Introduction

The neighbourhood environment has been identified as being integral to the lives of community-dwelling persons with dementia. A safe, accessible and familiar neighbourhood can provide emotional and practical support and augment participation, empowerment, trust and belonging for people with dementia (Keady et al, 2012). However, there is limited theoretical development and empirical evidence on the relations of people with dementia and neighbourhoods explored from the perspective of people's lived experience. There is a need to (1) better understand the dynamic relationship between people with dementia and neighbourhoods, and (2) integrate the physical and psychosocial dimensions of the neighbourhood environment in people's lives (Keady et al, 2012). A major theme explored in research in this area is the out-of-home mobility of community-dwelling people with dementia (Blackman et al, 2003; Burton and Mitchell, 2006). Mobility is central to the ability to successfully perform daily routines and remain healthy, physically active and socially engaged in the neighbourhood. However, currently, there is no integrative conceptual framework that (1) focuses on the processes of out-of-home mobility of persons living with dementia in the neighbourhood, and (2) bridges these processes with individual well-being and outcomes related to their quality of life. This chapter proposes a conceptual framework that integrates the processes and outcomes, as well as the objective and subjective components of out-of-home mobility of persons living with dementia. The research questions guiding this chapter are:

• 1. How do person– environment interactions in the context of outof-home mobility of community-dwelling persons living with dementia influence the processes of agency and belonging?

• 2. How do the processes of agency and belonging in the context of out-of-home mobility influence the developmental outcomes of autonomy and identity?

The following sections will (1) discuss two key guiding frameworks in environmental gerontology; (2) highlight the key concepts from the literature on out-of-home mobility of people living with dementia; and (3) demonstrate the interrelationships between these concepts in the proposed new framework.

Guiding framework

The two guiding conceptual frameworks are the Integrative Conceptual Framework of Person-Environment Exchange and the Framework of Interplay of Belonging and Agency, Aging Well, and the Environment (Wahl and Oswald, 2010; Wahl et al, 2012; Chaudhury and Oswald, 2019).