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Creative Cities Creating Connections: Fostering Cross-Age Interaction Through Leisure

Older and younger people interact infrequently in most social realms – a pattern stemming from institutional, cultural, and spatial age segregation. Increasing cross-age interaction offers promise as a strategy for not only enhancing social connections but also reducing ageist attitudes. We argue th...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Douglas, Rachel, Barrett, Anne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7742481/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1416
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author Douglas, Rachel
Barrett, Anne
author_facet Douglas, Rachel
Barrett, Anne
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description Older and younger people interact infrequently in most social realms – a pattern stemming from institutional, cultural, and spatial age segregation. Increasing cross-age interaction offers promise as a strategy for not only enhancing social connections but also reducing ageist attitudes. We argue that a social realm with untapped potential for creating these connections is leisure, particularly within creative cities. To explore this possibility, our study examines cross-age interactions in Key West, Florida – a leisure-oriented city that promotes creativity through its social and built environment. Using participant-observation and interview data (n=126) from 2017 to 2019, we examined leisure experiences of tourists and residents, aged 23 to 83. Findings indicate that creative cultural contexts can counter ageist attitudes by promoting cross-age interaction. Data analysis revealed three processes encouraging these shifts – promoting diversity and acceptance, enhancing older adults’ participation, and nurturing intergenerational bonds. Ongoing cross-age interactions were fostered through the island’s welcoming philosophy and encouragement of out-group acceptance and diversity. They were further fostered by the island’s wide array of leisure activities and proximity of shared spaces that enabled older adults to readily pursue leisure with younger people. Cross-age ties also were promoted by the island’s focus on family-friendly leisure experiences. Our research highlights the potential of creative cities to promote age integration, and reduce ageism, through its cultural practices within leisure spaces.
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spelling pubmed-77424812020-12-21 Creative Cities Creating Connections: Fostering Cross-Age Interaction Through Leisure Douglas, Rachel Barrett, Anne Innov Aging Abstracts Older and younger people interact infrequently in most social realms – a pattern stemming from institutional, cultural, and spatial age segregation. Increasing cross-age interaction offers promise as a strategy for not only enhancing social connections but also reducing ageist attitudes. We argue that a social realm with untapped potential for creating these connections is leisure, particularly within creative cities. To explore this possibility, our study examines cross-age interactions in Key West, Florida – a leisure-oriented city that promotes creativity through its social and built environment. Using participant-observation and interview data (n=126) from 2017 to 2019, we examined leisure experiences of tourists and residents, aged 23 to 83. Findings indicate that creative cultural contexts can counter ageist attitudes by promoting cross-age interaction. Data analysis revealed three processes encouraging these shifts – promoting diversity and acceptance, enhancing older adults’ participation, and nurturing intergenerational bonds. Ongoing cross-age interactions were fostered through the island’s welcoming philosophy and encouragement of out-group acceptance and diversity. They were further fostered by the island’s wide array of leisure activities and proximity of shared spaces that enabled older adults to readily pursue leisure with younger people. Cross-age ties also were promoted by the island’s focus on family-friendly leisure experiences. Our research highlights the potential of creative cities to promote age integration, and reduce ageism, through its cultural practices within leisure spaces. Oxford University Press 2020-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7742481/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1416 Text en © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Abstracts
Douglas, Rachel
Barrett, Anne
Creative Cities Creating Connections: Fostering Cross-Age Interaction Through Leisure
title Creative Cities Creating Connections: Fostering Cross-Age Interaction Through Leisure
title_full Creative Cities Creating Connections: Fostering Cross-Age Interaction Through Leisure
title_fullStr Creative Cities Creating Connections: Fostering Cross-Age Interaction Through Leisure
title_full_unstemmed Creative Cities Creating Connections: Fostering Cross-Age Interaction Through Leisure
title_short Creative Cities Creating Connections: Fostering Cross-Age Interaction Through Leisure
title_sort creative cities creating connections: fostering cross-age interaction through leisure
topic Abstracts
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7742481/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1416
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