CREATING A DEMENTIA-FRIENDLY OUTDOOR BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

With the trend of a declining birth rate and increasing life expectancy of its population, Singapore will be faced with a situation of an ageing population in the near future. With an ageing population, the country will face various social and economic challenges. One of them, would be the situation on increasing numbers of persons with dementia. As age is a well-proven risk factor of dementia, with the increase in the number of elderly, it is expected that the number of persons with dementia will increase too. Based on the Well-being of the Singapore Elderly (WISE) study, the number of persons with dementia is expected to rise to 80,000 by 2030 amid the onset of an ageing population. To allow persons with dementia to continue to stay in their homes and age in place, it is necessary for steps to be taken to ensure that the surrounding environment of the persons with dementia to be dementia-friendly. Hence this dissertation seeks to explore the current measures that are in place to create a dementia-friendly outdoor built environment. It also aims to understand how persons with dementia interact with the outdoor environment as well as the design features needed to create a dementia-friendly environment. Lastly, it will provide some suggestions to improve the built environment based on the research findings and literature review. Research findings have shown that persons with dementia continued to use the outdoor environment. Most persons with mild dementia go outdoors only if there is a need to, rather than for leisure activities, whereas persons with moderate dementia, who tend to be accompanied by their caregivers, would go out for leisure activities. In addition, it was found that there is an improvement in their emotional well-being when they are outdoors. Hence, these findings reflect the importance of the need to create a dementia-friendly outdoor built environment.