This paper develops the argument that post-COVID-19 recovery strategies need to focus on building back fairer cities and communities, and that this requires a strong embedding of ‘ age-friendly’ principles to support marginalised groups of older people, especially those living in deprived urban neighbourhoods, trapped in poor quality housing. It shows that older people living in such areas are likely to experience a ‘double lockdown’ as a result of restrictions imposed by social distancing combined with the intensification of social and spatial inequalities. This argument is presented as follows: first, the paper examines the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on older people, highlighting how the pandemic is both creating new and reinforcing existing inequalities in ageing along the lines of gender, class, ethnicity, race, ability and sexuality. Second, the paper explores the role of spatial inequalities in the context of COVID-19, highlighting how the pandemic is having a disproportionate impact on deprived urban areas already affected by cuts to public services, the loss of social infrastructure and pressures on the voluntary sector. Finally, the paper examines how interrelated social inequalities at both the individual and spatial level are affecting the lives of older people living in deprived urban neighbourhoods during the pandemic. The paper concludes by developing six principles for ‘age-friendly’ community recovery planning aimed at maintaining and improving the quality of life and wellbeing of older residents in the post-pandemic city.
This paper explores how understandings of community and belonging have shifted in relation to rapid deindustrialization and subsequent waves of redevelopment in East Manchester. Drawing on ethnographic research, it focuses on two social settings which are under threat of closure -a coffee morning and a market place. In these settings, long-standing residents make community, paradoxically, by sharing narratives about the loss of social ties. Drawing on relational approaches to place, the discussion sheds light on the disruption between place and identity in post-industrial localities which have been reshaped by drastic physical regeneration. The paper argues that in order to understand the apparent contradiction between narratives of social decline and observations of abundant social relations, it is necessary to extend existing sociological and anthropological approaches to community and belonging.
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on issues facing older people living in urban areas characterised by multiple deprivation.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper first reviews the role of place and neighbourhood in later life; second, it examines the relationship between neighbourhood deprivation and the impact of COVID-19; and, third, it outlines the basis for an “age-friendly” recovery strategy.
Findings
The paper argues that COVID-19 is having a disproportionate impact on low-income communities, which have already been affected by cuts to public services, the loss of social infrastructure and pressures on the voluntary sector. It highlights the need for community-based interventions to be developed as an essential part of future policies designed to tackle the effects of COVID-19.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to debates about developing COVID-19 recovery strategies in the context of growing inequalities affecting urban neighbourhoods.
Repeated studies of urban regeneration have focused on the displacement of working class residents, but those who remain living in sites of urban change have received less attention. To attend to this gap, this paper focuses on the lives of long-standing residents in East Manchester, a site of urban regeneration, and examines their views of urban change. Ethnographic research reveals how the demolition and rebuilding of new houses has resulted in a deep sense of uncertainty. Drawing on anthropological theories of materiality, the analysis makes an original contribution to debates about urban regeneration, showing how social and material relations have been reconfigured and arguing that this in turn has created new meanings about the home.
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