Quand la diversité culturelle des territoires métropolitains avance en âge. Est-ce que la forme urbaine des territoires influence le risque d’exclusion ?

Abstract

Aging at home is a trajectory that governments have been promoting for many years, and that seniors and their families appreciate. However, aging at home is not a static or linear experience. As people's lives evolve, so do their neighbourhoods, placing individuals in different situations, more or less favourable from the point of view of inclusion, participation and, more broadly, control of their residential environment. This dual evolution is particularly visible in the immigrant areas of metropolitan agglomerations like Montréal. The environments in which both immigration and aging are concentrated vary widely in terms of urban form (inner-city, peri-urban, suburbs, etc.) and urban dynamics (renewal, requalification, gentrification, etc.). These differentiated dynamics sometimes correspond to favoured areas that may be experiencing impoverishment, and sometimes refer to areas undergoing relatively significant social and economic change, posing challenges for urban policies that are just as challenging. Using the concept of residential normalcy, we look at 3 types of living environments (established immigrant communities, requalifying communities, and sprawled immigrant communities). Seniors achieve residential normalcy when they report generally positive feelings about their living environments, the people, groups or institutions that shape their daily lives, and the activities they are able to choose and carry out. Many of the factors that exclude established immigrant communities are related to access to urban resources, particularly institutional recognition. If access to mobility and transportation is a factor of fragility, to be able to follow the trajectory of the community of belonging in the agglomeration, the anchoring of the community of belonging in its environment is a strong factor of inclusion. For areas undergoing redevelopment or sprawling, it's the very location and presence of urban resources that raises questions, giving visibility to individuals and communities. This issue of (in)visibility involves a number of ordinary places (shopping centres, vacant spaces of all kinds, etc.), but these are undergoing major transformation, and their control is not guaranteed. The cases of two Montréal boroughs, Parc-Extension and Montréal-Nord, and the City of Brossard, provide an opportunity to discuss the policies.

Keywords

• immigration
• suburbs
• Aging
• inclusion
• inner-city
• planning