Older People and Social Connectedness: How Place and Activities Keep People Engaged

To understand how older adults perceive and navigate their neighborhoods, we examined the implications of activity in their neighborhoods for their health. We interviewed 38 adults (ages 62–85) who lived in San Francisco or Oakland, California. Seven key themes emerged: (1) people express a wide range of expectations for neighborliness, from “we do not bother each other” to “we have keys to each other’s houses”, (2) social distance between “other” people impede a sense of connection, (3) ethnic differences in living arrangements affect activities and activity locations, (4) people try to stay busy, (5) people able to leave their homes do many activities outside their immediate residential neighborhoods, (6) access to a car is a necessity for most, and (7) it is unusual to plan for the future when mobility might become limited. Multiple locations influence older adults’ health, including residential neighborhoods. Older adults value mobility, active lives, and social connections. 1. Introduction The phenomenon known as “aging in place” refers to the people wanting to stay in their residence as they age [1–3]; indeed, in the US only, about 5% of people age 55 and over move each year, and half of those who do move stay in the same county [4]. Therefore, understanding the dynamic of older adults in their residential neighborhoods is important for social policy and public health programs in an aging US. As people age and their physical mobility decreases, it is assumed that their geographic world shrinks [5]. While it is relatively unclear at what ages, what levels of functional ability, or in what ways or why older adults pare down the territory in which they act, the residential neighborhood is assumed to be at the center of range. Here, neighborhood refers to individuals’ perceptions of their residential environment. This could be a historically recognized area with a name (e.g., Chinatown) or an area that is bounded by certain streets generally accepted by those who live within it to be a neighborhood. In this paper, we examine the perceptions and uses older people make of their neighborhood and the implications for health. A review of the quantitative literature (1997–2007) describing how neighborhoods might be associated with health for older adults identified some key limitations: (1) primarily cross-sectional studies, (2) not taking into consideration specific characteristics of older people (e.g., functional capacity and household composition), and (3) few studies which featured ethnic minority study samples [6]. Most of the quantitative literature