Spatial Age Segregation and Co-Accessibility to Urban Activities

Spatial age segregation means that people of different ages do not occupy the same space, which again leads to little mutual interaction. Despite evidence suggesting that an inclusive approach to age leads to societal benefits, among them the reduction of ageism and the isolation in later life connected to it, age segregation is still a problem to be faced.

 

Usually, the concentration and distribution of various age groups living within a neighbourhood is "the" indicator used in literature. Age segregation outside the residential place is taken into account by only a limited number of studies despite its implications for everyday life (parks, supermarkets, restaurants, workplaces, etc.).

Generally speaking, there are two categories of accessibility: a) place-based (number, density and diversity of activity locations in a neighbourhood) and b) people-centred measures (degree to which people have access to a the destinations). Both approaches rarely consider the demographic characteristics of the people having access to the destinations.

In their study, Milias and Psylldis (2022) define accessibility "according to which activity location is accessible to different people within walking distance". The study of spatial age segregation is carried out in the five most populous Dutch cities characterised by differences concerning density, age structures and distribution of activity locations. Residents are grouped into the following three age categories: 0-15 years, 16-64 years, equal or above 65 years of age.

We start by exploring how accessible the different activity locations in each city are to the three population age groups under study. To do so, we calculate an estimate of the total number of each age group that has access to any given destination within five, ten, and fifteen-minute walking radii from people's residences. We then assign percentages to each destination that reflect the potential age structure of people who might perform activities at that location. These percentages are used as proxies of potential exposure of an individual to a specific age group (e.g. children).

In Amsterdam Center about 14% of the people who have access to the activity locations within a 15-minute walk from their residence are elderly, only approximately 5% are children. An example of the opposite case is the Amsterdam child-rich neighbourhood Ijburg where 20 to 30% of the people who have access to various destinations are children while only 2 to 6% are older adults. 

An emerging pattern, visible across all the cities under study, is that activity locations with higher age diversity scores tend to be located in the city outskirts. (...) In contrast, across all cities, activity locations with low age diversity scores (i.e., EI < 25%) tend to be located in the Inner City (IC) neighborhoods. This, is mostly visible when considering activities accessible within a five-minute walk distance from people's residencies. Overall, activities within a 10 or 15-min walk from people's residencies yield higher age diversity scores.

Discussion:

(...) across all cities under study a similar pattern emerges; that is, the activities located in the outskirts of each city tend to have higher age diversity values. These values are strongly affected by the population distribution in the Netherlands, where children and elderly populations reside primarily in the outskirts of the cities, contrary to adolescent and adult populations that are more dispersed across the urban fabric. Thereby, local age structure should be considered in tandem with the distribution of activities when assessing spatial age segregation from the lens of accessibility. 

(...) Lastly, our results suggest that the time required to reach a destination also influences the co-accessibility and age diversity scores. In particular, destinations that lie within a 10 or 15-min walk yield higher age diversity scores, relative to destinations within a 5-min walk from people's residences (accessible to a lower number of people). This further indicates that promoting people to perform activities only within a 5-min walking radius potentially decreases the likelihood of encountering people from different age groups.

A very interesting thought is the need not to overestimate the degree to which different age croups encounter each other: 

Conventionally, judging only on the basis of age structure in the residential space, these neighborhoods would not be considered age segregated. However, the scarcity of accessible activity locations within these neighborhoods could have a substantial effect on the likelihood of people from different age groups to encounter each other. This, for instance, might occur either when the portion of residents who have access to the same activity location are not as age-diverse as the overall neighborhood population, or when a portion of the residents have no access to any activity location and it is, therefore, unlikely to encounter other people. In other words, the sole consideration of a neighborhood's overall age structure could often result in an overestimation of the degree to which different age groups are exposed to each other.

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- Milias, V. & Psyllidis, A. (2022). Measuring spatial age segregation through the lens of co-accessibility to urban activities. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 95, link
- photograph by David Godlis via

Shtetl by the Sea

The first time David Godlis went to Miami Beach was to visit his grandparents. That was in the 1950s, he was a child and his grandparents had retired in South Beach, a sort of heaven for older generations and Jewish immigrants mostly originally coming from Eastern European countries. Later, he said these trips  were "like visiting Jewish Disneyland". When Godlis went to visit with his grandmother in 1974,  part of "that magic kingdom" had already disappeared. He was 22, took his his camera out on to Ocean Drive, shot sixty rolls of film in ten days capturing what was left of the magic (via) witnessing the end of an era. 

The environment had once been a thriving one attracting many people, offering - among other things - Yiddish-language vaudeville shows in art deco theatres (Yiddish would be abandoned by the second-generation immigrants in favour of English). 

His grandparents, like other immigrants in the community, were snowbirds who retired to South Florida after back-breaking work in the hustle-and-bustle atmosphere of New York City. A far cry from New York's harsh winters, these retirees were savoring the respite from the frost of the Northeast. 'Goodbye snow, hello coconuts,' Godlis writes in his book. (via)

When Florida repealed the discriminatory law barring Jewish Americans from owning real estate in 1949, Miami Beach became a magnet for the community. It was called "Little Jerusalem" or "Shtetl by the Sea" (via). In the 1970s, around 80% of the population of Miami Beach was Jewish,, with a peak in the 1980s (via). While in 1982, there were an estimated 60.000 Jewish households, more recent surveys put the number at a maximum of 16.000. Today, the legendary nightclub and theatre are no more, the demographics have changed. (via). But, as Godlis says, not all is lost.

In 2017, when I last returned to Miami Beach, I stayed in the little Century Hotel, looking pretty close to how it looked in 1974 when I first came upon it. I walked around to see where most of these pictures had been taken. To dream the dream I had photographed 40 years earlier. And I could still see it all. Even my cover girl in her cool Oliver Goldsmith sunglasses. The ocean and palm trees have a way of making those dreams come true. If only for a 1/125th of a second. David Godlis

In 1985, 10 years after I shot these photographs, I returned to Miami Beach with my wife, Eileen. I took her down to Ocean Drive to show her where they were taken and was astonished to find that most everyone was gone. I don’t think even in my early 30s I understood how fast time flies. Of course, many of the retired people I shot pictures of were dead 10 years later. But also many of them had been driven out by the Mariel boatlift of 1980. You can see what became of Ocean Drive in the bathroom shootout scene with Al Pacino in Brian DePalma’s Scarface. So Eileen and I stayed a little further up Collins Avenue the year. And I had to be very careful taking photographs on Ocean Drive that my camera wasn’t stolen.
David Godlis

photographs by David Godlis via   

... an absurd parody of our former life.

"There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning – devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work."

Simone de Beauvoir

photograph by David Godlis via

The Grandmother Stereotype and the Fog of Irrelevance

A grandmother is seen as a one-dimensional being since becoming one "subsumes everything else in your life under a fog of irrelevance". When Hillary Clinton, for instance, became a grandmother she was asked when she would "please go quietly into the night" (via). This attitude is there despite the fact that grandparents represent a bigger chunk of the population than ever before and despite many of them being in the labour force. Let's face it: "The idea of Grandma baking the occasional batch of cookies doesn't match today's realities." (via).

There's nothing new about grandmother stereotypes. Remember Little Red Riding Hood? A wolf swallows up sickly granny in her cap and nightgown and climbs into her bed to wait for the dutiful child to appear so he can gobble her up too, along with her basket of goodies. In the more benign resolutions of the tale, a friendly woodcutter cuts open the wolf, and grandmother and child emerge unscathed. Presumably granny then retires to her rocking chair and is transformed into another common stereotype – the plump, kindly old woman in her dotage, sitting with her knitting in an isolated corner of the room. Sandra Martin

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photograph by David Godlis via