Over the years, and at the margin of psychology, there have been interesting and original lines of reflections on ageing based on careful observations of older people’s lives in their environment. First, the environment came to the fore in approaches developed in dialogue with geography, which started to apprehend it as a landscape of care. Second, ethnographies of ageing gave in-depth understanding of development in age in more or less supportive, more or less formal environments. Third, psychoanalysis developed its reflection on ageing as it saw its steady change. It has theorised the specificities of the ageing psyche, while showing its multiple determinations. Put together, these three lines of studies pave the way for a rich, case-study based approach to development in older age, where people are understood as deeply related to the evolving environments in which they live.