Hi all
read an interesting article in the yesterday's paper about the declining
population and change in demographics. It was based on the projections made
by the government actuary's department. It referred to the support ratio.
This is a ratio of those of working age in Britain defined as between 15 and
64 and citizens aged 65 or over. In 1999 this was calculated to be 4.2 but
this is predicted to decline to 2.45 by 2040. Also that favourite and much
quoted statistic of the "average" family having 2.4 children is now
calculated to be 1.74.
Some other interesting figures that get quoted in the article are that there
are 727 million people currently in Europe and the UN reckons by 2050 that
will have dropped to 603 million and possibly as low as 556 million.
Currently the UK has 59.4 million people and is predicted to drop to 54.4
million by 2050. The country predicted to have the largest reduction in
population is Italy with 57.6 million at the moment and down to 40.5 million
in 2050.
Anyway why am I going on about this on accessibuilt? Well the arguments are
being put forward that in order to boost the working population the
immigration rules should be relaxed to encourage people to fill the gap in
people in employment in order to fund the pension system, health service
etc. So we should be putting forward our arguments for inclusive design as
not only creating environments for a population that is getting older
through change in demographics, but also culturally inclusive since our
population will become much more cosmopolitan and culturally diverse. At the
moment I feel issues of inclusion are only just starting to think about
cultural diversity and we need to quickly understand how we can design and
create culturally inclusive environments.
I have read some interesting case studies in Franck, K.A. and Bianca Lepori,
R. (2000). Architecture Inside Out. Chichester: Wiley. Also there is a
couple of papers in the Universal Design Handbook but has anyone come across
other useful material on cultural aspects of inclusive design in the built
environment?
cheers
marcus
SURFACE
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