ABSTRACT

This chapter explores spatial, relational and critical approaches to health geographies of aging. It identifies three key concerns within these approaches, specifically inequities in health geographies of aging, the health aspects of aging in place and attachment to place, and landscapes of care including the provision of health care and other forms of support and service for aging. A spatial approach to aging and health geography aligns with the issues and processes used in spatial science, and in human geography more broadly, to focus on the measurement and implications of the changing distribution of aging populations at global, regional, urban and household levels. Exploring older people's interactions with social and physical environments, approaching the relationship between people and their environments as reciprocal and indivisible, characterize a relational approach to aging and health geographies. A priority for future research is to achieve an understanding of the multifaceted interactions between individual older people, their everyday settings, and their health and well-being outcomes.