Coping with Rural Change: Finding a Place for the Elderly in Sustainable Communities

This paper reports on some individual constructions of ageing and how these relate to the mutual sustainability of lives and communities in the changing rurality of New Zealand in the 1990s. The Arena Society model is used to organise a discussion of the impact of technology on settlement systems, with reference to changes in the provision of banking services and their impact on the elderly. The views of older people living in the village of Tirau in the Waikato are used to ground the analysis in human experience. The concluding discussion focuses on the potential contribution of older rural residents to the ‘multiple agency’ that communities will need for survival in the ‘open society’.