“A neighbourhood of necessity”: creating home and neighbourhood within subsidised aged housing in Durban, South Africa

This study illuminates the concept of "aging in place" in terms of functional, symbolic, and emotional attachments and meanings of homes, neighbourhoods, and communities. It investigates how older people understand the meaning of "aging in place," a term widely used in aging policy and research but underexplored with older people themselves. Older people (n = 121), ranging in age from 56 to 92 years, participated in focus groups and interviews in 2 case study communities of similar size in Aotearoa New Zealand, both with high ratings on deprivation indices. The question, "What is the ideal place to grow older?" was explored, including reflections on aging in place. Thematic and narrative analyses on the meaning of aging in place are presented in this paper. Older people want choices about where and how they age in place. "Aging in place" was seen as an advantage in terms of a sense of attachment or connection and feelings of security and familiarity in relation to both homes and communities. Aging in place related to a sense of identity both through independence and autonomy and through caring relationships and roles in the places people live. Aging in place operates in multiple interacting ways, which need to be taken into account in both policy and research. The meanings of aging in place for older people have pragmatic implications beyond internal "feel good" aspects and operate interactively far beyond the "home" or housing.

Questions of 'who we are' are often intimately related to questions of 'where we are', an idea captured in the environmental psychological concept of place-identity. The value of this concept is that it attends to the located nature of subjectivity, challenging the disembodied notions of identity preferred by social psychologists. The topic of place identity would thus seem to be a productive point around which the sub-disciplines of social and environmental psychology might meet, answering calls for greater disciplinary cross-fertilization. This study contributes to this project by presenting a sympathetic but critical evaluation of research on place-identity. It argues that such research is valuable in that it has established the importance of place for creating and sustaining a sense of self. However, drawing on recent developments in discursive approaches to social psychology, the authors identify several limitations with existing work on place-identity. This critique is then developed through analysis of an ongoing research programme located in the changing landscapes of the new South Africa.