Age-Friendly for Whom? An Aperture to the Lived Experiences of Older San Franciscans

Abstract

Abstract Background and Objectives Spatial practices and changing urban environments affecting identity, experiences, and everyday life were examined among a diverse sample of older adults as they negotiated and navigated an age-friendly city. Research Design and Methods Ethnographic interviews, observations, and visual methods were used to understand spatial practices and lived experiences of 4 older adults, who chronicled their lives using disposable cameras. Results Informant identities emerged in their everyday practices, reflecting varied positionalities that fundamentally shaped their notions of “age-friendly.” Informants sought to sustain or improve their lives while attempting to negotiate socioenvironmental forms and forces that often threatened their identity and increased their precarity. Discussion and Implications Contrast exists between “invariant” macro/meso issues all older adults face as they age and “multivariant” ways in which age is accomplished based on place, biography, and intersectionality. Age-friendly environments may simultaneously maintain the status quo and exacerbate inequalities. Gerontology must take seriously how stratified life chances can undermine seemingly universal potential benefits of age-friendly environments.