Ageing during times of change: community, social infrastructure and social exclusion
This special issue will address two of the most pressing societal challenges of the 21st Century, population ageing and urbanisation. More people than ever before are spending most, or all, of their later life living in urban environments. Therefore urban ageing, and how we can create urban environments that support the health and wellbeing of older people, is a key challenge for sustainable development.
The need for this special issue is evidenced in a number of ways, Firstly, the Covid-19 pandemic has both revealed and exacerbated neighbourhood inequalities and in some cases has permanently altered how older people engage with their communities. It has also put significant pressure on already stretched community resources. Therefore, questions about how older people experience their communities and how they access support at this scale needs to be revisited in this changing context. Secondly, the increasing diversity of the older population means that services and organisations supporting older people need to continue to find new, innovative and creative approaches for involving different groups of older people and different sectors involved in their support.
Aims of the Special Issue
This special issue aims to do the following:
- Provide theoretical advances around how we can use a framework of social infrastructure to illuminate different questions of the lived experience and inequality in social gerontology and allied fields
- Provide new empirical cases of how older people experience and negotiate urban environments that highlight the neighbourhood as a source of both inclusion and exclusion in later life.
- Provide a critical analysis and discussion of both historical and contemporary community-based initiatives designed to tackle social exclusion
- Advocate for a renewed engagement with the politicising of community interventions by locating them in the context of structural inequalities and political change
- Provide examples of different forms of community participation that may facilitate the involvement of diverse groups of older people mobility at a time of rapid change following the Covid-19 pandemic
These aims will be met through a combination of theoretical, empirical and policy-review papers.
Topics of Interest
- Urban ageing
- Inequalities and marginalised groups
- Neighbourhood inequalities
- Social and community infrastructure
- Public policy
Submission Information
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here:
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see:
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Key Deadlines
Closing date for manuscript submissions: 27 June 2025
For more details refer here
