ABSTRACT
Place makes a difference. This statement is highlighted in the Handbook of Theories of Aging (Gans, Putney, Bengtson, & Silverstein, 2009), whose editors write in the concluding article: “There appears to be a consensus across disciplines in gerontology that understanding the environment and the individual's place within it is crucial for understanding the aging process” (p. 732). The authors go on to state that “despite recognition of the importance of integrating personal and environmental factors in aging research … prior to today there have been few attempts to develop aging theory by integrating comparable concepts of individual and environment across disciplines” (p. 732). This is a surprising statement for anyone who is immersed in the field of environmental gerontology because research on aging and environment has existed as a significant line of inquiry within the wide array of gerontological research since the late 1960s.
