From Spatial Breach to Spatial Recovery: Affective Atmospheres, Mobility Rhythms, and Social Infrastructures during Housing Relocation

This article explores how older adults experience relocation and adjust to life amid processes of urban renewal. Transformations in their physical and social surroundings can unsettle established routines and weaken place attachment, a disruption often compounded by age-related physical and cognitive constraints. Even so, the relocated participants exhibit adaptive resilience, developing new mobility patterns that allow them to engage with affective atmospheres and social infrastructures across different settings. The research project employed a qualitative geographic information systems approach, integrating sedentary and go-along interviews with Global Positioning System tracking techniques. It involved forty-one older adults living in Dawson, a housing site in Singapore where former residents of a mature estate, Tanglin Halt, were relocated under Singapore’s Selective En Bloc Redevelopment Scheme. These older adults participate in diverse affective atmospheres and modes of place-making during adaptation, which this article argues are not reducible to place attachment and belonging alone. Rather, their explorations across neighborhoods cultivate autonomy and evoke affective responses such as nostalgia, curiosity, and wonder—feelings that broaden and enrich the experience of aging. By highlighting the interconnections between affective atmospheres, mobility practices, and social infrastructures in later life, the study offers deeper insight into aging and urban renewal.