An ‘age-regation’ process as theoretical understanding of the gated retirement village

Abstract

Gating the elderly appears to be a common and inevitable part of international urban life. In our study we have used the structure-agency relationship to identify and analyse the salient elements of the process of gating. In order to emphasise the dichotomy of the process in which aging people congregate together and, simultaneously, segregate themselves from urban life, we coined the term “age-regation”. We provide a comprehensive and logically structured theoretical framework, in which the theoretical bases of the gated retirement village are discussed within two overarching constructs, namely age (identity, lifestyle) and the congregation/segregation enclave (physical, social, psychological, political, economic, mobility, racial).