Problematizing the age friendly cities and communities program in Toronto

Abstract

This article contributes to the literature on Age Friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC) through a poststructural policy analysis of the program in Toronto. The purpose is to propose an approach, rooted in the study of public policy, that can offer a political interrogation into the problems plaguing AFCCs in practice. The approach centres on a basic question: what problem are AFCCs in Toronto intended to solve? A discourse analysis is undertaken on this problematization, using Toronto's age-friendly policy and 77 qualitative interview transcripts with policy actors as key texts. The findings suggest a dominant discursive practice where AFCCs are used to address the problem of costly seniors rather than the problem of inaccessible environments. However, alternative discursive practices rooted in the rights of senior citizens to access services and amenities in environments are also highlighted through the analysis. AFCC policy is thus flexible enough to be used by different political projects and poststructural policy analysis is useful for teasing out these projects, for understanding the problems that plague AFCCs, as well as for informing rights-based alternatives.

Keywords: Aging in cities; Discourse analysis; Poststructural policy analysis; Urban policy.