Being an age friendly city is about improving traffic lights, public toilets and other urban amenities and infrastructure so that older people can enjoy easy access.

Coordinator of the 11 agencies that successfully lobbied the Tauranga City Council into adopting the World Health Organisation's Age Friendly City programme, Carole Gordon, says its main affect is to improve urban environments in a way that will pay.

The move is being driven by the baby boomers; the first of the generation born between 1946 and 1964, turning 65 this year, and now driving major demographic, economic and social changes.

The number of New Zealanders turning 65 over the next year, from June 2011 to June 2012, is expected to be 18 per cent more than last year.

In 10 years, the number of New Zealanders aged 65 and older is expected to double to more than one million.

The baby boomers will be healthier, better educated and have more spending power than any other generation reaching 65 in New Zealand's history, says Carole.

'It's how you adapt all sorts of services and how you plan the city so that it keeps them engaged in life and keeps them well.

'That's part of that mind shift – how do we keep them well, because we can't afford for them to be unwell.

'The great majority are well educated, take pride in their well being and want to have an active life, so that's really the lead edge of where Tauranga can have leadership.

'We can be a vibrant city of mature people. Baby boomers are never going to want to call themselves old. They will never embrace this oldie stuff, never.

'So the whole connotation of mobility scooters doesn't spell out the age group we are talking about.”

An example of how age friendliness works is pedestrian timing at traffic lights.

The Tauranga City Council recently introduced the Barnes Dance phasing of the Devonport Road/Elizabeth Street crossing.

The Barnes Dance is the holding of all vehicles on a red light to allow pedestrians to cross the intersection diagonally.

'They didn't apply an age friendly analysis,” says Carole.

'Even a normal able person of any age still only gets halfway across the street before the lights change red.

'In Auckland they have internationally recognised light modes.

'You get a green light man that is walking, then when you are almost to the other side – because the timing is adjusted – a red man comes on with a countdown of the time you have available to get to the kerb.

'So that's an age friendly approach. We haven't got that, but we are going to have a quarter of our population over 65 in the next 10 years.”

Cities that have followed the age friendly path overseas have reaped significant economic benefits, says Carole.

A Canadian city boosted visitor numbers by a third by asking the older visitors what they wanted.

In Tauranga, all the older visitors come off the cruise ships, they arrive in campervans or move into the city with their families.

The overseas passengers can be catered for by replacing the blue toilets at the base of the Mount with a 'decent clean proper toilet that every one of all ages can use,” says Carole.

'As a work programme proceeds, you make improvements – as they do with the Hopper Bus system, where they are adapting their bus routes to meet where their customers are.”

And the older people bring their wealth and spend it in the city, says Carole.

'Peter Farmer at Farmer Motor Group – he claps his hands with glee.

'He knows where his money comes from because older people buy new cars.

'We have to shift this conceptual framework that people come here to die.

'The future contribution of baby boomers will be the biggest set of consumers the world has ever known.”

While the council has taken a globally forward thinking position, joining the WHO programme is not the be-all and end-all, says Carole.

'We wanted staff resources allocated in this annual plan to work on developing strategy in the Ten Year Plan,” says Carole.

'The city can go ahead and do whatever it likes without joining WHO for goodness sake.

'That's minor detail and is not a requirement.

'The important thing is to make adjustments to the policies locally.”