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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.2471
igaa057.2471
Abstracts
Session 6185 (Symposium)
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
My Neighborhood Is Fuzzy, Not Hard and Fast: A Mixed-Methods Study of Neighborhood Size Among Aging Americans
Finlay Jessica  Jang Joy Bohyun  Esposito Michael  Tang Sandra  Khan Anam  Clarke Philippa  
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”703 704
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This 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.Abstract
In this exploratory sequential mixed-methods study, interviews with 125 adults aged 55-92 living in the Minneapolis (Minnesota) metropolitan area suggest that neighborhood boundaries are “fuzzy”. Qualitative analysis of neighborhood perceptions identified race, mobility, driving status, social connections, housing insecurity, land use, urbanicity, and crime as key themes. Over 8,000 REGARDS participants (mean age 72) indicated how many blocks composed their neighborhoods (mean=9.9, SD=35.4). Linear regression models showed that being over the age of 85, white, less educated, lower income, less physically and cognitively healthy, and living outside of a metropolitan area significantly predicted smaller self-reported neighborhood sizes. Further, there was significant variation among participants residing in the same areas as other respondents. The mixed-methods results indicate that neighborhoods are fluid and dependent on a mix of personal and geographic factors. Findings inform the scale of environmental audits, place-based interventions, and community outreach programs targeting older adults.