By Della Hasselle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Crosswalks in more than 400 intersections in the city have had four seconds added to them in an effort to make New York safer for the elderly.
Pedestrians at the crosswalks now have 29 seconds to get across the street, up from 25 seconds.
As part of its initiative to make the city more "age-friendly" it is also about to create two age-improving districts in East Harlem and the Upper West Side, the New York Times reported.
The city is hoping these efforts will make New York a more attractive retirement place for the baby boomer generation.
"New York has become a safer city, and we have a richness of parks and culture that we’re becoming a senior retirement destination," Linda I. Gibbs, New York’s deputy mayor for health and human services, told the Times.
The goal of the districts is to encourage businesses to voluntarily include amenities, like extra benches, adequate lighting, menus with large type and window stickers that identify the places that cater to the elderly.
"The whole conversation around aging has, in my mind, gone from one which is kind of disease-oriented and tragic, end of life oriented," Gibbs said to the Times, to "much more about the strength and fidelity and the energy that an older population contributes to our city."
The initiative has great economic potential, officials said. The Department of City Planning predicts that, by 2030, the number of New Yorkers 65 and older is expected to increase by 44 percent from 2000, up to 1.35 million, the Times reported.
The New York Academy of Medicine got the idea to make New York more age-friendly from the World Health Organization in 2007, and have received financial and political support from City Council and the Bloomberg administration, according to the Times.
Some people worry that Bloomberg is offering a fast fix to a bigger problem, when other city services like senior centers and bus routes are being cut.
"When we’re talking about age-friendly, it should not only be the boomers who have retired from law firms, as opposed to the people who have worked all their lives and are now living in Brownsville," David Jones, president of the Community Service Society, told the Times.
