Age-Friendly Rural Communities: Conceptualizing 'Best-Fit'

The literature on age-friendly communities is predominantly focused on a model of urban aging, thereby failing to reflect the diversity of rural communities. In this article, we address that gap by focusing on the concept of community in a rural context and asking what makes a good fit between older people and their environment. We do this through (a) autobiographical and biographical accounts of two very different geographical living environments: bucolic and bypassed communities; and through (b) analysis of the different needs and resources of two groups of people: marginalized and community-active older adults, who live in those two different rural communities. We argue that the original 2007 World Health Organization definition of age friendly should be reconceptualized to explicitly accommodate different community needs and resources, to be more inclusive as well as more interactive and dynamic, incorporating changes that have occurred over time in people and place.