Paper short abstract:

This paper, using focus groups and individual interviews with older residents of city centres, strives to understand how postmodern urban processes of regeneration shape the experience of growing old and how ageing of population influences urban environment.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on "Ageing in the environment: regeneration, gentrification and social exclusion as new issues in environmental gerontology (2010 - 2012)" which strives to understand how postmodern urban processes shape the experience of growing old and how ageing of population influences urban environment. Here we present results from focus groups discussions and individual interviews with older community dwelling residents of central parts of three biggest Czech cities: Prague, Brno and Ostrava. The city (usually as compared to a country) is by the communication partners considered a good place for growing old, as important services, like shops, GPs/hospitals and transportation are usually available in the vicinity. At the same time older people are aware of profound changes in the lived environment of their cities in the last 20 years and they are very heterogeneous in perception of those changes, and reaction to them based on their postcodes, socioeconomic and health status or mobility. One of the main issues emerging from the transcripts is disparity between feelings of growing otherness of their living environment ("the city is not ours", [the new neighbours are] "strangers, complete strangers; they have nothing in common with us") with persisting willingness to "stay put" expressed in individual life strategies. The concluding discussion raises question whether and how different forms of regeneration of the cities create risks of real as well as symbolic exclusion of older people and how these are heterogeneously incorporated into older people narratives.