Who Will Plan for "Ageing in Place"?

Governance of Affordable Housing for a Growing Senior Population in Switzerland 

Blogpost by Dr. Deniz Ay based on her paper presentation at AESOP (Association of European Schools of Planning) Conference 2025 in Istanbul, July 7-11.

Ageing as a Planning Challenge

Switzerland, like many OECD countries, is getting older — and fast. The growing percentage of seniors is not just a health and social policy issue, but also a major urban planning challenge. Housing sits at the centre of this transformation.
Older adults increasingly want to “age in place”: to remain in their own homes and communities rather than moving into retirement institutions. This preference is not only about comfort and autonomy — it’s also part of public policy strategies to reduce the costs of institutional care. But what happens when existing housing stock no longer fits?
Ageing in place requires more accessible apartments, smaller and more affordable units, proximity to public transport, and socially cohesive neighbourhoods where care does not become a fully commodified service but remains embedded in everyday life. Right now, Swiss municipalities are struggling to align housing, land policy, and social services to meet these demands.

The Politics of “Ageing in Place”

On paper, ageing in place sounds like a win-win: seniors stay independent, municipalities save money, and families avoid the burden of full-time institutional care. But the reality is more complicated.
There is a policy paradox at play: seniors are encouraged to remain at home, yet suitable housing options are scarce and often unaffordable. The shortage is especially acute for low- and middle-income households. This raises critical questions about responsibility: Who should ensure that housing adapts to demographic change?

Who Are the Key Actors?

My research looks at how different actors — municipalities, housing cooperatives, and private businesses — respond to the challenge of providing age-appropriate housing in Switzerland.
I focus on five recent projects in the Canton of Bern:

• Lutertalpark, Langnau and Am Hof: cooperative initiatives often supported by municipalities through land leases.
• Bolligen Domicil and Zollikofen Senetiva: private initiatives developed through rezoning processes and long-term rental contracts.

In all of these cases, municipalities sit at the core of the response. They decide how land is allocated, whether projects receive support, and how care responsibilities are distributed between public, cooperative, and private providers. Municipalities balance efficiency in land use with the goal of maintaining a socially mixed age composition. Housing cooperatives experiment with collective living arrangements that combine affordability with community care, though they still face long-term challenges for maintaining this structure. Private actors — investors, developers, and care providers — enter the field with profit-driven or service-oriented models, often in close negotiation with municipalities.

Why Switzerland?

Switzerland offers a unique case for studying the governance of ageing in place:
Policies for housing, land, and ageing are highly decentralized, leaving municipalities with significant autonomy but also uneven capacities.
The country has one of the fastest-ageing populations in Europe, without policies to reverse demographic trends through higher birth rates.
This makes ageing an accepted, rather than avoided, policy challenge — and a fertile ground to study new governance arrangements.

Key Lessons from the Case Studies

The projects in Bern reveal how ageing in place depends on complex actor constellations:
Land provision is critical: cooperatives benefit from long-term ground leases from municipalities, while private initiatives rely on rezoning and planning obligations.
Project development takes different routes: cooperatives often emerge from local councils seeking community-based solutions, while private investors push projects through architectural competitions and market-driven models.
Across all cases, the question of affordability looms large. Cooperative models reduce costs in the long run, but new units are rarely affordable at the outset. Municipal support is essential, yet not sufficient to ensure equitable access.

What Next?

If Switzerland is serious about ageing in place, housing provision cannot remain a side note. Some possibilities for policy innovation include

• Strengthening non-owner housing cooperatives.
• Expanding publicly owned rental housing.
• Encouraging the transformation of single-family homes into subdivided units.
• Introducing quotas for age-appropriate housing in new developments, similar to existing affordable housing quotas.

Conclusion

Age-appropriate housing is not just about buildings — it is about governance. Who plans, who pays, and who benefits? Municipalities, cooperatives, and private actors each play a role, but their interaction determines whether ageing in place remains an option only for the well-off, or becomes a viable path for all.
By situating the question of senior housing within broader urban governance debates, we can see that ageing in place is not simply a personal preference. It is a political, economic, and spatial issue — one that forces us to rethink the responsibilities of municipalities, the potential of cooperatives, and the limits of market-driven housing models.