Over the past four decades the environmental context of aging has come to play an important role in gerontological theory, research, and practice. Environmental gerontology (EG)--focused on the description, explanation, and modification or optimization of the relation between elderly persons and their sociospatial surroundings--has emerged as a subfield in its own right. The aim of this article is to reflect on the historical, empirical, and theoretical development of recent EG, following Parmelee and Lawton's diagnosis from 1990 that there is a need to move the field beyond its current languishing state. From a historical perspective, EG has clearly played an important and successful role within the gerontology enterprise in terms of explicit consideration of the sociophysical environment in theory and research. A literature analysis of empirical studies supports the view that research has continued on a substantial quantitative level during the 1990s. Findings of these research studies address the whole diversity of classic EG research questions, but mostly in the sense of replication and extension. In terms of theoretical discussion, our analysis leads to the insight that EG may be described as a field high in conceptual aspiration ("world views"), but low with regard to making research and application-productive use of its theoretical achievements.

The TESS-NH efficiently assesses discrete elements of the physical environment and has strong reliability and validity. The SCUEQS provides a quantitative measure of environmental quality in institutional settings.

The Professional Environmental Assessment Procedure (PEAP) was developed as a global quality-assessment measure for use by trained professionals in special care units for older people in dementia units of nursing homes. The PEAP consists of nine ratings whose relationship to another assessment device, the Therapeutic Environment Screening Schedule (TESS), is reported. Although designed to be multidimensional, the PEAP as tested in 43 special care units seems to reflect primarily a single evaluative dimension. It correlates highly with the TESS and may be used either separately or in combination with the TESS.