The Aged and the Central City: a Study of the Urban Ecology of the Aged in Wellington, New Zealand

Abstract

Interviews with 413 residents over age 65, all of whom lived in sperate households in Central Willington provided the basis for an examination of the structure of an environment with a high proportion of aged people. The research, undertaken in 1975, uses an urban ecological perspective. The study investigates and attempts an explanation of the significance of the empirical observation that in industrial societies the aged members of urban populations are characteristically residentially concentrated within the Central Business District and the Zone in Transition. As a result of the scant attention paid by sociologists to the aged, to the process of aging, and to age stratification, considerable emphasis was paid to gerontological theories and an integration of such theories with the urban ecological perspective was attempted. It was found that the central city was a location of net in-migration of the aged and that decisions to move were predicated upon a series of role-losses attendant upon old age, such as retirement, loss of a significant other and loss of mobility. Such role-losses led to perceptions of status inconsistency in existing locations and, consequently, to residential change to more favourably perceived locations. Change in social position led to changes in residential position. Central city location ameliorated fears of dependence and institutionalization and enabled aged persons to maintain independence by substituting processes of increasing proximity to central city facilities. These compensate for decrements of both the physical and social worlds of the elderly as the high level of proximate behaviour which is typical of old age can easily be maintained in the central city. Amongst the central, city aged residential location serves to maintain patterns of social segregation developed in middle age. Because socio-economic differences are no longer based on occupational or income differentials, the major bases of differentiation are in housing and life-style. Several groupings of the aged were identified, and it was found that residential location was the paramount indicator of variations in a suite of social behaviours, such as interactional networks of family, friends and voluntary associations.