Local seniors, along with the city’s community planning team, and a group of UBC master’s students are exploring how the City of Maple Ridge can become an age-inclusive and socially connected neighbourhood.
A two-hour engagement workshop was held in January in the Blaney Room at city hall, that included about 25 members of the Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows, Katzie Seniors Network – an organization that brings together, community non-profits, private-sector organizations supporting older adults, and older adults with lived experience – to re-imagine what the town centre could look like in the future.
This engagement ensures that planning work reflects the lived experiences and aspirations of older adults in our community, explained Louisa-May Khoo, with the City of Maple Ridge community planning department.
“The insights gathered directly support UBC’s planning studio course and will contribute to the city’s goals towards planning for longevity,” she said.
The project came about when the city reached out to UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning (SCRAP), and offered to partner with a team of students in the department’s Master of Community of Regional Planning (MCRP) program as part of the program’s mandated planning studio course to address a real-world issue.
As part of the course requirement, students are expected to work with others in the government, as well as private or non-profit sectors, to obtain planning experience outside of the classroom and textbooks, said Khoo.
As part of the workshop, the group provided fresh perspectives and evidence‑based ideas to help the city envision how a transformed age‑inclusive neighbourhood could look.
They looked at challenges like: housing precarity, social isolation, and mobility barriers, to inform longevity planning as the city’s aging demographics accelerate.
The work, said Khoo, serves as a launchpad to spark new possibilities.
“This represents a milestone as the first formal collaboration between SCARP and the city, strengthening future opportunities for co‑learning and joint policy development,” she said.
Maple Ridge was one of the first cities in Canada and the first in the province to join the World Health Organization’s Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities.
So, the city has a longstanding commitment to supporting its aging populations, added Khoo, noting that workshops like this helps embed older adults’ lived experience as policies and concepts that are being crafted and in the early stages of development.
“It enables more thoughtful plans, intentional ideas and policies to be developed, which resonate with people’s everyday lived practices, as well as their aspirations to make Maple Ridge a place where one thrives as one ages,” she said.
The workshop is part of an eight-month course that will culminate in a student report and a public exhibition at UBC this spring.
The work will also contribute to the city’s “planning for longevity” framework and help inform future policy discussions, including work on the next Official Community Plan, said Khoo.