditions that allow people to age at home, stressing the need to redesign and reorganize the living environment as a way to oppose the institutionalization of the elderly in specialized nursing homes. Based on intensive field work and research projects, this contribution presents and discusses the original and innovative inputs that the case study is offering to the Italian and European debate on housing and urban change.