Consumption Dynamics, Ageing in Cities and Age-Friendly Urban Development: Discourses, Practices and Policies at the Italian Scale

Abstract

The article focuses on the connection between ageing and territory at the urban scale and, more specifically, on the relationship between consumption dynamics and age-friendly forms of urban development. This framework increasingly dominates – e.g. through the notion of ‘active’ ageing – discourses and policies, intersecting with consumption practices of the elderly population, which have also profoundly changed, and often obscuring contradictions, rhetoric and ambivalences of ageing in the city. The latter will be explored at the Italian scale – retracing the fertile branch of consumption geography which links identity, ageing and place, by subverting consolidated stereotypes – with particular attention to the Metropolitan Cities (MC). The analysis of recent reports and documents will allow us to dwell on the current dynamics of aged consumers and, more generally, on the potentialities and critical issues about the MCs, considered by policies as laboratories for the ageing population. The intersection between the general framework, the new dynamics and practices of consumption, and the transcalar focus on age-friendly policies will be the basis for questioning the opportunities and limits underlying forms of urban development aimed at building cities increasingly elder-friendly also in Italy.