RESEARCH ON AGING Robert / COMMUNITY CONTEXT AND AGING Community Context and Aging Future Research Issues

This special issue of Research on Aging focuses on the topic of com-munity context and aging. When advertising the call for papers, we described a broad focus on the relationship between community con-text and aging and on community context and older adults. We said that we were open to various definitions of community (e.g., neigh-borhoods, self-defined cultural or religious communities) and pro-vided examples of community context, including community socio-economic context, racial segregation, community service environment, community social capital, community stability and dis-order, residential mobility, community age structure, and community cultural context.We also provided additional examples of topics, such as community action research with older adults, community interven-tions to improve the health andwell-being of older adults, and the role of older adults in shaping community context. Clearly, there are a number of ways in which people talk and think about communities. Communities can refer to spaces in which people live; spaces defined by political boundaries, municipal boundaries, or natural geographic boundaries (rivers,mountains); or other delineated spaces. Communities can also be defined by social rather than physi-cal boundaries, such asmembers of a social groupwho share interests, identity, and/or interactions. The main idea is that there is something about the places and people with whom we surround ourselves that matter to our lives. Although there is renewed popular and research attention to the role of community in our lives, much of the recent research on com-munity context has not focused on life-course or gerontologica