Towards an elderly-friendly society: how much has the elderly’s well-being been taken into account in the provision of urban public services?

Population aging has become the development trend of cities globally. This phenomenon nevertheless presents the challenges to the carrying capacity of urban public services in protecting elderly’s well-being. It is therefore important to have a proper method for conducting rigorous assessment on this carrying capacity, thus the weak areas can be identified and proper measures can be taken to enhance the capacity. This paper presents an innovative method for assessing urban public services carrying capacity (UPSCC) from the perspective of elderly’s well-being. The method incorporates both the carriers and loads of urban public services. In developing this assessment method, Maslow’s hierarchical needs theory and Existence Relatedness and Growth (ERG) theory are referred jointly to delineate the profile of elderly’s nuanced needs and demystify UPSCC carriers and loads, and their interactions. The applicability of the proposed assessment model is exemplified via the empirical case study in referring to four municipalities in China. The results indicate that UPSCC varies significantly between overloaded and underutilised among the four municipalities. The empirical findings provide valuable references for the case cities to formulate tailor-made policy instruments to better develop and utilise urban public services in addressing the challenges brought by population aging.