Improvising Later Life in the City: A Multi-Sited Ethnography of Ageing in Rapidly Urbanising Contexts

Ziel

The twenty-first century is being shaped by two powerful forces: rapid urbanisation and population ageing. While their intersection has drawn growing attention, most studies approach it through policy frameworks such as the World Health Organisation’s model of age-friendly cities. Crucially, this research has centred on high-income countries. This narrow focus leaves a major blind spot: in the rapidly urbanising countries of the Global South, where demographic and urban transformations are unfolding the most intensely and unevenly, we still know little about the lived realities of growing older in the city. LIV-AGE addresses this gap through a multi-sited ethnography of how urban ageing is lived, contested, and imagined across diverse social and cultural contexts. The project asks: (1) How is rapid urbanisation reshaping the lived experiences of ageing in the Global South, and how do families, communities, and states respond? (2) What forms of inequality, care, and belonging emerge, and how do they differ across social, generational, and cultural contexts? (3) How do global age-friendly frameworks intersect, or collide, with local realities, and what alternative spaces and practices emerge? This study examines cities-from megacities to smaller towns-in Indonesia, Colombia, and Zimbabwe, using a comparative design to reveal how ageing and urbanisation intersect with each site’s political economy, history, migration, and care systems. LIV-AGE focuses on three groups: (i) older adults in rapidly urbanising contexts; (ii) professionals shaping city design and policy; and (iii) local communities, including family members and multiple generations. LIV-AGE contends that rapid urbanisation and ageing intersect unevenly across the Global South, transforming what later life means across these contexts. By ethnographically tracing these processes, the project offers new, empirically grounded insights that expand and challenge conventional ideas of both urbanisation and ageing.

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