ABSTRACT
Rural populations aging with disability are examined and three models that differently conceptualize and shape responses to disability and aging in the context of rurality are presented. The application of theory-based principles through which to redesign aging and disability as part of the valued fabric of rural life are then proposed and illustrated. However, given the increase in both aging and disabled bodies, recent scholarship has aimed to wrest both aging and disability away from a decline model, repositioning it within the expanse of human diversity. Although it meets with significant opposition, the medical model of disability remains predominant in the twenty-first century. In the social model, the impaired body starring on the medical model stage is supplanted by a leading villain, the environment. Aging and impairment can be reinvented as primary stimuli for rural innovation. Reimaging how a rural environment can be reinvented to meet increasing human diversity represents an excellent rural redesign opportunity.
