ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Aging and Public Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1624641
This article is part of the Research TopicNeighborhoods and Community: The Role of Built and Social Environment for Healthy AgingView all articles
Exploring the influence factors and operating mechanisms of agefriendly communities in urban fringe areas from the resilience perspective: A case study in Shangjie Township, Southeast China
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Environmental and Safety Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China
- 2Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, America, Carolina, United States
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The development of age-friendly communities (AFC) is a key initiative in response to the active ageing strategy proposed by World Health Organization. Urban fringe communities (UFC) are characterized by distinctive features such as intricate built environments and heterogeneous resident populations, and these characteristics pose a great challenge to the promotion of age-friendliness in these areas. To begin with, this study defines the concept and connotations of AFC in urban fringe areas (UFA), underpinned by a resilience perspective. Then, this study combines field surveys and spatial analysis to reveal the age-friendliness in different types of UFC in Shangjie Township, southeastern China. And we employ structural equation model to quantitatively analyze the factors influencing age-friendliness in these communities. Finally, this study proposes a mechanism for the operation of AFC in UFA based on the DPSIR model. The results of this study indicate that over 50% of the UFC in the study area exhibit satisfactory age-friendliness, while the age-friendliness in some communities still requires urgent improvement. Furthermore, community space, facilities and services, social interactions, and social participation all have a positive impact on the age-friendliness of UFC. This study develops a systematic framework for enhancing the age-friendliness of UFC, providing a viable strategy for addressing the challenges of population ageing. The findings of this study make both theoretical and practical contribution to the development of AFC in UFA.
Keywords: Resilience perspective, Age-friendliness, Urban fringe communities (UFC), structural equation model, Operational mechanism
Received: 07 May 2025; Accepted: 11 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pinqi, Haiying, Yafeng, Chengfeng, Pingping and Song. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Zou Yafeng, College of Environmental and Safety Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China
Yi Chengfeng, College of Environmental and Safety Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China
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