Here's how I feel about the Villages, a super creepy all inclusive retirement community:
You know that feeling when you think about licking chalk?
I heard about it from this book review. Here's a good excerpt:
The Villages has a population of 75,000 with houses for 35,000 more on the way, residents for whom it provides "anything their hearts could possibly desire, mostly sealed inside gates: countless recreation centers staffed with full-time directors; dozens of pools; hundreds of hobby and affinity clubs; two spotless, crime-free village centers with friendly, affordable restaurants; and three dozen golf courses -- one for each day of the month -- with plans for many more." But the icing on this particular cake is that it "provides residents with something else they apparently crave -- a world without children." The buyer of a house there "must be at least fifty-five years old . . . and no one under nineteen may live there -- period." Visits by children "are strictly limited to a total of thirty days a year."
Yikes.
But as scarily vapid as that lifestyle sounds, it seems to me that this is really just an extreme example of the way our society is most likely going to change as the baby boomers come of age.
In a time when the first generation who was raised in total internet immersion is entering the work force--and politics, especially politics--I'm curious to see what society takes shape in the collaborative (or push/pull) relationship between the boomers and the younguns that spend all day reading blogs.
The photo is from here.
|