Place-making with older persons: establishing sense-of-place through participatory community mapping exercises

Principles of positive ‘aging in place’ emphasize the importance of creating sustainable environments that enable older people to maintain a sense of safety and security, autonomy, independence and belonging. Initiatives to help older adults remain in their communities have contributed to planning and design concepts such as age-friendly cities and neighbourhoods. Yet, simply altering the built environment is insufficient for creating more inclusive environments for older persons, since ‘meaningful’ places for aging involves consideration of psycho-social and cultural issues that go beyond designing physical spaces. A strong sense-of-place is articulated through access to culturally-appropriate supports for active participation, and opportunities to build and sustain social networks and assume meaningful roles in the community. One approach to researching sense-of-place is through participatory community mapping exercises (PCMEs). PCMEs are founded on tenets of empowerment, which highlight the value of building on community strengths to generate new knowledge and ideas for action, shared awareness and an understanding of community resources and assets. PCMEs provide opportunities for older adults, particularly those transitioning into new homes, to situate themselves within the context of the new community and visualize prospects for active, meaningful engagement and social participation. This paper presents findings from PCMEs conducted with older adults transitioning into affordable housing as well as local service providers. Through effective visual representations, participatory maps created by community stakeholders demonstrate community functionalities, values and their perceptions of place to identify significant features (e.g. services, amenities, open spaces) within the environment that make it a positive place to age.