Healthy Ageing in a Smart Urban Future: Co-designing this with Asian Older Adults in Auckland

Abstract

<jats:p>Auckland mirrors global patterns of urbanization and population ageing, where digital innovation and demographic change evolve together. As the economic dependency ratio rises, questions of how cities support older adults’ wellbeing become urgent. By 2043, Asian communities will form almost half of Auckland’s population, with a rapidly growing 65+ group. Many faces language, culture and digital barriers. These realities raise the guiding question of this study: How can Auckland’s evolving smart city systems be leveraged to support future healthy ageing among Asian populations? The research is framed by critical realism, which recognises both the lived experiences of individuals and the structural forces that shape them, and by critical inquiry and anticipatory governance, which together ask who benefits or is left behind in smart urban, and how governance can adapt to disruptive future uncertainties such as AI, biotechnology, and climate change. Using a co-design approach, bringing together older adults and key stakeholders in a culturally adapted “World Teahouse” workshop (an iteration of the World Café inspired by Asian tea culture to foster comfort and participant). Across 2-4 sessions, participants engage in games, storytelling, and mapping to co-create insights on how healthy ageing, migrant, technology and co-design intersect in Auckland’s future urban governance. The study will generate a shared artefact (e,g. ecosystem map, narrative scenarios, or a community-based co-design model) that acts as a signpost for policymakers and communities. Data will be analysed through a participatory and reflexive process, combining collaborative sense-making with thematic analysis and integrating participant feedback throughout. As a practice-led inquiry grounded in the researcher’s cross-cultural perspective,the study’s contribution lies in reframing healthy ageing as a governance as well as urbanism challenge rather than only a medical issue, and in showing how co-design with Asian elders can open new, inclusive, and future-ready pathways for urban systems that can help Auckland and other cities.</jats:p>