Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Demographic aging and expanding early childhood care demands have generated a structural challenge for contemporary urban communities: conventional service systems address elderly and young populations in parallel, age-segregated siloes that foreclose the complementary intergenerational exchanges capable of serving both groups simultaneously. This problem is especially acute in China, where rapid urbanization, housing redevelopment, and the transition beyond the one-child policy have simultaneously intensified both the social isolation of elderly residents and the caregiving pressures on young families, while eroding the informal intergenerational bonds that historically mediated between them. Grounded in multi-case research across two primary field sites—Xinguang Community (Wuxi) and Hongqiao Community (Shanghai)—and three international reference cases, and drawing on participatory observation, in-depth interviews, co-creation workshops, and service blueprint analysis conducted with over 200 community residents, this paper presents a Design-Driven Intergenerational Integration (DDII) framework that systematically combines service design methodology, co-creation practice, and intergenerational integration theory to address this challenge in Chinese urban community education contexts, constructing a three-stage "Senior-Youth Pairing" service model and a Community 4.0 governance architecture featuring a graded volunteer cultivation system (Community Expert 1.0–3.0) that demonstrate how service design and co-creation can function not merely as tools for service improvement but as institutional catalysts for sustainable intergenerational community infrastructure—generating the governance conditions, relational bonds, and collective ownership that enable intergenerational programs to become endogenous community practices rather than externally facilitated projects.</p>