Can Ageing Improve Neighbourhoods? Revisiting Neighbourhood Life-Cycle Theory

Abstract

Neighbourhood life-cycle theory has provided some important insights into the question of how population ageing may influence local neighbourhoods. But this theory has been rightly criticized by urban scholars for its deterministic and highly pessimistic approach. More recent theoretical ideas about “positive ageing” challenge the underlying pessimistic view of ageing in neighbourhood life-cycle theory, and provide opportunities to consider new and more optimistic conceptualizations of neighbourhood ageing. This paper provides a brief review of some of the key literature underpinning neighbourhood life-cycle theory and, drawing on some of its principal concepts, proposes two hypothetical neighbourhood life-cycle scenarios, one “pessimistic” and the other “optimistic”, which represent two ends of a full spectrum of neighbourhood life cycles.

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