Making Meaningful Places in Old Age

When it comes to understanding how older adults experience their surroundings and the implications this can have for their health and well-being, environmental gerontology is fundamental. Recently, research in this field has paid particular attention to the ways in which older adults relate to place and space. From the outset, the editors of this book, Graham D. Rowles and Miriam Bernard, define spaces as “locations within a Cartesian world that, in and of themselves, have no meaning” (p. xii) and places as “those same locations transformed through processes of habitation and life experience into sites of great meaning that reinforce individual and group identity” (p. xii). They argue that we should be concerned with space and place because, “Of one thing we are sure: space matters, but place matters even more, because it captures the essence of meaning in life” (p. 20). The aim of the book is to examine these two concepts and the meaningful ways in which they feature in older adults’ lives to construct a current landscape of this burgeoning area. Key topics are considered, such as structural and functional space (mobility, architecture, design), and public/private places (home and communities, ownership, attachments, social aspects) in the context of studies and insights contributed by a range of well-respected international authors.

As a PhD student studying relationships between nature, health, and well-being in later life, I was eager to review this book. The words Meaningful Places were of particular interest to me, because I believe that environmental gerontology is in need of a revived explanation of what various environments can mean to older adults and how and why older adults attribute meaning to place. After having read the book, I was not disappointed.

Structurally, the book consists of 12 chapters divided into five parts. Part 1 focuses upon The Meaning of Place in Residential and Public Spaces and provides a theoretical and conceptual overview of the field. Rowles and Bernard usefully note that the meaning of place in later life has been documented over the past 36 years. It should be said, however, that the recent literature is strongly dominated by a focus upon home and housing, thus leaving scope for further research.

An editors’ introduction welcomes each chapter of Parts 2, 3, and 4, providing the reader with an overview that may prove useful for readers such as students, researchers, and practitioners who want to quickly establish the relevance of each chapter for their personal purpose. The content of Parts 2, 3, and 4 represent the main body of the book. Each chapter applies the theories and concepts delineated in chapter 1, albeit from varied perspectives, in relation to Private Residences, Long-Term Care Environments, and Public Spaces, respectively.

In Part 2, chapter 3, Oswald and Wahl draw upon follow-up data from the ENABLE-AGE project to comment upon the relationship between private housing, autonomy in old age, and the notion of healthy aging. In doing so, they emphasize the importance of focusing on both belonging and agency together when considering housing in old age, and they promote the idea that we “reliably and validly” assess these concepts to determine how satisfied older people are in their houses. Interestingly, this is in contrast to the approach taken by de Medeiros, Rubinstein, and Doyle in chapter 4, whose focus is upon the narrative and environmental positioning of older adults in the context of their home environment. They explain how meanings attributed to environmental features vary depending upon the position of the individual. In this sense, belonging and agency should be considered in context via in-depth research methods that adhere to narrative theory—an approach that I believe is somewhat overlooked within environmental gerontology. In addition, their chapter is valuable to the field of aging, because it gives voice to a minority group (childless older women), which acts to highlight the socially constructed meanings of home and how these meanings can implicate in the lives of the “other.”

Part 3 bridges the gap between private and public space with the example of long-term care environments, which, as Cutchin, O'Shea, Walsh, Chaudhury, Cooke, and Frazee illustrate, can act as either. What shines through in this part of the book is the usefulness of a person-centered approach for this area of study.

Not surprisingly, the part of this book dedicated to Public Spaces deals with issues of mobility, functional capacity, and the design of space in relation to age. The focus resides either on towns or purpose-built housing communities. What this chapter reinforces for me is something that is becoming increasingly apparent throughout environmental gerontology literature: the discussion of public spaces overlooks natural spaces, or places of nature. Although the authors’ contributions are extremely useful in making key points for the field of environmental gerontology, such as advocating the importance of longitudinal studies and recognizing the embodiment of place with the meaning-making process of the construction of place, nature seems to remain an area in need of further exploration.

A neatly planned ending to the book consists of a reflective chapter written by the editors to form Part 5, Challenges of Application. This chapter may be of particular value to researchers and practitioners, since Bernard and Rowles highlight how the former content can be translated into practical applications and the challenges that can arise from this.

As noted by Bartlam, Bernard, Liddle, Scharf, and Sim (chapter 11), “Exploring the relationship between individuals and the environment(s) in which they live requires a range of perspectives and approaches in order to begin to capture its complex, multi-dimensional nature” (p. 254). I believe the book successfully does this by incorporating a diverse range of data, from the use of a personal e-mail (chapter 10), case studies (chapters 4 and 8), interview data, focus groups, and photographs (chapters 6, 9, and 11), and vignettes (chapter 5) to structured models, graphs and statistical tables (chapters 3 and 7). Arguably, the editors appreciate the different angles from which information can be understood and interpreted, which I consider to be a major strength of this book, especially in terms of its ability to reach varied and widespread audiences.

To date, the field of environmental gerontology has been predominantly based on context-independent research (Schwarz, 2013). In order to develop the field of environmental gerontology, Scheidt and Schwarz (2013), among others, express the need for more research that acknowledges the context of everyday practices. Crucially, they emphasize the need for research that examines the relationship(s) between people and their “sociophysical” environment. The multidisciplinary format of Environmental Gerontology: Making Meaningful Places in Old Age provides a proficient response to these calls, which adds to the excitement of being “on the threshold of a new era in our knowledge and understanding of older people's relationship to place, an era in which environmental gerontology has the potential to use deepening understanding of the manner in which older adults relate to place…helping us make progress along a path toward greater…awareness of the lived experience of older adults, which has the potential to improve quality of life for us all” (pp. 19–20). It is my hope that this book represents the shape of things to come in the field of environmental gerontology: a multidimensional foundation from which we can “know our place.”

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