Team Synergy: Visions of a Future without Elderly Isolation
Team Members: Corine Britto, Sujan Das Shrestha, Helen Hu, Anukriti Kedia, Eugenia Perez Matheus & Shariwa Sharada
Project Brief
For this project our team had to develop a lifestyle based vision that encapsulated the day-in-the-life narrative template in which the wicked problem had already been resolved. Making it place-based to Pittsburgh was also central in our idea. It is a storytelling exercise in which the wicked problem does not exist anymore and captures the new beliefs and paradigms that led to it. By approaching problems via an everyday life lens we are directly opposing fragmented solutions that are categorized by specific areas such as “economic solutions” or “educational solutions.” A holistic view of all the areas that we are resolving must be apparent via everyday life.
Three Horizons Framework
In order to begin foresighting and imagining the future of the snapshot of 2050 our group decided to use the Three Horizons Mapping. This helped us envision what mindsets and postures needed to be let go of and which ones were viable and preferable for the future we had in mind.
As shown in the diagram above the three horizons included what needed to be let go of as horizon 1, as horizon 2 the disruptive frameworks and innovations were included and horizon 3 the new and transformative mindsets in which the wicked problem is resolved begin to emerge.
For the first horizon, current mindsets of 2019 are barriers to innovation and moving forward in regards to solving the wicked problem. This is why it is so important to identify and address these in order to propose a new way of seeing. These cultural barriers and perspectives worsen the elderly isolation in Pittsburgh because they are embedded in the cultural levels of thinking. As our future vision we propose ways of seeing that are not directly opposite of the current 2019 mindsets but go beyond as direct responses. The new mindsets and postures are based off of the leverage points our group considered in our MLP mapping from the previous assignment. For example one leverage point included “Redefining Family Structures Through Communal Living.” By going back to the leverage point we were able to identify what current mindset was works against that leverage point and which ones are preferable. Individualism and the way career means success in the West is one of the current mindsets in horizon 1. Instead the value of interdependence as key to long-term sustainment of the family unit is proposed as a value of 2050. Also in regards to family structures the shift from blood ties to community ties becomes more important. Family does not necessarily mean next-of-kin but it shifts into the active members of communities that enhance a person’s overall well-being.
Another leverage point that includes important mindsets is “Shift from Private Healthcare System to Universal Healthcare.” Currently, health is seen as a commodity instead of a universal right. In our preferred future of 2050 health is meant for human flourishing and a holistic view of the body is treated instead of a mechanistic and transactional way of addressing health.
In the second horizon a few of the disruptive innovations that could lead to the new mindsets of 2050 include having the government subsidize co-housing communities. The idea of communal living is central in tackling problems with elder isolation in Pittsburgh through the sharing of traditions and customs of different people. Other interventions include classes that showcase aging as an important part of life and that it can still be a fruitful and meaningful stage. This also includes knowledge on self-care and body awareness. Other interventions that regulate how aging is seen are advertisements through the deployment of positive aging campaigns and regulating the amount of “youth as beauty” advertisements that are out there. Gerontology as a field is expanded on, opening new opportunities and interest in research.
In the third horizon, we imagine a new way of life involving interdependent, generational communities and post-ageist society. Interdependence means that family extends beyond blood ties to the broader community, co-ownership becomes the norm. The cost of healthcare is shared and caring for people of all ages is seen as a shared responsibility. We move beyond the notion of just surviving to flourishing at an old age, age is celebrated and the shared experiences and wisdom of the elderly are made visible. As a society, we examine the new and the old, and consult the old or traditional ways of solving problems. Success as an individual moves beyond career achievement to social capital.
Developing a Future Vision
Levels of Scale at work
To examine the intersection of cosmopolitanism and localism within our future vision of communal living, we imagined how the placed based everyday practices would facilitate a sense of cosmopolitanism, through the multi-level, multi directional networking between its different scales.
Household: On the household level, the individual units for living would allow for utilisation of a space within which basic subsistence needs could be met with an emphasis on providing for a sense of security and privacy for an individual living in the commune. However, each of these individual units would be attached to larger communal spaces within the community, increasing access and visibility
Neighborhood: We imagined the communal living system, to redefine the neighborhood to be a more interconnected space, serving as a synergistic satisfier to collectively meet the many needs of the different households that become a part of it. Within this space reside the communal meeting points for socialization, a big kitchen to cook food together, a town hall to address issues and a system of rotating economy where everyone contributes to their neighborhood/commune and feels responsible towards it.
City: On a city scale, we propose a city wide committee for communal living, which would allow the members and representatives of the different communes to come together to discuss city wide issues as well as those pertaining to their own communes. This institution would also be a point of information which would allow dissemination of best practices for better collaborative learning. We also imagine the city to have vocational knowledge institutions that would allow the senior adults as well as the younger population of these communes to interact with another to teach and learn skills that go beyond professional training.
Region: On the region scale, we suggest regional libraries, which would extend beyond sharing books to share tools that can be leveraged by these different communes. These libraries would preserve and promote local practices in context to the region’s environments and traditions and allow a transfer or barter of good between different communities across cities of the region.
Planetary: Finally, on the planetary level we propose a worldwide committee for synergistic communities that upholds values and promotes these local communities in tandem with planetary goals. Similar to study abroad plans, we also discussed the possibility of a commune exchange, which would allow old and young members to travel through the different communes of the world to understand best practices and to witness different local cultures.
Storyboards and Narratives
Needs Comparison
While we found communal living as a leverage point during our MLP mapping process, the idea was tied together in a class on Max-Neef’s Needs, where we understood the differences between single and pseudo satisfiers. We found communal living to function as a synergistic satisfier bridging the many needs through a collective space.
Process
We began the creation of our future vision by creating a graph that started with the current situation that we were dealing with in terms of elderly isolation. The other side of this graph began to list out what were the factors that we would want to be much higher in the future. This graph represented what are the current factors that help propel elderly isolation and the future factors represented our ideal vision. In between we began to think about the rise of certain practices that would help make out future vision a reality and how these practices when first introduced would seem unusual but in the vision, become the norm.
After this we began to analyse what sort of ideas we had in the MLP from the previous assignment at the niche level that could help us encompass most, if not all the future vision factors we wanted. This highlighted the growing idea of co-housing and co-dwelling, communes in Europe. Through the idea of the commoning we began to see our future vision.
First we thought about how the physical spaces of the commune would work — what kind of housing units, who would they house and how would that be beneficial to the occupants. Focusing on the elderly, we began to think of a much larger expanse of land that had mainly one storey units that would allow for much easier movability for the elderly while giving them access to much needed social interaction.
The we began to get into the political and economic parts of it — how will this be funded, will it be well run, if yes then how do we ensure this, how do the elderly get to have a larger role in the way they are run, etc. We also drew a lot of inspiration from the Indian village tradition of a Panchayat. This is a town hall that is comprised of a mainly elderly committee that listen to the issues that are bought up by those living in the village and come about with ways to solve this problems and such. Inspired by this idea we also suggested that this idea could exist in the commune of our future — where people come to talk about how things work in the commune or how they could better, or even how we could sustain positive attitudes of community.
Furthering the creation of this world we then proceeded to understanding how it could be incorporated at a much global scale — household, neighbourhood, city, region, planet. Etc.
Reflections
Imagining a future society where elderly isolation as a wicked problem is resolved, involved imagining a radically different way of living.
Our mechanistic world today was not designed for us to enjoy autonomy and fulfillment at old age. Our previous MLP mapping allowed us to see how haphazard (and even arbitrary) the journey of events was that led to and exacerbated elderly isolation (e.g. the rise of the nuclear family, life course framework that sets retirement, industrialization and value of human tied to productivity, etc). Many of those events were motivated by economic or political needs (e.g. needs of mass production, insurance companies, big pharma, etc) rather than the needs of communities or members of society at all ages.
So we re-framed our 2050 state as humanistic, age-positive, and community-oriented. It was interesting to see through a critical lens the current state of our society and to re-imagine where we might aspire.
The process of mapping the Three Horizons Framework (near-term, mid-term and long-term futures), along with Levels of Scale (from the household to the planetary levels), allowed us to consider our wicked problem of elderly isolation as a more comprehensive plan or proposal for change. The Three Horizons Framework pushed us to think about the reality of the pace of change, and what might be possible, relative to the speed of change we have seen in our lifetimes and that we have studied across history. The Levels of Scale helped us see how institutions (farms, schools, governments, etc) and norms at every scale might be seen to either exacerbate the problem or be leveraged as part of the solution.
We saw that our aspirational future state of communal co-living and shared responsiblity is a hyper-active endeavour in both planning and execution. In reflection, designing a radically new way of communal living is both a shared burden and gift.
