Aging in the Right Place: Participatory and Community Mapping for Collaborative Working and Knowledge Co-Creation

Tenets of aging in the right place emphasize the importance of creating accessible and inclusive environments that enable older people to maintain their health and well-being through developing a sense of belonging, autonomy, independence, safety, and security. Creating functional and “meaningful” environments for aging extends beyond altering physical surroundings and requires consideration of the psychosocial and cultural aspects of places and spaces. This chapter examines the role of place in the lives of older people through the use of participatory and community mapping as an innovative visual and participatory technique for including the voices of older people in the research process. There is a need for research methods to permit older adult’s expression of their sense of aging-in-place and for researchers to understand what aging in the right place means to older people. This chapter draws on three “place-making with older people” projects in Canada and the UK to demonstrate application of this method in practice to (i) better understand older people’s sense-of-place needs and (ii) articulate place within the context of their immediate environments and the wider community. Data from three community-based participatory research (CBPR) projects highlight how inclusive methods such as community mapping can foster inclusive spaces where older adults have the opportunity to collaborate with a range of community stakeholders in a co-created planning process that uncovers nuanced and deeper meanings of older adults’ sense-of-place.