ABSTRACT
With growing numbers of elders, scholars, policymakers, and ordinary people have an interest in understanding the conditions that enable older people to thrive in their communities. Aging in place is popular among older people who want to remain in their communities and with policymakers who see aging in place as a less costly and popular alternative to institutional options. At the same time, today a new generation of poor and moderate-income urban elders struggles to grow old in gentrifying cities across the country, as the communities where they live absorb affluent new arrivals. Drawing on 5 years of ethnographic fieldwork among older adults in a gentrified New York City neighborhood, this chapter offers insight into how research participants built supportive networks when faced with neighborhood change and traditional challenges associated with old age, such as declining physical mobility and the loss of friends, relatives, and other social connections. Public places proved as important as home to my research participants and served as crucial venues for them to develop connections with others, effectively serving as extensions of their living rooms. They not only aged in place but also in places.
