“For a Younger Crowd”: Place, Belonging, and Exclusion among Older Adults Facing Neighborhood Change

Abstract

Cities are gentrifying, yet we know little about the experience of older adults aging in gentrifying areas. Most research has focused on a shortage of affordable housing and threat of eviction for low-income residents but has paid less attention to age. This trend neglects a fuller understanding of place’s heightened significance for older people and how commercial gentrification threatens their possibilities to connect in non-institutional, intergenerational spaces. Drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork among older adults in a gentrified New York City neighborhood, this paper examines the significance of “third places” for longtime residents. I find that features of establishments such as proximity (distance from study participants’ residences), cost, physical design and layout, and surveillance shaped how different neighborhood places facilitated face-to-face interaction and a sense of ownership that supported participants’ independence as they aged in place. This paper contributes to limited scholarly knowledge about older people’s experiences of gentrification and neighborhood change, an understudied area of growing concern as population aging converges with the increasing desirability and cost of living in urban areas.