Since ‘coming of age’ in the 1970s, environmental gerontology has had much to say on the ways in which space, place and environment interact with the ageing process. If there is one thing we can be sure of from this work, it is that where we age matters for our health and wellbeing, our identity and for the nature of our interactions. So, this useful edited volume is following a well-trod path in asking how best to provide public and private spaces that can foster a sense of belonging or homeliness for older people. Where it diverges is in its ambition to translate research on place attachment, environment and ageing into practical recommendations for the making and development of, to borrow the phrase from the subtitle, ‘meaningful places in old age’.
Twelve chapters, each preceded by a brief overview written by the editors, are presented across five sections. The first addresses the meaning of place in residential and public spaces, offering a conceptual and historical overview of the sub-discipline and raising important issues about how we conceptualise environment, space and, especially, place in ageing studies. The second section explores the making of home in private residences, while the third explores the well-trod, but no less important issue of how people make meaning during the move to assisted living and longer-term supportive environments. The fourth section explores the outdoor environments, including how older people transform unfamiliar into familiar environments and intergenerationally supportive public spaces. The final section serves to synthesise the varied themes and ideas discussed in the preceding chapters as well as to present a framework for guidance and recommendations for practice. In common with the sub-discipline that shares its title, this is an interdisciplinary multi-methodological (though tending more towards the qualitative), and theoretically diverse volume. It goes beyond now established arguments about ‘environmental press’ or humanistic understandings of experiential places to consider older people as active place-makers. The geographical contexts are international in scope though with a primacy on urbanised areas and, with the exception of Singapore, focus on Western Europe and North America.
Putting together an interdisciplinary, multi-methodological text is a difficult act to balance. Sometimes, contributions can be overly complex for neophyte readers, who in turn might have liked deeper analysis in those chapters with more familiar content. Like most readers of edited volumes of such diversity, I have my preferred chapters – in this case, those chapters that deal with the world beyond the front door – which for me offer some important insight into what it means to experience ageing in and through public spaces. But to single these chapters out for individual attention would be to detract from the quality of all the contributions. There is, for example, much to learn and reflect on in chapters on the meaning of home for childless older women; how people with dementia experience institutional spaces; or how people make home-like places in assisted living environments. Indeed, those chapters that cover what might (with good reason) be considered the mainstay of environmental gerontology: of private homes and long-term care environments, all offer fresh insights. Likewise, there are useful attempts to add to existing theoretical positions, but also develop alternatives (e.g. Dewey's geographical pragmatism; environmental positioning; and the concept of connectness). Cumulatively then, this is an up-to-date, empirically rich collection of studies, well situated in theoretical contexts, that offers a welcome contribution for researchers and students seeking to survey the contemporary state of the sub-discipline.
Being critical, at times the text lapses into the more familiar territory of home- rather than place-making, and can overlook some of the political and structural factors that enable and constrain the place-making process. Considered as a whole there is, perhaps, also tendency to treat each of the environments discussed in the chapters as juxtaposed, discrete blocks (public and private, for example) that are nested in a hierarchy of scales (from home to street to town centre, for example) rather than a collection of interconnecting constellations of experiences, structures and practices constrained and enabled through space. Consideration of what constitutes ‘the environment’ in environmental gerontology is, though, a challenge for another text. And while it remains to be seen whether the recommendations from each of the chapters will make it into the practice of making meaningful places (however defined), this is a book that demonstrates clearly the on-going importance of understanding the relationship between ageing and environment.
