In this episode, host Susanne Stadler, architect and AHWGO Executive Director, welcomes Stacy Torres, Ph.D. — Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the UCSF School of Nursing and author of At Home in the City: Growing Old in Urban America (2025) — for a discussion on the lifelong practice of aging in place.

Stacy's interest in this topic is deeply personal. When the neighborhood café and bakery she called her "home away from home" in New York had to close, she followed the people — conducting a five-year ethnographic study tracing elderly regulars through loss, health setbacks, and the slow churn of a changing city. What she found was striking: "With many of the people I spent time with, going out was essential to their functioning, to their mental health, to their physical functioning."

That insight shapes a bigger invitation — to rethink aging in place not as something that happens to us later, but as a lifelong practice of seeking out the spaces where we are recognized and belong. From a neighborhood bakery, a nearby park, to a public library, where do we go to linger, to become a "regular," to build intergenerational connections? As Stacy puts it: "The practice of finding your places and your people, wherever they may be, creating your webs of connections — it really does need to begin earlier." Join us as we explore what it takes, in our communities and ourselves, to build the social infrastructure that supports growing older together.

Episode Transcript: https://share.descript.com/view/qMEGRINF65o

Takeaway Resources: https://athomewithgrowingold.com/2026/03/11/at-home-on-air-a-conversation-with-stacy-torres/

At Home With Growing Older is proud to host At Home, On Air — a radio hour offering connection, community and knowledge to our participants.

Learn more, support our work, and register for the next LIVE episode of At Home, On Air: www.athomewithgrowingolder.org.