“Urban space is shared with people whom we do not know and who do not share our views or background.”

 

—Kim Dovey (2020, p. 9)

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Overview
Most challenges in a longevity society are systemic, interconnected, and complex. How can we design food delivery and nutrition systems for senior centers that promote healthy aging? How can we redesign New York City’s public transportation system to provide more inclusive and accessible travel for people of all ages and abilities? These challenges require multidisciplinary collaboration to understand, prototype, and evaluate potential solutions.

 

This week, we will apply systems engineering methods, focusing on Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs), to identify underlying relationships, feedback loops, and system dynamics. Rather than direct solution generation, we will use CLDs to develop a deeper understanding of the problem, reveal interdependencies, and identify leverage points for design interventions.

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We will examine the concept of the urban exposome (Wood et al., 2025) as a framework for understanding how environmental, social, technological, and policy factors collectively shape health and well-being across the lifespan. Together with discussions of the City of Longevity (Palmarini & Corner, 2023), these perspectives will help us examine how cities, services, and infrastructure can be designed to support healthier, more inclusive, resilient, and age-friendly futures.
 

Reading Material

• Lee, S., & De Weck, O. (2025). Uncovering latent needs in longevity planning: A case study using mixed-methods and system modelling. Design Studies, 102, 101373. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2025.101373

• Woods, T., Palmarini, N., Corner, L., Barzilai, N., Maier, A. B., Sagner, M., Bensz, J., Strygin, A., Yadala, N., Kern, C., Ward, P., Ferrucci, L., Bischof, E. Y., Barker, R., Shiels, P. G., Guiot, G., Monti, J., Justice, J., Kennedy, B. K., & Furman, D. (2025). Cities, communities and clinics can be testbeds for human exposome and aging research. Nature Medicine, 31(4), 1066–1068. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03519-8

• Palmarini, N., & Corner, L. (2023). City of Longevity. National Innovation Centre for Ageing. https://issuu.com/nationalinnovationcentreforageing/docs/col_brochure_-_2023_-_issu_spread 

• De Weck, O.L. (2022). Impact of Technological Innovation on Industrial Ecosystems. In Technology Roadmapping and Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88346-1_19

• Goodspeed, R. (2020). Scenario Planning for Cities and Regions: Managing and Envisioning Uncertain Futures. In Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.