An urban geography of the Third Age: Canadian metropolitan segregation and community cohesion in Calgar

This study focuses on the urban geography of the elderly by emphasizing the metropolitan linkages between the structural aging of populations and the way in which such change impacts on the locational dimensions in which elderly people live their lives. Two conceptual devices are used to integrate two seemingly separate issues.;The Theory of the Third Age provides a conceptual framework to explore the urban social implications of aging, particularly through changes in the life course and the potential for place-based communities to contribute to individual self-fulfillment. The characteristics and spatial manifestations of the Third Age in Canada are identified. Particular attention is given to intra-urban age segregation (voluntary and involuntary) as one geographical characteristic of a metropolitan Third Age.;A second conceptual framework on the multidimensional structure of place-based communities is welded to the idea of the Third Age. The concept of "community" in the Third Age is empirically tested in terms of a set of behavioural, cognitive, and affective dimensions associated with place-based communities. Seventeen dimensions of community are empirically derived (PCA analysis) from a case study of 598 residents living in in-situ aging areas and age segregated retirement villages in Calgary, Alberta. Similarities and differences in the spatial manifestation of these community dimensions in the two types of residential setting are identified.;Since place-community may contribute to self-fulfillment in the Third Age, Well-Being and Self-Actualization is measured in the two residential contexts, and the relationship between the community dimensions and these indices is identified. Although place-based "community" does significantly contribute to or explain variations in Well-Being and Self-Actualization in the Third Age, the level of explanation is weak, and is more important in retirement villages.;The study points to the potential for increased intra-urban social differentiation in the Third Age. Structural aging, involuntary and voluntary age segregation, and the differential experience and manifestation of community may be contributing to unequal intra-urban geographies of self-fulfillment. Yet the fact that the role of place-based community is only partial is a cogent reminder that age segregation may not be a panacea to self-fulfillment in the Third Age.