Introduction

The age-friendly cities movement has gained global enthusiasm for its efforts to address the multiple, interacting layers of the social world that influence the degree to which older adults are integrated in their communities (WHO, 2007). Many of the age-friendly initiatives implemented around the world have developed and occurred in parallel with the continued elaboration of academic research in environmental gerontology and related fields. Although these two streams have not always cross-fertilised, emergent and intersecting processes in the 21st century such as increasing globalisation, urban renewal and gentrification, and population ageing highlight the fact that both enterprises share common concerns and objectives, and they also share some common limitations. In this chapter, we articulate two key challenges, shared by prevailing paradigms in both age-friendly initiatives and the scholarly field of environmental gerontology: microfication and erasure. Then, using examples of two current issues facing many older people globally, we demonstrate how rapid social change in population processes underscores the need for concerted, multi-level consideration of the forces affecting the wellbeing of older adults.

The development of environmental gerontology

From its beginnings, environmental gerontology has been concerned with focusing on how environment and context may be arranged to enable older people to optimise and sustain high levels of physical, mental and social functioning. For example, early work such as Lewin's ‘living space model’ (1951), Lawton and Nahemow's (1973) ‘ecological theory of aging’ and Lawton's (1986) ‘press-competence model’ were developed as part of efforts to understand the interactions between older individuals and their environments. Studies in environmental gerontology have examined the socio-spatial implications of ageing and its complex relationship with the environment at the micro-level (for example, home and family) and at more encompassing levels of social organisation (such as neighbourhood, city, region – see, for example, Wahl et al, 2004). In doing so, scholars of environmental gerontology have pushed the agenda of social and environmental planning and policies to improve the experience of ageing. They have sought to advance ‘ageing in place’ and awareness of the importance of place attachment and spatial experience to older individuals and their conceptualisation of place as a home (Andrews and Phillips, 2005).