Jack Kupferman Delivers SGA Statements at the United Nations 2026 Partnership Forum, 01.27.26
- Jack Kupferman
- Mar 20
- 2 min read
Thank you. My name is Jack Kupferman and I'm with the Gray Panthers and I'm representing the constituency of older people. The age-friendly cities concept is a wonderful planning tool to implement SDG 11 in all communities and cities around the world. The age-friendly cities framework focuses on older persons but creates improvements for all people in the community.
The eight interlocking domains of age-friendly focus on outdoor spaces and buildings, transportation, housing, social participation, respect and social inclusion, civic participation and employment, communication and information, and community support and health services. By definition, implementation of age-friendly cities requires partnerships between local authorities, the private sector, community-based organizations, older persons themselves, community members, and many others.
The World Health Organization maintains a city, a network of cities and communities, a compendium of best practices, toolkits, and um and toolkits for municipalities to facilitate implementation.
It's important for all of us to understand that the age-friendly framework is flexible and scalable for communities of all types. Within SDG 11, the concerns of older persons were explicitly included as priority with regard to access for green spaces and transit. Housing is essential for older people and for everyone. The SDGs, the Doha Declaration, and the New Urban Agenda emphasize the necessity of inclusion for older persons. Now, let's turn to concrete examples of various successful implementations of age-friendly.
First, a number of countries have adopted age-friendly as a national priority. Those include Ireland and Wales. In Kenya, efforts to bring age-friendly to informal settlements is moving forward. Those things focus on walkability and mobility improvement, addressing high crime and inadequate lighting, ensuring that health clinics and services are within reasonable distance, and leveraging the close-knit social work networks in informal settlements to foster solidarity between generations.
Now, one of my favorite projects coming from the age-friendly world is the development of sheds where older men head to the shed in order to build things. It's easy to see how the sheds can contribute to building items critical to street infrastructure. In Seoul, the subway system also adopted age-friendly city age-friendly cities, um, projects to facilitate not only the improvement for access to older people, but for everyone.
Elevators, adaptations, automatic gates, LDC screens, and comprehensive voice announcements. Now, there are so many different kinds of uh examples. What I'm trying to convey is that it can be done in any community everywhere. We encourage you to reach out to us for any community and to understand better the Age-Friendly City Network, how it can uh improve the quality of life for older people and for everyone. Thank you.
Jack Kupferman at 1:33
Cynthia Stuen at 2:09
