by Andrew Carle
Andrew Carle is an award-winning professor and founding director of the Program in Senior Housing Administration at George Mason University, Virginia, the first academic program in the nation dedicated exclusively to the field. He has received national and international recognition for defining a new category of senior housing, “University-based Retirement Communities” (UBRCs™), as well as a definition and categories for “Nana” Technology™ (technologies for older adults). Carle’s work has been featured or cited in or on CNN, CBS News, NPR, the New York Times, USA Today, and U.S. News & World Report, among others, as well as numerous international media.
Today’s new or soon-to-be retirees should be proud. As the leading edge of the “Baby Boom” (my own generation), you invented the personal computer, artificial heart, and rock and roll. You stood up for civil rights, women’s rights, and disability rights. If the “Greatest Generation” saved the world (and they did), there can be little doubt you changed it.
But what if you were in a position to do the unthinkable? To change the world for the better not once …but twice?
By 2030 there will be more people over the age of 60 than under the age of 15 for the first time in our 300,000-year history as a species on the planet. We will literally be living in a different world than has ever been known before.
Unfortunately, society has done little to adjust to this new world. We live in suburban communities designed for families and cars. Our grown children have moved away, making the assistance they have traditionally provided difficult to receive. We have built senior housing communities that are a better alternative to nursing homes, yet the elderly are still often separated from the rest of society.
For boomer retirees, there are only two options. We can “get out of the way” and hope someone else takes care of these problems. Or we can try and fix them ourselves.
Betting that the generation that marched on Washington will not settle for going quietly into the night, I offer two areas where we can use retirement to improve the quality not only of our adult lives, but also of every generation to follow.
Technologies, including those targeted specifically to older populations, have made the lives of nearly everyone easier. One recent technology places sensors around the home, tracks movements, and reports unusual patterns of those living alone to a designated family member or friend. We’ve also seen automated medication dispensers that ensure distribution of the right dose at the right time, as well as safety devices that can recognize a fall and signal for assistance.
But such technologies are limited in function, and often constrain activities outside the home. Instead of sensors in the walls, why not in our clothes? Researchers are developing “iTextiles,” clothing that can be washed and worn, and that will wirelessly monitor everything from blood pressure to heart rate, cholesterol, blood sugar, responses to medication, and falls. In a chapter from science fiction, scientists at MIT are working on a shirt that will incorporate nanotechnology (molecular engineering) to not only detect and report a heart attack, but physically contract and release to administer CPR.
Need help around the house? Japanese researchers are developing “assistance robots” that can see, hear, and smell, as well as empty the dishwasher, sweep the floor, and wash, dry, and fold laundry. “Rosie the Robot,” only real.
Tired of losing the remote or getting up to turn off a light or change the thermostat? What if you could talk to your home? Voice recognition technology is advancing to allow virtually “human” conversation, including a refrigerator that will alert you when you are low on milk, even order it directly from the store.
While such technologies hold promise, they will be meaningless if retirees are living in homes that don’t additionally match their needs, preferences, and lifestyle.
An aging world will need “livable communities,” places that move houses from the back of the lot to the street, that make “walkable” the shopping and services people need. Places that provide housing for multiple generations on the same block, and parks where older adults can sit while children play.
It will also need better-designed homes. Homes either without stairs, or with bedroom and bath spaces on the ground floor. Such homes will have wider doors, better-lit hallways, zero-step entrances and showers, and kitchens with adjustable-height countertops, cabinets, and appliances. As we have learned from areas of public architecture, a “universal design” home would simply be a better home for people of all ages.
Finally, there will be a need for more choices in what retirees call “home.”
Like to travel? How about retiring to a cruise ship? Enjoy wine? How about a community in Napa for wine connoisseurs? Belong to a niche culture or group? Retirement communities for groups from Asian Americans, to university alums, to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender populations are beginning to enter the market. Through both their numbers and diversity, boomers have exploded the portfolio of products of every industry throughout their lives. Why settle for retirement and related senior housing communities that all look alike?
Totaling more than 70 million in the United States alone, boomers possess the critical mass, attitude, and experience in creating change to not only reinvent retirement, but eliminate ageism as the last “ism” of our time. If that weren’t enough, we also possess something we did not have the first time around. We control 70 percent of the nation’s wealth.
So here’s suggesting we don’t rest on our laurels. Instead, let’s use our unique position to move advanced technologies out of the lab and into our daily lives by demanding that corporate America listen to our needs and purchasing power. Let’s use our collective voices and political might to change zoning and construction regulations that currently place barriers on the creation of truly livable and intergenerational communities. To paraphrase the first president we elected to office, ask not what your retirement can do for you, but what you, as a generation, can do for retirement.
Thought 1969 was fun? By 2029 we can change the world — again.