Urban design across the life course: towards longevity-enabling environments

Since the early 2000s, global population ageing has significantly reshaped how urban design and planning address the human experience of city life. In this evolving context, age-friendly urban design has emerged as a transdisciplinary field aimed at configuring spatial systems that sustain autonomy, participation and wellbeing in later life. This study involves the theoretical and operational consolidation of the field by tracing its foundations in major UN and WHO frameworks and examining how these have been translated into technical standards, regulatory instruments and evaluative models, emphasising the ergonomic dimension of age-inclusive environments. The paper positions ergonomics and human factor as key interpretive lenses for understanding how the integration of accessibility and usability issues with environmental quality may shape inclusive urban settings across the ageing process in a life course perspective. The focus is on two critical application domains: technological innovation, encompassing smart-city infrastructures, participatory digital platforms and assistive systems, and urban green and blue infrastructures (UGBI), conceived as integrated strategies that support environmental resilience and multisensory restoration especially in later life. By combining theoretical perspectives with empirical evidence, the study synthesises current knowledge of age-friendly urbanism and identifies persistent conceptual and methodological fragmentation. It ultimately promotes a shift toward longevity-enabling environments, designed as adaptive, inclusive and evidence-based spatial systems that support human health through wellbeing, functional ability and human flourishing, not only during aging but across the entire lifespan.