Social Sustainability in Ageing Shanghai

The sustainability policies and studies during the last few decades have primarily focused on the environmental and economic aspects, leaving social sustainability relatively underexposed. So far, impeded by the lack of theorization, integrative conceptual framework, proper contextualization, and evidence-based knowledge, our understandings of the concept of social sustainability are still fuzzy and limited (Colantonio, 2011; Åhman, 2013; Littig and Griessler, 2005). In addition, as one of the most significant social transformations of the twenty-first century, population ageing has brought challenges for nearly all sectors of urban societies and is becoming increasingly of relevance to the social sustainability of cities. A particular emphasis of social sustainability on the ageing population in cities is badly needed.
This research aims to better understand conceptually the meaning of social sustainability in ageing societies, particularly within the Chinese context, and to investigate empirically the influences of urban environmental, geographical and other contextual factors on social sustainability of elderly population in the city of Shanghai. Firstly, this research proposes an integrative conceptual framework of social sustainability that includes three key components (i.e., well-being, social justice and context), taking in particular the Chinese contextual interpretations and elderly population into account. Well-being, social justice and context show respectively what are important for a good life, how to distribute those important goods fairly among people, and the socio-cultural (Confucianism and Collectivism), institutional (Hukou system), demographic (ageing population) and geographic (Asian and Eastern) contexts that influence well-being and justice interpretations. Thereafter, focusing on well-being, social justice and context, this research provides empirical evidences to show that, hindered by Hukou’s institutional constraints, the migrant elderly people in central Shanghai in 2000 were residentially segregated from the local elderly people. Such residential segregation produced evident inequality in well-being, making migrant elderly people more disadvantaged in their urban life. During the period 2000-2010, the persistence of Hukou’s institutional constraints along with the intensified differentiations of housing price and new housing distribution had further slightly strengthened the residential segregation between local and migrant elderly people, which continuingly produced inequality in their well-being distribution.
Furthermore, this research investigates specifically the well-being effects of urban residential environments and individual resources. Several residential environmental factors (e.g., good quality residential building, good accessibility to medical and financial facilities, higher economic status of a neighbourhood, and a lower proportion of older adults in a neighbourhood) and individual factors (e.g., health and household income) are found to be important correlates of the subjective well-being of older adults in Shanghai. Health, as the most significant individual factor for older adults’ subjective well-being, is also significantly influenced by the urban residential environments. This research shows that the residential environment affects older adults’ health directly, but also indirectly through a series of significant behavioral (physical and social activities) and perceptual (subjective well-being) factors. Urban residential environments such as good housing and neighborhood quality and a safe social environment exert significant positive total effects on older adults’ subjective, physical and mental health conditions.