Ageing, identity and place: Extending intersectional perspectives in age-friendly urbanism through the lived experiences of mid-older adults with intellectual disabilities and LGBT+ identities

The World Health Organization’s Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC) agenda promotes environments that support independence and participation in later life, yet affords limited attention to the relational and intersectional dimensions of belonging. Drawing on IncludeAge, a multisite study across Great Britain, this study explores how community inclusion and exclusion are experienced and negotiated by two groups often marginalised within age-friendly research and policy: mid-older adults (aged 40+) with intellectual disabilities (ID) and mid-older LGBT+ people. In doing so, it extends age-friendly urbanism through the intersectional place perspective (IPP). Guided by community-based participatory research principles, life-course interviews were conducted with 77 participants with ID and 76 LGBT+ participants, across urban, suburban and rural contexts. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic and narrative co-analysis informed by the IPP. Three themes were developed through collaborative analysis: (1) everyday spaces, micro-interactions and the making of belonging; (2) agency, resistance and claiming space; and (3) digital spaces as sites of connection, exposure and mistrust. Across both groups, belonging was negotiated relationally and unevenly across physical, social, service and digital domains. By foregrounding intersectionality, place and life-course trajectories, the study advances a more reflexive understanding of age-friendly urbanism. It extends the IPP within urban ageing debates, illuminates cumulative disadvantage and resilience, demonstrates the value of co-produced knowledge and proposes a conceptual theory of change to support a more intersectionally responsive AFCC agenda.