Surveys will go out the first week of September to 1,500 randomly selected residents throughout Columbus who are 50 or older.

Surveys will go out the first week of September to 1,500 randomly selected residents throughout Columbus who are 50 or older.

Katie White has just one word for these people when it comes to returning the surveys: Please.

White is project manager for Age-Friendly Columbus, a Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission initiative aimed at determining just how kind the city is to residents for whom the first blush of youth is a thing of the past.

The effort, which will continue through December 2017, is "critical," in the opinion of Northland resident Dave Paul, a member of one of eight subcommittees involved in Age-Friendly Columbus.

Central Ohio's population of people age 65 and older is expected to double over the next 35 years, according to MORPC.

"We need to make sure that as people age and their abilities change, they can still remain in their neighborhoods and live a high-quality life of independence and with easy access to services, amenities and community involvement opportunities," reads a press release from the commission.

"I think it's critical that we understand better how seniors can be served and how they're currently being served and try to identify some of the gaps," said Paul, chairman of the Northland Community Council's development committee who represents the Senior Services Roundtable of Columbus and Franklin County on the communication and information subcommittee for the MORPC project.

"Clearly there's a need for the area ... to make sure we're positioned to have an age-friendly population," said Councilman Michael Stinziano, chairman of the MORPC project's advisory council.

Former Councilwoman Fran Ryan is vice chairwoman of the advisory council.

"The awareness of the aging community is really at a peak right now," she said. "We're really seeing the interest evolve.

"The reason we're so excited about getting designated as age-friendly ... is the fact that we can now approach things on a holistic basis. The survey, I think, will show us where the needs are in the next couple of years: transportation, housing, nutrition, wellness and, particularly, we will get into the infrastructure. If you're going to keep seniors in their homes, you're going to need good sidewalks."

The upshot of Age-Friendly Columbus, which Stinziano said could embrace an array of policy changes throughout the city, won't benefit only one segment of the population, said Antonia Carroll, director of the Franklin County Office on Aging and a member of the advisory council for the project.

"Anything that's age-friendly is age-friendly for all population groups," she said. "A lot of the things that older people want in a neighborhood, you'll find that younger people want as well."

Age-Friendly Columbus will determine, with the help of responses to the survey, how amenable the city is to seniors, said White, by focusing on eight specific areas, or "domains," as identified by the American Association of Retired Persons in partnership with the World Health Organization.

These are:

* Outdoor spaces and buildings

* Transportation

* Housing

* Safety and emergency preparedness

* Social participation, respect and inclusion

* Civic participation and employment

* Communication and information

* Community support and health services.

As the initiative moves forward, four pilot neighborhoods identified in a Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity study as densely populated, with some residents "vulnerable" as they age, will be examined, White said. Efforts with the first two, the Hilltop and Clintonville's Beechwold area, will start sometime in September. White said she will host a meeting for older residents from both those areas to kick off the pilot projects, but those dates have not been set.

"I think we'll get good information out of (Beechwold)," said Libby Wetherholt, chairwoman of the Clintonville Area Commission and a representative of Age-Friendly Columbus.

"We want to make sure that if we're making improvements, we're making improvements for everyone," White added.

The other two pilot projects -- in the Linden area and Near East Side -- will start in the spring.

kparks@thisweeknews.com

@KevinParksTW1