Disengagement as Withdrawal From Public Space: Rethinking the Relation Between Place Attachment, Place Appropriation, and Identity-Building Among Older Adults

Background and Objectives: Empirical research indicates that engagement with public space decreases with age. Why do some older adults withdraw from the public, and which role does the (urban) environment play in spatial (dis-)engagement? Environmental gerontology's model of person-environment (PE) fit suggests an interrelation between agency and belonging and their causal effects on identity and wellbeing in later life. However, there is little research on how these dimensions are actually related. This study sets out to investigate this relationship and how PE can be better adapted for deprived neighborhoods. Research Design and Methods: The study follows a qualitative case studies approach, focusing on a deprived neighborhood in Vienna, Austria. Nonparticipant observations were conducted at this site and complemented by 13 episodic interviews with older residents. Results: The results challenge PE's model of interrelation between agency and belonging and their causal effects on identity, wellbeing, and autonomy in later life. Spatial agency in the deprived neighborhood was intense but so was spatial alienation and distancing oneself from one's neighborhood. Drawing on notions of territorial stigma, this might be a coping strategy to prevent one's self-identity from being "stained". Which strategy is being adopted by whom depends on the position and the trajectory in social and physical space. Discussion and Implications: PE can be complemented with intersubjective measures of environmental conditions (e.g., stigma) and spatial engagement. Gerontology should proceed to consider not only the poor, disadvantaged, disengaged elderly, but also the rebellious, resisting, provocative new generation of older adults.