Does spatial proximity supplant family ties? Exploring the role of neighborly support for older people in diverse, aging cities

“That is when you realize your age”—A spatial approach to age(ing)

“…Seemingly objective criteria, such as retirement age, are merely individual perspectives on ageing that are constantly made and re-made by older individuals (Barron 2021b), and even prove irrelevant in specific contexts, as we will show below. Diverse subjective experiences and imaginations that cannot be separated from a person's biography impact what is ascribed to older age and how a person experiences this stage of life (Enßle and Helbrecht 2020). Likewise, no age group is able to exist without relationships to other age groups, because if we understand "age as being produced in the interactions between different people, then it becomes more difficult to talk about geographies of children, older people or anyone else in isolation" (Hopkins and Pain 2007, 288).…”

“…Pain et al (2000) have shown impressively how people use leisure spaces and the home to prevent becoming part of the group "older people" (also Mowl et al 2000). Thus, images of later life unfold in close relationship to spaces as people deliberately use space to display a certain image (Enßle and Helbrecht 2020). Beyond the personal experience of becoming an older person, space matters for the social construction of later life (Barron 2021a(Barron , 2021b.…”

“…The group scripts their own plays, which are based on the life stories of the group members-for example the biographies of two older gay protagonists and how they became who they are today. Conversations about the ageing process make apparent that the older person comes into being in relation to their younger self (see also van Dyk 2015b;Enßle and Helbrecht 2020). Compared to earlier times, older age is perceived as freedom, as Lora (FG II, 13) puts it: "I had several relationships with men and two with women.…”

“…Existing research in geographical gerontology has soundly demonstrated that space matters in later life: spatial contexts form the material world older people live in and thus impact living conditions and quality of later life (e.g., Buffel et al 2013;Knight et al 2018;Carroll et al 2020). Spatial concepts such as proximity and distance impact older people's social networks (e.g., Conkova and King 2019;Enßle et al 2020); spatialities shape the realm of imaginations and ideas about later life and vice versa (Pain et al 2000;Enßle and Helbrecht 2018;Maclaren 2019). Most of these studies focus on "older people" as a social group, thus employing age as a structural category.…”

“…Moreover, two further aspects add to the complexity of age(ing) (see Figure 1): first, the (dual) relationality of the ageing process in relation to people of other age groups and to one's own biography (van Dyk 2015b) and second, the entanglement of age(ing) with other social categories. From an intersectional perspective, the experience of the ageing process and of being an older person is inseparably related to other social categories, such as gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, social class, and bodily ability (e.g., Calasanti 1996;Enßle and Helbrecht 2020;Finlay 2021). It is against the backdrop of the threefold multidimensionality of age(ing), meaning the concurring aspects of (1) its character as category and process, (2) the dual relationality of the ageing process, and (3) the entanglement of age (ing) with other social categories, that we propose a spatial perspective to capture the process of ageing.…”