Background:In different parts of the world new models of senior housing have rapidly appeared, which indicates that existing housing and care models are not fulfilling the hopes and needs of current and new generations of older people.Material and Methods:This qualitative study focuses on one type of communal senior housing complex located in a mid-sized town in Central Finland. The complex was designed to have accessible low-maintenance apartments and common spaces, and to be near easily accessible green spaces, amenities, services, and public transport. The complex has a part-time community coordinator. The minimum age limit is set at 55 years. The data consists of 36 qualitative interviews with residents (21 women, 15 men) aged 66–93, conducted between November 2018 and February 2019. The semi-structured interviews were recorded and transcribed. The data analysis focused on how different aspects of the manmade, natural, and social environment were portrayed in residents' descriptions of day-to-day life. Theoretical framework adopted for the study draws from the ideas of environmental and geographic gerontology. The data was analyzed using positioning analysis which is one form of discourse analysis.Results:The senior housing in this study fulfilled its promise of providing accessible a physical and social environment which encourages and enables residents to be physically active and independent, yet which also provides social activities and feeling safe. In this respect, the senior housing complex offered an environment which supports well-being and healthy aging. However, the residents' interpretations of what the senior housing complex represented varied. For some of the residents it was first and foremost a social place, which provided opportunities for social contacts and social activities. For some of the residents the most important were maintenance-free apartments and outdoor areas. The question remains as to how social practices, in the form of government policies and market systems can support the development of different kinds of senior housing which are affordable and accessible for all.

As an inevitable process, the number of older adults is increasing in many countries worldwide. Two of the main problems that society is being confronted with more and more, in this respect, are the inter-related aspects of feelings of loneliness and social isolation among older adults. In particular, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and its associated restrictions have exacerbated the loneliness and social-isolation problems. This paper is first and foremost a comprehensive survey of loneliness monitoring and management solutions, from the multidisciplinary perspective of technology, gerontology, socio-psychology, and urban built environment. In addition, our paper also investigates machine learning-based technological solutions with wearable-sensor data, suitable to measure, monitor, manage, and/or diminish the levels of loneliness and social isolation, when one also considers the constraints and characteristics coming from social science, gerontology, and architecture/urban built environments points of view. Compared to the existing state of the art, our work is unique from the cross-disciplinary point of view, because our authors’ team combines the expertise from four distinct domains, i.e., gerontology, social psychology, architecture, and wireless technology in addressing the two inter-related problems of loneliness and social isolation in older adults. This work combines a cross-disciplinary survey of the literature in the four aforementioned domains with a proposed wearable-based technological solution, introduced first as a generic framework and, then, exemplified through a simple proof of concept with dummy data. As the main findings, we provide a comprehensive view on challenges and solutions in utilizing various technologies, particularly those carried by users, also known as wearables, to measure, manage, and/or diminish the social isolation and the perceived loneliness among older adults. In addition, we also summarize the identified solutions which can be used for measuring and monitoring various loneliness- and social isolation-related metrics, and we present and validate, through a simple proof-of-concept mechanism, an approach based on machine learning for predicting and estimating loneliness levels. Open research issues in this field are also discussed.

In recent years, many Finnish cities and municipalities have aspired to develop services that support older adults’ well‐being and social inclusion. This study focuses on the Social Hub model, a local social innovation developed in the city of Tampere. Social hubs operate on a neighbourhood level, providing free‐of‐charge service coordination and counselling, group activities, and meeting places for social gatherings. This study aims to look at whether this kind of local innovation can support older adults’ well‐being and social inclusion. The sociomaterial perspective and multidimensional model of well‐being (the having–doing–loving–being approach) provided theoretical and analytical guidelines to examine older adults’ experiences and perceptions of social hubs. The qualitative interview data was collected among people living in service housing, senior housing, or ordinary housing in the proximity of the social hubs studied. Face‐to‐face and “go‐along” interviews with 19 older adults aged between 57 and 96 were analysed with theory‐driven content analysis. The results showed that the hubs are a valuable local resource for older adults, providing free services, accessible and appealing shared spaces, and activities that promote social well‐being, physical activity, creativity, and autonomy. The hubs serve as important gathering points for older adults in the neighbourhood, fostering community‐building among citizens residing in different types of housing. The results highlight the importance of acknowledging well‐being as a multidimensional phenomenon. The Social Hub model provides one practical tool to support older adults’ well‐being and social inclusion by offering various kinds of resources and social and cultural activities.

As the population ages, the number of people with dementia increases. An emerging body of research is focusing on living with dementia and understanding the experience of caring and the care burden. There is much less research on the meaning of dementia from the perspective of an older couple’s spousal relationship and related intimacy. This qualitative study explores the meanings of emotional and physical intimacy and the changes brought by dementia in the couplehood of persons with dementia and their spousal carers. The data comprise semi-structured interviews with 35 persons. The interviews were analysed using inductive qualitative content analysis. Four themes describing the meanings of relational intimacy were identified: intimacy as a striving force, intimacy turning into worrisome behaviour, intimacy as physical and emotional dependency, and intimacy turning into one-sided caring for a partner. Dementia changes the intimate relationship in many ways, but shared affection and long-term partnership help maintain the spousal relationship. While dementia may bring about conflicts and behavioural challenges in an intimate relationship, the couple’s shared intimacy and a sense of responsibility for one another may serve as a resource and support the continuity of couplehood.

Older peoples' independent living in their own homes and their ability to move around and maintain social relations in their communities have been acknowledged as important aims to support their well-being. In this article, we study Special Transport Services as a means to support older persons with 'aging in place' - that is, within their communities. From "go-alongs" (shared dial-a-ride bus journeys) and "sit-down interviews" (at participant's home or a cafe ') with 12 older people living in a Finnish suburb, we explored their everyday dial-aride bus trips to the local mall. We used actor-network theory and the concept of motility to show how at first glance what appeared to be simple dial-a-ride journeys were in fact produced by a complex and fluid actor network consisting of people, rules, norms, practices, technical devices, as well as other objects and tools. Associations between various human and non-human actors compensated for the functional limitations experienced by the participants, but also created difficulties during the journeys. Our main finding is that the actor network of dial-a-ride bus did physically help older people be more mobile, but at the same time the service required a wide range of know-how and skills. We argue that developing a truly age-friendly environment - with inclusive services to help older individuals age well within their community - requires a detailed understanding from their perspective of the actor networks that produce those services. When planning old age services, there is a need to engage with older people from different social backgrounds to develop services that are genuinely supportive and easy to use for a heterogeneous group. Our findings can be utilized in developing physical and social environments that better support older people's mobility and enable them to age well in the community.