Ageing in Place: The Present and Future Social and Health Threats

Maintaining optimal health and a sense of attachment to one’s home and life space (i.e., neighbourhood) is the core of ageing in place. Life space can diminish over the life course due to a change in life goals as well as a gradual decline in functional ability. Climate change, infectious diseases, violence, and radical industrialisation, collectively referred to as the global crises, are being felt globally and may further limit access to life space, especially in later life. This chapter aims to provide a heuristic as a theoretical lens through which stakeholders can understand how the global crises affect life space and ageing in place. We utilised the heuristic to explain the concept of psychological distance and how it serves as a premise around which life space may diminish due to global crises. Implications for ageing in place are encapsulated in six postulates to guide future research and policy development. The chapter suggests a need for stakeholders to co-develop sustainable interventions to the global crises, enabling contexts or neighbourhoods to avoid alternating between episodes of these crises.