ABSTRACT
The populations of rural areas are ageing more rapidly than in urban areas. Chronological age, however, is not necessarily a strong marker of experiences in later life or of the issues that people may face, and recent research attention has focused on various transitions that shape people’s housing and wider needs. Planning for the current and future needs of older people can be framed not only in terms of helping to mitigate the impact of these potential transitions in later life, but also in understanding how these experiences are shaped and mediated by living in different rural environments. An overarching framework for situating policy design and service delivery in different rural contexts is the World Health Organization’s programme on age friendly communities. While this agenda has most notably been applied at the level of cities, it also provides a useful framework for contextualising how planning may enable residents of rural communities to ‘age well’.
