Sunday, March 20, 2005

Retirement CoHousing

An ad for a posh retirement community in San Mateo got my attention somehow: Peninsula Regent.

Later, when I was reading articles about rising rates of people choosing to never marry, some of which mentioned new families of "intentional communities" and cohousing, I saw a connection.

These retirement communities for wealthy old people, which have shared dining and other facilities, and household services, are pretty much the same idea as cohousing, although the latter is pictured with liberal green hippies and the former with rich retired capitalists.

This type of housing, facilities, and services are built together in planned communities for old people in retirement centers and students in dorms. For some reason society isn't expecting each of them to cook, clean, and do everything for themselves, but the busiest age group of people in their working prime are expected to operate in nuclear families in suburbs doing everything themselves in addition to childcare which the former do not have to worry about.

Perhaps change in social structures and lifestyles will actually start with retired people. As is said, that the Baby Boomer generation which coined a new name and definition for each phase of life they went through, from hippies to yuppies, they will probably redefine retirement when that begins in a few years as well.

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