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

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.

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.

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.

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.