Older people will increasingly choose to live near hospitals capable of treating their illnesses rather than "die alone in the countryside" for lack of treatment, according to a British expert on ageing. Frank McDonald, Environment Editor, reports.
Mr Christopher McCarthy, of London-based structural engineers Battle McCarthy, said that just as younger people might choose where to live based on proximity to good schools, older people would gravitate towards acute hospitals. Addressing a conference in Dublin, he said people seeking to prolong their lives in the face of illness would "migrate to hospitals, as they once did to medieval keeps, because the nearer you are the better your chance of survival".
Mr McCarthy said the needs of an ageing population could best be catered for by "ageless engineering" that would stand the test of time. This would involve the provision of high-tech homes, or what he called "tailored housing and living space".
At present, he said, building regulations tend to be based on catering for "fit 30-year-olds". But the increasingly ageing population would need much more gadgetry - for example, to answer the front door without having to get out of bed.
Mr McCarthy told the conference that better standards of insulation would also be required, as well as more daylight, bigger windows, more sophisticated security systems and better sound-proofing, especially in urban apartment buildings. Housing would increasingly be prefabricated, as in a pilot project being co-designed by Battle McCarthy in the Elephant and Castle area of London.
"There's no reason why we couldn't produce one of these blocks a month", he said.
The firm has also designed the wind farm which will occupy the spire of Freedom Tower, the proposed replacement for the World Trade Centre in New York City, designed by Daniel Libeskind and Associates, the Berlin-based architects.