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Written by Malcolm Cutchin and Graham D. Rowles.
Aging and place are two intricately related essentials of the human experience. All of us are aging, all the time. And everyone ages in the context of a set of places that are often taken-for-granted but have a large role in how we experience growing old. Yet even though gerontologists have been studying aging and place for several decades, the need for deeper understanding of this relationship, and especially its link to the well-being of older people, is increasingly urgent. The global mean age is rising rapidly. In addition, places and societies are in continual evolution and faced with ongoing crises. The dynamism of aging and place presents scientific and practical challenges to enhancing human well-being and also, depending on context, the places and people in question.
Academic and applied work on this important topic has too often relied on the perspective of ‘aging in place’, a static view premised on the idea that aging in a single place is optimal. Moving away from this rather simplified view is important, because we need to grapple with the complexities and multiple relational dynamics of ‘aging and place’. As geographers and others have continued to theorize place in the 21st century, those working in aging studies have begun to take notice. The various places through which we age—home, neighborhoods, workplaces, third spaces, communities, cities, rural places, and countries—provide a plethora of influences and experiences. Each of these diverse places offer both challenges and opportunities for aging well. Understanding how different places are involved in aging processes and outcomes is an important goal. Moreover, learning how processes of place-making and re-making as we adjust to new settings can be used to improve the experience of place for older people is part of that larger goal. This is not just a theoretical problem; for instance, around the world many are working to help communities become more ‘age friendly’. We like to think of such processes as part of enhancing ‘place integration’ (the ongoing functional coordination of person and place to address disharmony) which ultimately leads to the ‘sweet spot’ in aging and place: an imperative to which we all aspire, achieving a sense of ‘being in place’.
Gerontologists often seek to understand the aging person or persons in the context of their life course. Naturally, that life course intersects with places as well as with aging issues. Some of the most important issues in the domain of aging and place are long-lasting albeit evolving, for example, identifying the most appropriate housing, processes of migration, and creating optimal care settings. Those remain foci of research and practice, yet other issues have moved to the forefront more recently. For instance, diversity and inclusion of older adults in community and social life has become a major concern, even for those considered to be aging well. People with dementia live primarily in their own homes and communities and will continue to do so; how do we best understand what their experience of places is like and how can we make places better for their social participation and safety? Gentrification—urban renewal that often prioritizes middle-class or affluent populations over lower socio-economic status groups, including older people—is not a new process. But gentrification is now recognized as a major influence on older people and their quality of life in cities. A final example of more recent inquiry is how technology can be used to help aging populations integrate and be optimally satisfied with various types of places.
The Handbook on Aging and Place offers detailed examinations of these and other topics central to the study of aging and place. It is divided into three main sections: perspectives on place and aging; core places of aging; and making/re-making places for aging. To cover what is a global as well as topically broad field, we invited a geographically dispersed and interdisciplinary set of experts. While all contributors are successful gerontologists, they bring other disciplinary backgrounds that enable them to contribute unique insights on the complexities of aging and place. Those disciplines include architecture, psychology, geography, social work, occupational therapy, sociology, urban studies, and public health. The Handbook is more than an anthology of state-of-the-art knowledge on the topic. It presents a forward-looking set of ideas and arguments about aging and place that are critically perceptive of the gaps in understanding as well as suggestive of ways to fill those gaps.
In our conclusion to the book, we distill key thematic directions in the study of aging and place that our contributors suggest and which are likely to define research and practice in the decade to come. Among those we note that the cutting-edge narratives in the book suggest further inquiry into the role of habit in aging and place relationships; a priority to understand better how places can be therapeutic for aging people; moving beyond limiting Western perspective in gerontological thinking; and creative ways to support inclusion for older people in various types of places. Chapters in the Handbook also contribute to further theoretical development in the field, especially along the lines of relational, life course, and material perspectives on aging and place. Furthermore, we advocate that movement from theory to practice be emphasized as a trend for the future in terms of interventional and participatory approaches to making and re-making places for aging. We believe the contributions within the Handbook are important to both gerontological research and applied gerontology. As the subject of aging and place continues a renaissance, the Handbook should serve as a guide to a broad range of readers across different places and fields. The challenge is sustaining and further building an integrative imagination to grapple with the complexities of aging and place in an ever-changing world.
Edited by Malcolm Cutchin, Professor, School of Occupational Therapy, Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences and Graham D. Rowles, Emeritus Professor, Graduate Center for Gerontology, University of Kentucky, US
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