Introduction

This chapter explores what neighbourhoods mean for people living with dementia. While the built environment, and the economic and political apparatus they comprise of such as shops, services and localised campaigning, are certainly important, our attention focuses on how people living with dementia understand neighbourhoods as sites of relationally constituted ordinary or everyday social connection, engagement and interaction. The chapter outlines the nature of associations individuals have with the wider social sphere of their immediate locale and considers how these ostensibly geographical proximate (or local) social connections might support people to live as well as they might with dementia. In doing so, it considers why it matters to understand the socio-spatial dimensions of neighbourhoods as relational and interconnected phenomena and considers the importance of thinking about neighbourhoods as more than environments in need of intervention or modification in order to support people living with dementia.

How are neighbourhoods understood in the dementia literature?

In a review published in 2012, Keady and colleagues noted that a surprisingly small amount of literature has focused specifically on the importance of neighbourhoods for people living with dementia. The review identified three domains of activity: outdoor spaces, the built environment, and everyday technologies. The first examines how the outdoor environment can be better designed and/or modified to support people living with dementia. This includes work on the design of streetscapes and road layouts to better support mobility, as well as ongoing work to enable easier access to a range of different environments such as green and recreational spaces. A second attends to navigation and mobility of environments, such as shopping centres, hospitals, museums and grocery stores. The third investigates the use of technologies, including virtual realities, to support access to, or better develop, environments beyond the home (Keady et al, 2012). Since then, a considerable body of work has continued to investigate these areas (Sturge et al, 2021) and continues to provide evidence of the need to better understand why and how people living with dementia interact with their immediate environments outside of the home.