Diana Olsberg

Older People: Well-Being

As almost all developed countries and most developing countries confront entirely unprecedented demographic changes as a consequence of the ageing of their populations, the availability of adequate, suitable, and satisfactory housing for older people becomes a pressing necessity. The persistent and increasing longevity of those ageing populations and their enhanced expectations for welfare and well-being in later life demand increasing attention to the issue of housing by policy decision-makers in government and by the private sector, as well as being fundamental to the future welfare and well-being of individual older men and women and their families. This article reviews current international research which focuses upon the changing expectations of older people regarding future housing, the contribution to health and well-being for older people to remain living independently, and the possibilities of housing design which can ensure the liveability, welfare, and well-being of ageing populations.

Book Reviews : SOCIAL WELFARE AND INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY: FOR AND AGAINST David Schmidtz and Robert E. Goodin Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, xiv, 222 pp.,

mate cosmopolitan. The final and hardest question is, does it all add up? Do the chapters support each other and the theoretical claims? I have to say that a single author (though clearly he has an army of helpers and colleagues, including a profusely credited wife) finding and interpreting all this material in light of a single theoretical framework seems both courageous and mad at the same time. Castells opens himself to the kind of objection against ’enlightenment man’ that Meaghan Morris made of David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodemity (1992, ’The Man in the Mirror: David Harvey’s &dquo;Condition&dquo; of Postmodernity’ in E. Jacka ed., Continental Shift: Globalisation and Culture Sydney: Local Consumption, pp. 25-51). Harvey’s book