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$38.95 Stock #29241 (ISBN 978-1-932529-24-1) 288 pages 6" x 9" papercover © 2009
Visit Jack Carman’s website here! |
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Excerpted from Section I of Re-Creating Neighborhoods for Successful Aging edited by Pauline S. Abbott, Ed.D., Nancy Carman, M.A., C.M.C., Jack Carman, FASLA, and Bob Scarfo, Ph.D., M.L.A. Copyright © 2008 by Health Professions Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. The World of Senior Living Life is synonymous with change. Sometimes the changes are slow and sometimes they occur in a New York minute. The aging of the United States, and for that matter of the global population, is only one of several emerging trends that will soon influence how many people carry out their daily routines in their neighborhoods. People’s routines are already changing. The near-retiree cohort is redefining retirement, retiree, retirement community, and, for that matter, grandma and grandpa. Preparing for the coming of age of baby boomers cannot be considered nor planned for in isolation. Rising energy costs due to oil depletion are impacting the costs of heating and cooling homes and businesses, commuting routines, as well as food production, processing, and shipping, to name just a few effects. Health issues associated with obesity and Type 2 diabetes are not only influencing individual well-being, community and business health care costs, and employee and student absenteeism, but also community policies and planning practices and their subsequent design outcomes. It has become apparent that suburban sprawl contributes to weight gain, whereas pedestrian-friendly environments contribute to healthier people. Daily life in many neighborhoods is being redefined by a need to downsize. These trends are each first-time-ever events. Each is contributing to what will come to be known as daily life, active living, and healthy aging. Space, in terms of the form, content, and character of neighborhoods, is in need of greater consideration in the research and literature on aging. That research, its interpretation and practical applications, calls for greater collaboration at each stage along the theory–practice spectrum. The attitudes and activities associated with retirement, retirees, and retirement communities are also being redefined. Shifts in the three are readily seen in Del Webb’s Baby Boomer Survey throughout the 1990s and the 21st century. People’s attitudes, values, and behaviors are changing, as well as the built environments to which they are being drawn. Given the boomers’ increased longevity and their sheer numbers, their history of influencing changes in landscapes, architecture, social systems, and institutions as their cohort has aged is not about to slow down. Being idle is no longer their image of a retiree. Decade by decade, the boomers have caused massive changes in schools and schooling, in the numbers and kinds of advanced degrees in higher education, in housing and recreation, and in industries and technologies. Their intellect and innovative spirit have pushed the envelope in communications, space travel, medicine, aeronautics, film making, and more. Their ideologies have challenged presidents and politics. Now, with so many baby boomers at the brink of retirement, society must recognize and acknowledge that boomers will apply the same energy, inquisitiveness, and innovation to their retirement. Baby boomers’ tendency away from idleness and toward action aimed at bettering communities is evident in a growing number of studies. A 2001 study conducted by the Fannie Mae Foundation and the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy Census found that 18 out of 24 downtowns saw increases in their populations. The authors identified one of the contributing factors as the influx of empty nesters, people no longer responsible for dependent children. This growing restlessness is reinforced in the 2003 Del Webb Baby Boomer Survey, which reported that 59% of those surveyed said they would move into a new residence in retirement. In the 1999 survey, only 31% of respondents, age 48 to 52 at the time, said that they planned to move to another residence for retirement. The influence of boomers on existing and proposed communities is noted in the MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures New Face of Work Survey: "This new survey of Americans aged 50 to 70 finds that they do not expect to, or want to, put their feet up and not work at all in retirement . . . Fully half of all adults age 50 to 70 (50%) say they are interested in taking jobs now or in the future to help improve the quality of life in their communities. Leading edge baby boomers are especially interested, with 6 in 10 (58%) indicating they would consider taking jobs now or in the future that would serve their communities." (Civic Ventures, 2005, p. 6) According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, "Someday soon, going to a university at [age] 50 or 60 could be the norm. Someday, every major university will have graduate schools designed specifically for accomplished professionals who want to make the transition from their primary income-earning careers to their years of flexible service. Someday, corporations will include tuition for these schools in retirement packages and will support scholarships through their foundations. Someday, the federal government will offer tuition grants and tax breaks for attending universities after 50, to support new forms of philanthropy and public service that truly solve problems." (Kanter, 2006) The American Association of Retired Persons is already offering its Loan to Learn program, which allows members to borrow anywhere between $2,000 and $50,000 a year for all education-related expenses up to $250,000. Once a truth, the call for aging in place is developing a wrinkle. Yes, people want to age in place, but that place, that house has become the home they want to live in until they die—after one last move. The campuses and the communities to which older adults will relocate will need to change. Communities with good mass transit, readily accessible goods and services, diverse recreational opportunities, and built environments that foster and sustain social connectivity will attract the aging cohort’s energy, entrepreneurial and innovative spirit, and financial and political clout.
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