Growing Old In A New Downtown By Maria Vesperis Summary

City of Green Benches: Growing Old in a New Downtown (1985), by Maria D. Vesperi focuses on analyzing the symbolic process of older people in St. Petersburg, Florida, and its consequences of how government and commercial mechanisms view them. When Maria Vesperi first visited St. Petersburg in 1975, her intentions were to study how American cultures view of old age is communicated to the low-income elderly, and how the individual older person attempts to modify, adapt to, or reject social construction. However, what is significant about St. Petersburg is the process of normal aging, and how it correlates individuals of old age with an ongoing reciprocal relationship with society. Reciprocity, for Maria Vesperi, is defined through the mutual act of giving and receiving across social interactions. Furthermore, it is regarded as a basis mechanism that creates stable social relationships in a person’s life. As a result, this action of interdependence as a norm, not only has a universal positive effect on the continuity in elderly people’s relationships, but also poses as an excellent predictor to mental health and overall life quality.

Petersburg, Florida, as it served society at large as a symbol of retirement. Vesperi participated fully in the lives of elder residents to let them express the subjective nature of their encounters with the world. She conceptualized that while most Florida elder members are not poor and dependent on social services, they were however, looked up upon and reminded by younger generations that they ought to grapple with the fact that they are stranded in the liminal. Not only were old people expected to meet and respond to this distorted image of how they were viewed informally, but they must also accept