Creating Empowering Environments for People with Dementia: Addressing Inclusive Design from Homes to Cities

This edited volume addresses the environments that exacerbate, exclude, and stigmatise those living with dementia to explore designs and processes that can optimise well-being and independence.

Featuring the voices and opinions of people with dementia, the chapters showcase individual homes, special dementia facilities, different forms of care homes, and public spaces, from landscape to urbanism, as examples of how to meet the needs and preferences for those living with dementia now. As a response to a recent Cochrane meta-analysis (2022) which highlighted the problems associated with using traditional, medically orientated evaluative methods for environmental design, this book demonstrates a range of research methods that can be used to inform and investigate good co-design of dementia-enabling environments. Furthermore, the book addresses cultural differences in people’s needs and illustrates past, ongoing, and novel initiatives worldwide.

Ultimately, this timely volume focuses on person-centred design that enables empowerment, quality of life, health, and citizenship in people living with dementia. It will be of value to researchers, scholars, and postgraduate students studying gerontology, dementia specifically, and those involved with architecture and the built environment for societal benefit more broadly.

Kevin Charras is Director, at the Living Lab Aging and Vulnerabilities, Department of Geriatrics, University Hospital of Rennes, France.

Eef Hogervorst is Professor of Biological Psychology and Director of Dementia Research, Loughborough University, UK.

Sarah Wallcook is a Researcher, at the The Stockholm Gerontology Research Centre, and affiliated to the Care Research Group, Department of Social Work, at Stockholm University, Sweden.

Saskia Kuliga is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Germany and the Department of Nursing Science, Faculty of Health, at the University of Witten/Herdecke in Witten, Germany.

Bob Woods is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology of Older People, at Bangor University, UK, and former clinical psychologist specialising in dementia care.