Rhythms, ageing and neighbourhoods

Abstract

To demonstrate the potential of time in understanding older adults’ experiences of place, this paper draws attention to the everyday temporal dimensions of ageing in urban neighbourhoods. In this qualitative research, we utilise Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis to illustrate how the rhythmic orderings of people and place come into being and inform their experiences. Rhythmanalysis proved to be a useful tool in eliciting how the social construction of ageing in social policy, with its focus on activity and work, becomes embodied in older adults’ everyday lives in terms of how they value their own rhythms. The findings reveal how the contrasting daily rhythms of the older respondents and younger residents emphasise the slowness of the rhythms of later life. To counteract the negative connotations of these slowed rhythms, respondents sought temporal anchors that would enable them to experience daily life in their neighbourhood as eventful. That the rhythms of older and younger residents were not synchronised in time and space resulted in experiencing a ‘generational divide’ that emphasised respondents’ stasis in the neighbourhood. Our findings suggest that the everyday rhythms linked to urban ageing can evoke a sense of ‘otherness’ within a neighbourhood. In the future, a challenge for societies will be to prevent neighbourhoods from becoming ensembles in which older adults feel ‘out of sync’ and out of place.

Re-engaging with places: Understanding bio-geo-graphical disruption and flow in adult brain injury survivors

“…Another avenue for further research is the mobility of ABI survivors. Insights into post-stroke mobility, or connections between meaningful places, could be drawn out more through use of mobile methods such as walking interviews (Lager et al, 2016). Furthermore, the role of virtual places in the renegotiation of everyday interactions with places, which was not part of the current research, is a promising avenue for further research.…”

When the spell is broken: gentrification, urban tourism and privileged discontent in the Amsterdam canal district

“…Nonetheless, the tourist spectacle is perceived to increasingly disrupt the daily rhythm of the area, not only due to their sheer numbers, but also to the 'other' ways of using space, reflecting generational differences as much as different classed identities. 52 When tourists perform the area differently than considered appropriate by long-term gentrifiers, the spell is broken. Their experiences can perhaps best be understood as a post-gentrification story: moving into the neighbourhood in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, our respondents remade the neighbourhood and the city to match their lifestyles and for a while achieved a form of dwelling.…”

Rural geographies in the wake of non‐representational theories

“…This means in practice maintaining a research diary, for example, that records the multiple textures of the rural spaces and places you are in, by attending to: the images of a space or place you are in as well as those associated with it and their affective capacities (Roberts, ); the materialities of a space and place; the everyday performances and practices ongoing in a space and their associated temporalities (cf. Lager, Van Hoven, & Huigen, , on rhythm); any implicit or explicit rules a space or place may have; and the interrelated affects, feelings, and emotions (Anderson, , ) that a space and place has. Within rural spaces, a research diary could record the daily social routines of greeting on village high streets, paintings depicting a rural idyll in contrast to derelict buildings, the feelings and emotions of interview participants about their bond to their rural space, and the feelings experienced by the researcher when immersed in their rural locale of study.…”