A global ageing population presents opportunities and challenges to designing urban environments that support ageing in place. The World Health Organisation’s Global Age-Friendly Cities movement has identified the need to develop communities that optimise health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age. Ensuring that age-friendly urban environments create the conditions for active ageing requires cities and communities to support older adults’ rights to access and move around the city (‘appropriation’) and for them to be actively involved in the transformation (‘making and remaking’) of the city. This raised important questions: what are older adults’ everyday experiences in exercising their rights to the city? what are the challenges and opportunities in supporting a rights to the city approach? how can the delivery of age-friendly cities support rights to the city for older people? This paper examines these questions through presenting the lived experiences of older adults across three cities and nine neighbourhoods in the UK collected through an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded three year project.https://vimeo.com/517076102