We are the last ones here... The experience of growing old in gentrifying post-socialist urban environment?

Gentrification might be analyzed through the processes of the displacement of specific groups of lower economic and political power. However, it might also be studied as a process of cultural change and the establishment of cultural hegemonies and dominances, as a multidimensional cultural practice (Zukin 1987). Especially in the post-socialist city, the concept of gentrification is tightly bound with the transformation of the meaning of the inner city and other urban areas, especially when the structure of housing was one of the main path-dependencies of the previous communist era, which shaped population distribution in cities by specific forms of central distribution.

The paper is based on the “Ageing in the environment: regeneration, gentrification and social exclusion as new issues in environmental gerontology (2010 – 2012)” research project realized in three biggest cities in the Czech Republic: Prague, Ostrava and Brno. In the qualitative part of our research we focused on the perceptions of the neighbourhood changes by the inner city inhabitants over 60 (individual in-depth interviews and focus groups), and on their experience of growing old in different parts of the city centres, while in the quantitative follow-up surveys we aimed to grasp the perception of urban change in more comparative way to be able to differentiate between certain groups of elderly dwellers. One of the main issues emerging from the results is disparity between feelings of growing otherness of the living environment (“the city is not ours”) with persisting willingness to “stay put” expressed in individual life strategies. The concluding discussion raises question whether and how different forms of regeneration of the cities create risks (symbolic) exclusion of older people and how these are heterogeneously incorporated into older people narratives. The key issues of autonomy, in/security, in/stability and experience of fear of displacement are discussed.