Ageing, Activism and Social Infrastructure: Advancing spatial justice within the Age-Friendly agenda

Abstract

Purpose

This paper explores the role of activism in the age-friendly movement, and its relationship to localised struggles over social infrastructure. The Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC) approach calls for coordinated action to support ageing in place, with social infrastructure understood as vital in supporting social networks and belonging in later life. Despite this, questions have been raised about the ability for the age-friendly model to address issues of spatial justice, including conditions like gentrification that threaten established social infrastructures used by older people. As a result, there are increasing calls for a greater exploration of radical, creative and rights-based approaches within the AFCC model to address the unequal contexts in which many older people live.

Design/methodology

To further investigate, this paper reflects on the role of activism in developing age-friendly initiatives, based on a 30-month participatory action research project in a residential tower block in Hulme, Manchester.

Findings

We analyse two distinct but connected forms of activism within this case study – ‘activism through resistance’ as explored through a protest movement against the destruction of an abandoned public house, and ‘activism through creation’ through the bottom-up co-design of a new community space.

Originality/value

Through our analysis, we argue that the current conceptualisation of the age-friendly approach has limited tools for addressing underlying social inequities acting older people in marginalised communities, and pose the question for the AFCC to be more accommodating of activist approaches when tackling issues of spatial justice.

Introduction

The Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC) agenda is firmly embedded at local scales across international contexts setting the blueprint for what an inclusive neighbourhood should be (WHO, 2007). Central within this is social infrastructure – spaces outside of the home that support older adults to maintain social connections and live socially integrated, healthy lives (Yarker, 2022). However, different intersecting pressures in cities such as gentrification, austerity and deepening inequalities shape the lived experience of older marginalised communities on the ground in stark ways (Buffel, Doran and Yarker, 2024). Such pressures result in the changing of local landscapes, most felt and visible through the loss of social infrastructure, resulting in feelings of ‘indirect displacement’ and the tensions and injustices amongst marginalised older adults that emerge. We argue however that the AFCC is out of touch with this stark lived experience of systemic issues and the difficulties of translating idealistic notions on the ground in such contexts, along with the efforts some older communities are already engaging in to challenge the injustices shaping their everyday lives.

In this paper, we explore how a spatial justice approach to the AFCC pushes for a radical reimagining of what developing an age-friendly neighbourhood entails in marginalised communities (Buffel et al., 2024: Yeh et al., 2024). We argue that activism is a key axis for developing age-friendly communities, as a method more in tune with the struggled lived experience of older adults in pressured urban contexts. Based on a particular lived experience of an older community in Hulme (Manchester) and their efforts to co-create a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community (NORC) programme in Hopton Court, a social housing block, we explore the way different forms of activism emerge as a response to struggles around the loss of social infrastructure in their community. We focus on two distinct yet interrelated forms of activism: activism through resistance with the ‘Block the Block’ campaign; and activism through creation with the co-creation of a community space as part of the NORC project. The paper ends by discussing how an activist approach clashes with the current ways that the AFCC model is applied internationally, but highlights the importance of more radical methods if the AFCC is to truly address issues of spatial justice.

Spatial justice in the age-friendly city

The AFCC agenda supports the development of neighbourhoods to improve the quality of life for older communities as they age supporting ageing in place, acknowledging that the latter is determined by multiple place-based factors and barriers (WHO, 2007; van Hoof and Marston, 2021). The agenda rests on democracy and social inclusion, where older people are actively involved, valued and supported, with infrastructure and services that promote health and wellbeing, meaningful engagement, and connectivity (Alley et al., 2007).

Integral to the AFCC agenda is the importance of social infrastructure, which is vital for supporting social networks amongst older people. Social infrastructure refers to ‘third spaces’, outside of the home and work environments, including libraries, cafes, community centres and gardens to name a few. Such spaces provide varied opportunities to ‘meet and mix’, where social interaction whether fleeting or sustained can occur, supporting the social economy of places (Klinenberg, 2018; Yarker, 2022). It is therefore essential for fostering a sense of belonging and preventing social isolation amongst older adults. As Yarker argues, ‘the story of social infrastructure is the story of the community’ (2022: 5).

However, given the changing, layered and unequal nature of cities, there are a variety of exclusionary pressures arising from gentrification and austerity, resulting in unjust and precarious geographies that dictate the everyday lives of older marginalised communities (Buffel et al., 2024). These pressures manifest in localised situations on the ground – such as older people feeling ‘stuck in place’ due to rent increases (Simard, 2020) or a sense of ‘indirect displacement’ from multiple-intersecting neighbourhood changes (Versey et al., 2019) – yet, more often than not, their impact is most visible and felt through the loss of social infrastructure (Lewis et al., 2022).

Driven by a neoliberal, entrepreneurial ideology, older people are often erased from urban redevelopment discourse (Kelley et al., 2018; Kavanagh and Lewis, 2024). This means that urban developers not only disinvest in and remove community spaces that are longstanding and important to older people (Buffel and Phillipson, 2024), but new neighbourhood infrastructure and amenities are not built with older people in mind and are exclusionary (Phillipson, 2007; Hammond et al., 2024). The lack of appropriate spaces limits where older people can go in the neighbourhood, resulting in a ‘shrinking’ effect of their social worlds (Lewis et al., 2022) weakening relationships and community networks. Lewis et al. (2022) argue that the losses are symbolic as well as functional, where changes to the ‘scaffold’ of social infrastructure ‘triggers insecurities’ about belonging and identity (Yarker, 2022; Versey et al., 2019). Thus, older communities living with the realities of gentrification are said to be ‘precariously ageing in place’ (Versey et al., 2019). Yet, despite many raising awareness to the pressures of gentrification impacting older adults, there are few place-based studies yet to empirically explicate the lived experience of these pressures from the perspectives of older people themselves, and even less exploring how older communities might navigate and resist these changes (see Salles, 2020).

The aforementioned pressures have led to calls to better embed age-friendly principles in debates on spatial justice (Buffel et al., 2024). Following Soja (2010), spatial justice emphasises the ‘spatial’ nature of experiences of democracy and rights within urban cities, tied to the fair distribution of resources and opportunities. Space is not a neutral backdrop, but an active force that shapes the injustice of communities (Soja, 2010; Buffel et al., 2024: 8). In other words, injustice is located in the specific conditions of places, such as access to housing, services, and infrastructure, as well as the collective struggles of communities to achieve more equitable access to these things (Soja, 2010: 32). The perspective thus highlights how it is also in the process of how cities come to be that is important, where justice can be negotiated in the process of producing place (Stoisser et al., 2025: 12). Recognising these factors calls for age-friendly initiatives to adopt more radical, creative and ‘rights-based’ approaches that give older communities fairer opportunities to address the root cause of the inequalities they face (Buffel et al., 2024).

We argue that integral to this burgeoning equity approach is a recognition of activism, which the AFCC agenda and related age-friendly work has glossed over. The AFCC is a policy-led and government-led initiative, which brings assumptions about what is and is not acceptable age-friendly practice. Activism (and protest) is often seen as a more radical route for bringing about change, through challenging the very power structures that the AFCC agenda is led by. Whilst there are examples of activism at a societal level to amplify and ameliorate ageing inequalities (such as anti-ageism campaigns more generally (CFAB, 2024) or the WASPI campaign, a women-led movement against pension inequality), we are focused here on the place-based forms of activism. Yeh et al. (2024: 216) argue that more recognition needs to be given to the contributions older people are already making to their communities and environments, building on this organically rather than trying to initiate change in a top-down way. We argue that bringing the notion of activism into focus attunes us to how older communities are engaging in different acts of resistance against the conflicts and injustices they face (Kavanagh et al., 2025a).

Context: Co-creating a NORC programme in Manchester, UK

To explore the role of conflict and activism around social infrastructure, this paper reflects on our experiences trying to co-create a ‘Naturally Occurring Retirement Community’ (NORC) initiative at Hopton Court in Hulme, Manchester, UK.

Hulme is a neighbourhood located on the fringe of Manchester’s city centre, which has undergone significant social and physical changes over the last 70 years due to widespread demolition and government-led housing renewal (URBED, 2010). Hulme is currently facing gentrification pressures, in part due to an influx of a younger, transient student population. 70,000 students study at the two universities located in and around Hulme, which has led to cultural and increasingly physical displacement of long-standing communities, particularly with the rise of private development of student accommodation within Hulme over the last 15 years (Rose, 2024). Local tenants have expressed how “there is nothing for us now, it’s all for students…there is no social life in Hulme anymore, it’s a young person’s place now” (Cribbin et al., 2021).

Hopton Court is a nine-storey social housing tower block in Hulme built in the 1960s. It consists of 70 single-storey apartments, 69 of which are one-bedroom and the other a larger three-bedroom property on the ground floor. Although not specifically designed for older people, 75% of tenants in Hopton Court are aged 50+ due to a lack of other appropriate, single-level properties in the area. Many of the tenants in Hopton are affected by health inequalities, with around one-third reporting at least one long-term physical health condition, and 46% suffering with depression or anxiety. Previous community-led research found many tenants falling through the gaps in services, facing high levels of social exclusion, and hiding their situations to avoid relocation into care homes away from social networks (Cribbin et al, 2021; Hopton Hopefuls and King, 2021). These conditions have led to a long history of tenant-led action, with several initiatives established to support older people to provide mutual support for each other.

“Manchester is going through a growth period and is expanding at an alarming rate…. there is a community [in Hulme] but it’s being slowly eradicated…if someone is ageing, should they lose their community, at a time when they need the community more than ever?” (Hopton tenant)

Years of campaigning led to the establishment of the Ageing Well in Place in Hulme partnership in 2019, through which tenants partnered with their housing association (i.e. not-for-profit organisation that provide social housing) community organisations and academics. The shared aim was to develop a NORC within the block as a means of addressing the inequalities faced by older tenants, and to work in collaboration on the ground to implement it. Originating in North America, NORCs are living environments or areas with naturally high concentrations of older people (Jiaxuan et al., 2022). A NORC programme leverages this density providing a range of integrated services of health and social support within and around existing accommodation, promoting a proactive approach to ageing in place (DePaul et al., 2022).

Methodology: Participatory Action Research

While NORCs are common in North America, there is little research exploring how they can be adopted in international settings, or within disadvantaged communities. To investigate this, we worked with Hopton Court tenants and the housing association to secure research funding to collaboratively trial the development of a NORC programme, including resource to pay for a NORC community worker for two years, employed by the housing association. The research project, ‘Co-creating Age-friendly Social Housing’, was funded by Vivensa Foundation and ran between September 2022 and March 2025. It was developed by an interdisciplinary academic team (architecture, sociology and geography) from Manchester Metropolitan University and University of Manchester, working alongside Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and local charity organisations such as Community Savers (CLASS).

The project adopted a Participatory Action Research methodology. This approach calls for researchers and communities to come together to define issues, implement solutions and document the insights that emerge from this process. The approach seeks to value the insights and expertise of local people as part of a more equitable research process, through which the co-creation of knowledge occurs alongside a corresponding process of emancipatory social change (Cornish, 2023).

Learning from this process was documented through fieldnotes, and observations of two years of direct engagement in the communities; informal conversations and ad hoc interviews with participants during these periods; regular interviews with key stakeholders and older tenants; monthly reflections meetings with the NORC community worker, and tenant surveys. During the period of the project, the research team and NORC community worker had direct engagement with 46 older tenants, convening the Hopton Tenant Meetings which met 10 times, and hosted 70 drop-in sessions. We also worked with tenants to organise 14 events over the period of the project, including community BBQs and day trips.

The project was not designed explicitly to explore the role of conflict and activism in the age-friendly movement, but we quickly discovered how central these themes were to our collective attempts to develop a NORC programme. What follows are vignettes of two interrelated cases of activism, written through our reflections as we experienced them on the ground whilst collaborating: the first exploring activism through resistance with the ‘Block the Block’ campaign; and the second exploring activism through creation focusing on the co-development of the NORC community space (whilst also recognising instances of resistance and creation in both).

Activism through ‘resistance’ – Block the Block

One of the key forms of activism we observed in Hopton Court was resistance against an ongoing process of urban change that older tenants felt was exacerbating their experiences of social exclusion. This is exemplified by ‘Block the Block’, a resident-led campaign fighting the proposed development of a high-rise student accommodation block adjacent to Hopton Court. The land is the site of the now-derelict Gamecock Pub, a former piece of social infrastructure once vital for bringing the community together, whose proposed development into student housing became totemic of the intersecting pressures facing long-standing residents in Hulme.

There have been several proposals to build student accommodation on the land since 2008, spearheaded by a succession of private student housing providers, each of which was rejected by the local government in part due to the community protests. The fight ramped up in 2021 when a group of tenants – from both Hopton Court and the surrounding neighbourhood – and organisations supported by Greater Manchester Tenants Union collectively organised under the banner ‘Block the Block’ to fight off a plan submitted by a private developer in 2020. This collective, driven in part by the same older tenants and community initiatives that catalysed the NORC programme at Hopton Court, were aggrieved both by the scale of the development and the building of yet more student housing within a community where there were other housing needs facing residents, particularly the lack of accommodation suitable for older people (Rose, 2024: 266). In response, ‘Block the Block’ engaged demonstrations on the Gamecock site and outside Manchester’s Town Hall. They also formally objected at local planning meetings, using expertise from partners such as the Tenant’s Union to raise legal concerns, including insufficient disabled parking, loss of daylight, and that more student housing threatened the mixed residential neighbourhood (MCC, 2024).

The challenge the community faces however is the relentless nature of the commercial development industry, with any rejected proposal soon followed up by another, sometimes with only slight amendments. This has kept the community in constant resistance, with each small victory quickly followed by the process restarting. This has led to the campaign taking Manchester City Council to court through a judicial review over their planning system (see Hall, 2025).

Whilst the campaign was not originally part of our project, it very much became entangled with our collaborative fieldwork on the ground (and the necessity of the NORC initiative), highlighting the varied, more radical types of actions necessary for progressing an age-friendly neighbourhood in an area facing distinct pressures. Commenting on the campaign, tenant activist Tina Cribbin (cited in Rose, 2024: 267) states, “it’s not just about a pub, it’s about a destruction of a way of life”, nodding to the deliberate dismantling of a community over time. In 20 years, 49 pubs have vanished, replaced by housing and student accommodation, erasing places deeply tied to older residents’ biographies, contributing to a gradual process through which their collective and individual sense of identity is erased (Tenquist, Hartland and Salles, 2024: 185). The fight on the former Gamecock Pub site encapsulates long-standing injustices and struggles – a site where different histories, communities and visions collide (Crang, 2001). As long-term community activist and volunteer tells us:

“…it feels like there’s a massive mallet trying to knock us into the ground…if we buckle under the stress of it, we’re done for…there is nothing for older people in this area, nothing”

There are thus entrenched and active feelings of conflict and frustration amongst the community that have built up over time, leading to ‘localised solidarities’ (Harvey, 1985) between tenants on the estate which causes them to (re)act to pressures in a specific, collective and activist way.

Block the Block represents older tenants’ absolute “right to be [t]here, a right to services and a right to be heard” (Hopton tenant) and demonstrates their outright “refusal to disappear” (Rose, 2024: 268) through fighting power structures. The initiative continues to bring older people together through a common opponent, with red and white posters in the windows of Hopton Court providing a visual marker of a shared conflict. The group are driven by issues of housing justice, a struggle to retain a sense of belonging and the hope of the return of social infrastructure that underpins their ability to age in place, aims which seem to fully align with those of the age-friendly programme.

Despite this, their vision for achieving an age-friendly neighbourhood through acts of resistance sits outside the normal domains of what constitutes ‘doing age-friendly work’. The WHO model assumes age-friendly programmes are initiated and managed by the state, who focus on utilising their convening power to bring together stakeholders to collaborate across the public, private, and community service sectors, supported by a central role in conducting assessments and developing city-wide and neighbourhood strategies to support ageing well (Greenfield and Buffel, 2022). Although the WHO approach places older people’s views at the centre, the adoption of consensus-based, partnership models offers little opportunity for heterodox acts such as protest, which are culturally and potentially legally difficult for professional organisations to explicitly support.

Activism through ‘creation’ – the NORC community space

Hopton Court has no communal space for tenants, curtailing opportunities for them to come together and socialise, exacerbated by the lack of affordable and accessible social infrastructure in the immediate neighbourhood due to gentrification and studentification. The majority of the socialising and engagement work done by tenants and in the project has been either in the garden, the use of which is dictated by the British weather, or in the caretaker’s office which is small and not fit for purpose.

Based off earlier research and recommendations (Cribbin et al., 2021; Hopton Hopefuls and King, 2021), plans to create a community space started with efforts to construct a purpose-built space in the gardens of Hopton Court. Through charity funding and supported by the housing association, tenants worked with architects through a series of co-design workshops based on the visioning of the new space from a variety of angles, from how the physical space needed to be in relation to access needs of tenants, to the social activities (communal meals, informal games, music sharing) and health services (health checks, vaccinations) tenants wanted.

However, despite being initially encouraging of the construction of a new space, the housing association underwent an organisational restructure, with new leadership stating that a purpose-built space in the garden was not possible. There was a prolonged period where communication between the housing association and the tenants was poor. The housing association were trying to find an alternative option and did not want to offer a running commentary for fear of unduly raising hopes, but from the perspective of tenants the lack of communication was representative of a lack of trust and respect - exacerbating existing power inequities and mistrust already entrenched between housing associations and tenants in Hulme.

Eventually an alternative proposal was offered by the housing association, who proposed converting an empty ground floor flat into a community space – a significant financial commitment that was above and beyond the statutory duty of the housing association. This raised morale within the NORC project where a new co-produced proposal was quickly drawn up based on the ideas from the previous space planned for the garden. The NORC community worker and research team carried out a block-wide survey through a BBQ event held in the summer in the garden to drum up interest for the new space, later compiled into a report based on tenant feedback requested by the housing association. Yet, several subsequent delays and little transparency over such updates fuelled tenants’ frustration, amplified further after the proposed completion date passed and no tangible renovation worked had occurred. It was a process marked by both drastic and subtle moments of conflict, going through “cycles of hope and confusion” (Hopton tenant) – revealing more broadly how precarities and inequities that exist within cities seep into collaborative efforts on the ground (Harvey, 1985; Kavanagh et al., 2025b).

The culmination of all the anger was a protest organised outside the housing association’s offices. The core group of older tenants that drive the NORC on the ground mobilised, creating large placards with statements reflecting their vexed sentiments, demanding transparency, including ‘HONESTY IS NOT YOUR POLICY’ and ‘OLDER PEOPLE BUILT HULME, YOU BROKE IT!’. This protest happened at a tense time when tenants were particularly frustrated by a perception that the housing association had broken several promises and failed to communicate the process surrounding the community space with them, layered on top of the wider injustices and structural disadvantages they already face.

Tenants involved in the demonstration debriefed afterwards about its necessity. In informal conversations with us in the block they stated how “we needed that conflict, we gain so much from it, of course it’s going to be uncomfortable”, demonstrating how conflict can be productive (Kavanagh et al., 2025b). The protest was a way for tenants to be heard, trying to rebalance the power relationships by trying to claim some (albeit small) power amidst a turbulent process by demanding a change in how the current collaboration was functioning. Tenants expressed how “no one gives you power, you have to take it”. In a follow-up meeting organised by the housing association, it was revealed that there was also something cathartic about the protest - “it was the act of coming together and letting off steam as a group” (Hopton tenant). Tenants have described feeling as though they were in a constant fight and battle mode within the project, not knowing when the course of action will change, or if their raised hopes were false, and the protest was a “really important release valve” (Hopton tenant) for their frustration. As the NORC community worker stated, the tenants “are not just protesting against the community space decision, but also against four years of discontent”.

We understand the creation of a community space as offering tenants stability and control within the block, things which are lacking in the wider neighbourhood given the pace of change gentrification and studentification are driving. Add to this the continual (unpaid) efforts tenants put in throughout the project to realise the community space in the years after, along with the protest of tenants exercising their right to be heard, we can understand such efforts as forms activism necessary for bringing about a social space that will support an age-friendly neighbourhood, helping tenants to age well in place.

It is worth stating that the community space, at time of writing, has still yet to be realised at Hopton Court, four years on from the tenants’ initial co-design workshops (some reasons of which are beyond the housing association’s control). Yet in the same timeframe, the surrounding neighbourhood and nearby city centre has seen more and more development occurring. When we consider tenants’ efforts to create a community space in the wider context of the ongoing dismantling of their community around them, and the injustices and lack of control surrounding that, along with the fossilised mistrust that exists between them and their housing association – we understand how the tenants’ activist actions emerge from a different emotional baseline.

Compared to our previous exploration of resistance, activism through creation appears more naturally aligned to the AFCC model where designing and realising possible solutions is both attractive and uncontentious for state and voluntary sector stakeholders. In reality, the act of creation has proved equally challenging. While older tenants in Hopton Court have demonstrated their central role in leading, shaping and justifying new social infrastructure, it also highlights the tension and emotional labour underpinning these processes, and the need for new ways of working that better reflect the lived experiences of older tenants in marginalised communities.

Discussion

The examples of ‘activism through resistance’ and ‘activism through creation’ set out in this article highlight the potential for age-friendly initiatives to push back against broader social issues that affect older people, but only when older people have the agency to do so. While the loss and creation of social infrastructure in these examples are local, they are also the product of national and global shifts driven by economic austerity, the changing role of the state, gentrification and financialisaton of housing. The inability of the normative government-led AFCC model to address these structural issues suggests the need for new tools and methods in addressing issues of spatial justice for older people.

While the age-friendly movement has committed itself to coproduction approaches, the parameters by which older individuals can act are often constrained by decisions made by stakeholders much earlier in the decision-making process. This is particularly pertinent in contexts where older people experience systemic precarity and insecurities that undermine opportunities for individual and collective wellbeing (Grenier et al., 2017; Grenier and Phillipson, 2018; Hammond et al., 2020). The research project coincided with the cost-of-living crisis in the UK, high levels of food and fuel poverty, over-stretched health and care services, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, issues that disproportionately affect communities like Hulme. These conditions made community-led action both necessary and incredibly difficult, highlighting the disconnect between the rhetoric of co-production and the reality of doing it on the ground in marginalised communities. It was common for people to become disengaged from the project due to other challenges they faced, including issues with social care support, increased care responsibilities, being victims of crime or anti-social behaviour, or limited disposable income to engage with their wider community. Like many community-led research initiatives, the project optimistically aimed to provide a catalyst for the group to be able to continue in a self-sustaining way, but this was quickly challenged by tenants who felt this to be overly burdensome, particularly when they felt their asks for support were just and fair.

“[Tenants] don’t want it to be a co-op where they do everything, or everything being done for people…some people like to be busy, who are up for doing things but they just can’t. There needs to be that support, funding… In terms of the cost of living crisis, many people are struggling. It doesn’t feel that feasible” (NORC community worker)

While this paper has focused on examples where tenants engaged in forms of activism that usually fall outside of the age-friendly model, it is important to note that the group understood and attempted to embrace many of the core features of ‘typical’ age-friendly programmes. Tenants attended steering group meetings and worked to build relationships with partners, despite their discomfort in these kind of professionalised settings where they felt they were “…always having to learn a new language, a new way of working” (Hopton tenant) and had a lack of trust it would bring about proper change. While the tenants aligned to the stakeholders way of working at times, there was no reciprocal shift when the tenants changed to a more activist approach, using methods that some of these stakeholders found necessarily uncomfortable, precisely because they were holding a mirror to systemic issues that professional classes had at best failed to address, and at worse were complicit in. This tension extended at times to the research team. While the NORC collaboration was itself an activist endeavour, advocating for resources for an older marginalised community, when it began moving in directions of more explicit activist actions like protest, there wasn’t consensus on how or if we should engage. Whilst we didn’t want the collaborative partnership to unravel jeopardising the wider project, equally we didn’t want to be seen to be withholding support after building up trust with tenants over time.

It is important to recognise the extraordinary effort that older people involved in the Hopton Court NORC needed to make to achieve even modest goals. We similarly shouldn’t glamourise the struggle the community have gone through, but instead understand it as a failure of systems to properly support them. Many participants noted the stress and exhaustion of having to ‘fight’, but that this was necessary because the community lacks institutional allies to intervene on their behalf to push back against the forces of global capital and lucrative development opportunities.

Conclusion

Buffel et al. (2024: 3) argue that research into age-friendly environments has focused too heavily on what needs to be included to make a place age-friendly, with limited knowledge on how to develop inclusive environments that meet people’s aspirations as they grow older. One of the challenges posed by the age-friendly movement is the distance between the scale of systemic and structural challenges that shape older people’s lives, and the mechanisms through which they are currently being addressed. We suggest that activism offers a novel opportunity to bridge this gap, but requires a reconceptualisation of how power is distributed in the age-friendly movement.

Activism is tacitly marginalised in many professional structures, yet by adopting these norms the age-friendly movement is hamstrung in its attempts to address the systemic issues that underpin many older people’s experiences, be that the financialisaton of housing, widening inequality, retrenchment of public services or social exclusion driven by regeneration policies. We argue that the age-friendly movement needs to better acknowledge the difficult conditions which older people live through, navigate and even resist, and such conditions require a more radical approach to change. Equally, we acknowledge the challenge this places on stakeholders, particularly when financial, regulatory and organisational pressures are to reduce risk and avoid action perceived as political.

There is however a fundamental challenge that this activist initiative poses, which is whether activism is intrinsically opposed to the AFCC model or not, given its origins in government policy. Despite activism being an important axis for developing age-friendly communities, can the AFCC meaningfully incorporate it, or must activism remain outside the system to challenge it effectively? If older people are protesting within the very movement designed to support them, does this point to limitations that the AFCC cannot address? Despite this complexity, of which this research doesn’t attempt to resolve, it is clear that change is needed. If the age-friendly movement cannot accommodate an activist ethic, especially when it is driven by those experiencing hardship, then it is perhaps time to imagine new models capable of supporting spatial justice for older people.