Where Will All the Boomers Go?

By Kerry Tremain, Civic Ventures Research Fellow

A movement to redefine retirement around active civic engagement and a movement among architects and planners to promote traditional neighborhood design share crucial goals. Both are critical of post-World War II development patterns. Both promote community building across generational (and other) barriers.

Whether they move to new homes or stay put, the large and diverse "baby boom" generation will impact housing and community design as they retire in the decades after 2010. Most currently live in suburbs designed to accommodate young families with children, and which are not ideal for older adults. Suburbs tend to restrict mobility and discourage physical activity, are geographically (and socially) isolated and offer only limited social services. While some Boomers, especially wealthier ones, may move to Sun City-type communities, most are likely to age in their existing homes and neighborhoods. The critical question is: Can existing neighborhoods be retrofitted, or new neighborhoods built, to better accommodate the needs of older adults?

New Urbanism, a recent movement of architects and planners, advocates a return to the traditional neighborhood, with town centers, mixed uses, housing of varied types to accommodate families of varying sizes and circumstances, and transportation options, including walkable streets. New Urbanists claim that Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) promotes intergenerational community life and sociability.

TNDs are an attractive option for older adults, especially when combined with infrastructure to facilitate community life. However, zoning restrictions and government incentives that encourage sprawl development inhibit TNDs.

Social innovators like Civic Ventures can make common cause with New Urbanists around research into critical questions of an aging population and community design. They can also highlight model communities, encourage partnerships toward integrated physical and social design, and support efforts to remove zoning and other restrictions on the development of mixed-use, intergenerational neighborhoods.

Prologue: An appreciation of my traditional neighborhood

My home sits on a wide, quiet street in Berkeley, California. A triangular sliver of land on nearby Shattuck Avenue, our main shopping street, was once the North Berkeley station of the interurban electric train line that served the area. Now it is home to a smattering of well-appointed shops – a dry cleaner, a hair salon, a vitamin and herb store, a Sicilian café, and a bakery and espresso bar, one of five coffee spots within a few blocks.

Most mornings I walk, coffee mug in hand, to one of the cafés and watch a human carnival of every age and ethnicity gather. I often run into my neighbor the clarinetist, or the retired osteopath from across the street, an Orthodox Jew with Parkinson's Disease who I help with small chores. Downtown is about a fifteen-minute walk, although I could take the bus or ride my bike or drive.

Home prices in my neighborhood have shot up dramatically in the last decade, and some of my middle-aged friends dream of cashing in – selling their houses, retiring early, and moving to "the country," by which they usually mean a small town where homes are cheaper and life is slower.[1] When pressed, however, they admit a worry that they wouldn't be happy elsewhere. Their vocations and churches as well their friends and often families are here, as well as their access to cultural amenities and cuisines and learning opportunities that are scarce in small towns.

Most of these amenities, including transportation, require higher densities than most suburbs, but people seem more willing to accept higher densities as part of an increasingly popular urban trend called "café culture."[2] Berkeley is one of the progenitors of this new European-style arrangement in America, but here the trend predates so-called New Urban design. (In fact, New Urbanists acknowledge their debt to older urban planners by calling their developments Traditional Neighborhood Design or TNDs.)

Generations of North Berkeley residents have worked to preserve and creatively reinvent uses for critical areas and even to absorb some egregious mistakes. The layout of streets and lots and the way they were developed inspired a virtuous circle in which the physical and social environments thrived in tandem. The old train station, for instance, provided a retail hub and established settlement patterns that city planners are now reviving in other neighborhoods with "Transit Oriented Developments."[3]

The array of nearby stores and services encourages walking, a little thing perhaps, but one that is particularly crucial to children. It means they don't have to depend on an adult with a car to go everywhere. Nor do older adults, like my neighbor with Parkinson's disease, who can walk to the corner to buy bread. He cannot drive; if it took a car to get to the nearest shop, he'd lose a sense of independence, the pleasure of running into people he knows, the daily renewal of belonging to a neighborhood. Access to a vital social life, we know from studies and from our own experience, improves healthfulness and the quality of life for older adults.

Not everyone wants to live in a traditional neighborhood. But the massive migration to the suburbs has come at the cost of many little things that made traditional town design appealing, and their absence may be felt more acutely as our population ages.

Where will all the Boomers go?

People who write about social trends and policy often paint a grim picture of the decades ahead. Some commentators warn that the aging population of Americans born in the post-World War II years, the so-called baby boomers, will place a crushing burden on the young, depleting the treasury with their demands for Social Security and Medicare. Others predict that a growing population will sprawl over the remaining countryside, creating a seamless, soulless landscape of mega-stores and congested freeways. And by projecting current trends, these analysts marshal ample evidence to support their predictions of an America filled with greedy geezers and suburban gas-guzzlers.

At the least, these apocalyptic visions exhort us to action, as they are often meant to do. America's true resilience may lie in the give and take of its dark prophets and it optimistic reformers. Indeed, both Boomer gloom and the Sprawl nightmare have their counterparts. The baby boom generation, in the reformers' view, should not be seen as a bottomless pit of need but as a reservoir of talent, experience and energy. Boomers needn't accept the dominant choices to work or golf 'til they drop (and early indications are that they won't); they can use their retirement years to reinvent themselves, rebuild their communities and recharge civic life.

To answer the challenge of sprawl – the dominant development pattern of the last half century – a group of reform-minded planners and architects organized the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), which advocates intergenerational, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly neighborhood design. The New Urbanists act as the design wing of a political coalition, called the Smart Growth movement, which consist of farmers concerned with loss of prime farmland, environmentalists and neighborhood groups concerned with a loss of open space and businesses worried about the impact of sprawl on their competitiveness.

These two groups of reformers, those who would redefine retirement and those who would rebuild our towns and cities, are linked in principle if not in practice. Although one is concerned primarily with social and the other with physical infrastructure, both claim to want to enhance civic engagement and a sense of "community" that many Americans feel is lacking among different generations and groups of citizens. Both are critical of the postwar pattern of development, which segregated housing "markets" by age, income and even, egregiously, by race.

For example, in his book, Prime Time: How the Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America, Civic Ventures founder Marc Freedman explores in detail how the developer Del Webb reinvented retirement as the "Golden Years," a new stage of life away from the demands of job and family, defined by leisure. While superior to the crude view it succeeded – of old age as simply a time of disease, decline and death – Freedman criticizes the "Sun City" model for segregating the elderly from intergenerational civic life and even from their families. The book argues that individual renewal and community renewal are linked, and impeded by segregated development patterns.

Similarly, the Charter of the New Urbanism, signed in 1996, views "the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society's built heritage as one interrelated community-building challenge." [4]

Both movements mourn the loss of civic vitality they sensed was present in towns and neighborhoods before World War II. Architect and CNU co-founder Andres Duany told the organization's 2000 convention, "Since the 1950s, the planning profession has contrived to destroy our cities and consume our countryside." [5]

However, if the Civic Ventures crowd is bullish on the Boomers, the New Urbanists are more reserved. No one doubts the significance of the demographic bulge moving inexorably toward retirement age, but CNU market researcher Todd Zimmerman argues that predicting how an entire cohort will act is perilous. "Who would have predicted that the 60s generation, which protested the Vietnam War and gave us the environmental movement, would move to tract houses in the suburbs and drive around in cars the size of World War II assault vehicles?"

"If we try to predict what they will do based on their predecessors, we will be wrong," he said, adding that while Boomers have fueled the segmented production pattern, what they will do in retirement won't start to be known for another seven to ten years. [6]

Nonetheless, entire industries are guessing and attempting to steer Boomer retirement plans. For its part, the development company Del Webb exudes confidence that significant numbers will flock to updated versions of Sun City. By contrast, William Frey, a respected demographer who studies housing patterns among older adults, predicts most Boomers will "age in place", that is, in their existing homes. [7]

We do know this: whatever housing choices baby boomers make, their impact will be large. Currently, most Boomers live in the suburbs. And suburbs present significant challenges for an older population.

Aging Suburbia

For over half a century, most Americans have moved to the suburbs. While they were seeking larger, less expensive homes, [8] they were also moving away from the cities with their density, poverty, troubled schools, crime and political in-fighting. Both government and the market encouraged massive suburbanization. Suburban neighborhoods that appealed to homogeneous homeowners and segregated homes from retail and social services were designed on an industrial model with the expeditious movement of goods in mind – including major arteries to increase traffic throughput and enable malls and highly-efficient big box retail.

But American suburbia has become a victim of its own success. Witness the hundreds of state and local initiatives limiting new development passed in the last decades. If suburban expansion once brought battles between urban interests and their rapidly growing neighbors, the new opposition is largely led by suburban residents themselves. Families that left the city to claim a piece of the countryside find themselves surrounded by new sprawl development and, by and large, they don't like it.

To be sure, suburbs are less homogeneous than they once were, encompassing everything from fast-growing, wealthy areas in the Southeast, Southwest and Rocky Mountains to lower middle-class inner ring suburbs in economically troubled regions like Buffalo or Milwaukee. [9] If poorer ethnic minorities are still disproportionately concentrated in inner city areas, the suburbs no longer fit the Leave-It-to-Beaver image. They include ethnically diverse traditional families as well as singles and single parent families.

Still, residential, industrial, office and retail areas are generally separated and single family homes predominate. Suburbs emphasize automobile travel to the point of excluding other forms of transportation. That and zoning segregation limit opportunities for walking or encountering people on the street.

Existing suburbs do hold advantages for older adults. Many of the houses are relatively new, with modern amenities, large enough to allow versatile uses, and situated on lots that offer privacy and space for various activities. They are perceived as, and often are, safer than inner cities, with fewer political, public health and social problems. With large retail outlets nearby, consumer goods are comparatively cheap and plentiful.

Suburbs also pose certain risks to older adults, especially with respect to mobility. [10] Martin Wachs of the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California in Berkeley writes, "Relationships with family and friends, excellent health and dental care, participation in cultural, recreational and religious activities all require access to a wide variety of destinations that over time are becoming ever more spatially dispersed." [11] Cars can make these activities accessible, but among older adults driving disproportionately increases the risk of being killed or injured in auto accidents. Trains and buses are prohibitively expensive in low-density areas.

Suburbs are also typically hostile to walking; many don't have sidewalks. The Center for Disease Control is concerned that a decline in walking (which correlates with a lack of walkable destinations) poses a health risk to older adults. They have established a program called ACES (Active Community Environments) to help reverse the trend by designating places that encourage walking and bicycling with sidewalks, on-street bicycle facilities, multi-use paths and trails, parks, open space, recreational facilities. Taking a page from the New Urbanists' playbook, they encourage mixed-use development and a connected grid of streets that allow homes, work, schools, and stores to be clustered and accessible to pedestrians and bicyclists. [12] Likewise, the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation is currently supporting studies related to walking and older adults, including some that address neighborhood design factors. [13]

Loss of mobility, especially when combined with spatial barriers to an active social life, can provoke a downward spiral. Social isolation increases the danger of depression, disease and decline, particularly for the surviving members of marriages and long-term relationships. Deprived of other transportation options, older adults without a car become dependent on others to drive them places. Wachs notes that suicide among older adults (especially men) escalates in the months following the loss of a driver's license. [14]

This link between physical design and social isolation is crucial in understanding the problems older adults will face in the suburbs. Most people spend their time at home, work or in centers for social gathering, so-called "third places." [15] Lloyd Bookout of the Urban Land Institute used that typology to identify a crucial problem: "Most suburban communities rely on a disjointed series of third places and they lack the critical mass and range of activities to meet the full spectrum of resident needs. By default, shopping malls have come forward to fill the void, though certainly not the real need." [16]

New Sun City

Are new generations of Sun Cities the way to achieve social cohesion? Will Boomers flock to them? In a survey of Boomers issued in October 1999, the Del Webb Corporation asserted, "This generation has always been more mobile and will continue to be so during retirement. Close to half (43%) of all leading-edge Boomers [people now 50-54] think they will move to a new home during retirement." [17]

Of course, Del Webb has a self-interested motive in promulgating the idea that Boomers will move. Beginning in 1960, the company promoted an active physical and community life – although strictly age-segregated – for its elderly residents; in some cases, whole groups of friends moved into Sun City together.

But such developments pose problems for both older adults and surrounding communities. Age segregation breeds generational conflicts and some communities have gone to great lengths to exclude young people. In an egregious example, reported in a New York Times story, one community tried to expel, then fined one couple $100 a day for "harboring" their grandchild in their home. [18] One commentator I spoke with condemned new retirement towns that "litter the landscape" as an "evacuation of human capital to sub-optimal agricultural land, causing permanent damage." [19] At the least, such communities rob older adults of the opportunity to continue to work or participate in traditional communities (something that a majority of Boomers report in surveys that they want to do) and rob communities of the benefits of their experience and talents. [20]

But it is unclear how many Boomers will opt for age-segregated retirement villages. When I sat with a Reno, Nevada city council member at a housing conference last year, he told me that developers were busy building such communities as quickly as possible in anticipation of retiring Californians who want to escape state income taxes. Del Webb boasts "in the very first year of baby boomers entering Webb's target market, some 350,000 of America's 'new seniors' already say they will consider moving into an active adult community when they retire." But the report makes it impossible to discern what percentage of the overall Boomer population that represents. The fact that the statistic is reported as a raw number is a clue that the percentage is small. [21]

Del Webb has shown an interest in TNDs with different age groups, but developers like them may create TND-like built environments that are entirely inhabited by seniors. Such designs could provide sufficient densities for desirable amenities, but still deny seniors the opportunity to live near their families or interact regularly with people of different ages. By some reports, the Boomers will resist living in age-segregated colonies, as they currently resist the older conception of retirement. [22]

The New Urbanist Alternative

Americans are rethinking the suburbs – a recent Pew Center poll (taken before the events of September 11) found people more worried about sprawl and traffic than about crime, jobs or education. But the "real story," wrote Donald Chen in a Scientific American article about the New Urbanism, is "that widespread concerns about sprawl have unleashed a wave of innovation." [23]

The New Urbanists' essential insight is that America needs to go back to the future – that we used to know how to design livable towns and neighborhoods, but lost our touch in the mad rush to build the suburbs. They point out that the places we like to visit on vacation, like Charleston, South Carolina or Florence, Italy, are appealing because they embody well-tested principles of traditional design.

Those core principles include town centers and compact, pedestrian-friendly, mixed use neighborhoods. A few hundred New Urbanist neighborhoods have been built over the last decade; the best known, Seaside, Florida, and Kentlands, Maryland, were also among the first. Although both communities contain significant numbers of retirees, there have been no systematic studies of older adults in any of the neighborhoods, according to Todd Zimmerman. He feels TNDs are strongly attractive to older adults – 18 of the 61 demographic categories of TND prospects that he studies are retirees or so-called empty nesters. [24]

While Seaside and Kentlands were "greenfield" projects – that is, built on open land, not urban infill – New Urbanists have significantly expanded their repertoire in the last several years to include downtown revitalizations, such as Albuquerque, and mixed-income affordable projects under the Department of Housing and Urban Development's HOPE program, such as Coliseum Gardens in Oakland, California. Berkeley architect Peter Calthorpe, promoting his concept of regional planning around transit hubs, has also conducted region-wide growth plans for many areas, including the entire Salt Lake City basin. [25]

Can New Urbanism, which like Civic Ventures claims a primary interesting in promoting community vitality, offer older adults a better quality of life? Certainly, one goal of most retirees is to stay or move close to family and friends, a goal facilitated by different housing types within neighborhoods. Zimmerman claims that older people are "on our radar and New Urbanist neighborhoods will serve them extremely well." He adds, however, that CNU thinks, "the age segregated landscape needs repair from the standpoint of all age groups, not just older ones. It disenfranchises the too old, too young or too poor to drive."

AARP Policy Analyst Andrew Kochera believes that CNU is "essentially correct" about the advantages of mixed-use neighborhoods for older adults, and TNDs with significant numbers of seniors have thrived. Senior villages have been built as part of age-integrated New Urbanist developments, notably the Gardens at Kentland, with 212 rental units across the street from the town center, and Middleton Hills near Madison, Wisconsin. [26] These units add enough density to makes more shops and services feasible for the entire neighborhood

But if New Urbanists build, will Boomers come?

Just as it is hard to predict what Boomers will do, there are few confident predictions about the market for TNDs. In a 1995 American LIVES survey, nearly half the participants liked New Urbanist concepts but dislike the density. And while nearly two-thirds were dissatisfied with current suburbs, the majority was unwilling to give up large lots and cul-de-sacs (a street pattern that discourages walking). [27] A research group from the University of Southern California that aggregated housing surveys argues that the very large future demand for New Urbanist-style developments is not being met by current development trends. [28] By tradition and zoning law, suburban sprawl is still favored in the building industry, despite the fact that TNDs tend to sell at rates of ten to twenty percent higher than comparable nearby suburbs. [29]

Redesigning the Suburbs

The biggest challenge, however, will be to adapt existing suburbs. Despite a recent phenomenon of "empty nesters" moving to urban neighborhoods with greater cultural amenities, Frey is probably correct that most Boomers will stay in their homes for as long as possible. [30] Even those who do move, according to Victor Regnier, Professor of Architecture and Gerontology at the University of Southern California, are more likely to go to places they know. [31]

"Las Vegas is big," he told me. "Everybody's been there." He expects the "frost to sun" migration to continue to states like California, Arizona, Florida, "hip" Texas, and North Carolina, but that not that many – only hundreds of thousands – are moving. The wealthier ones will be more likely to move to bigger homes, their "last chance to grab the golden ring," he said. "Others will simply retire to places where they have second homes, like Tahoe or Palm Springs."

If a significant number of baby boomers will be prosperous, especially after the so-called "trillion dollar transfer" of wealth from their parents, many others have not been able to save significant sums for retirement and their options will be limited. An AARP-commissioned study confirmed this income inequality. [32] For most, according to the AARP's Kochera, the key is to enable independent living, "Number one through home modifications, but if that's not possible, number two by allowing them to remain in the neighborhood."

That's what most people want. For its part, the CNU is focusing its next national conference on redesigning suburbs, where most of the aging population will probably live.

The Social Component

Lloyd Bookout reports that although planners and developers have emphasized community building through physical design, they are beginning to look to social programs to draw residents together. [33] An example is the effort by Charles Fraser, the American Town Design Network, located at Celebration, the Disney-sponsored community in Florida.

Many critics fault the New Urbanism movement for overselling the benefits of physical design. In my own encounters with New Urbanists, the emphasis is on the physical – they are, after all, mostly architects. But it is also true that the CNU Charter states, "We recognize that physical solutions by themselves will not solve social and economic problems, but neither can economic vitality, community stability, and environmental health be sustained without a coherent and supportive physical framework."

Of course, people have a way of establishing social networks whether developers plan for it or not, but retooling America's neighborhoods for the aging seventy-eight million baby boomers presents a prime opportunity for social innovators, including those concerned with redefining retirement, to partner with neighborhood developers. Civic Venture's Life Option Centers are one example of an effort to integrate a coordinating facility for social activity and life planning.

This is one way the two groups mentioned at the beginning may find common purpose and common ground. There are others, too.

Planning codes promulgated in the post war period, often based on dubious research, present a substantial obstacle to TND planning. These codes actively prohibit town-centered, pedestrian-friendly development. CNU is trying to get the codes rewritten, and having some success in doing so. Advocates for older adults could support the effort.

The AARP had weighed in on one particular change, to lift a common prohibition against accessory dwelling units, so-called "granny apartments." These offer an attractive alternative to many families, but like many CNU initiatives, are blocked by antiquated zoning ordinances. AARP, working with the American Planning Association, has developed a model ordinance for these units. [34]

Research into the impacts of Boomer retirement on housing is slim. Advocates for older adults might initiate fruitful partnerships for research with some of the many university urban planning or architecture departments. The Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities has begun the process, financing a small group of papers on related topics.

But perhaps the most important next step is for the two groups to begin a more active conversation about shared goals. It is a small irony that two movements with a commensurate desire to end neighborhood segregation should themselves be segregated from one another.

KERRY TREMAIN, Research Fellow for Civic Ventures, is a writer and editor specializing in health care, life transitions and cities. A 2002 finalist for the National Magazine Award in Public Interest journalism, Tremain is currently working on a book with David Kendall and S. Robert Levine M.D., "The New Health Care," which describes how critical medical innovations foretell a hopeful new paradigm for health care delivery. He serves as Senior Fellow in Health & Aging Policy for the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., and is the lead author on their major new paper on Medicare reform. He is a former editor of Blueprint, former executive editor of Mother Jones, and editor and essayist for "Witness in Our Time," the bestselling book of the Smithsonian Institution Press in 2001. Tremain lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, Barbara Ramsey, who is a primary care physician with the Native American Health Center in Oakland and an avid quilt artist.

[1] In surveys, a majority of Americans show a preference for small towns. American LIVES, New Urbanism Survey, 1995.

[2] Dowell Myers, etal, "Current Preferences and Future Demand for Denser Residential Environments," 2001. This paper, published by the Funders Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities, is a useful survey of housing studies that indicate how increasing preferences for neo-traditional community design is related to the changes in housing preferences by aging baby boomers (and their children).

[3] Architect Peter Calthorpe is associated with this concept. See The Next American Metropolis, Princeton Architectural Press, 1993.

[4] The Charter is available at www.cnu.org/aboutcnu/index.cfm

[5] CNU XIII Conference notes.

[6] Interview with Todd Zimmerman, 2001.

[7] William Frey, Beyond Social Security: The Local Aspects of an Aging America, Brookings Institution paper, 1999.

[8] William Schneider, "The Suburban Century Begins," The Atlantic Monthly, July 1992

[9] Different authors have proposed new, more precise typologies to describe "suburbs". Myron Orfield enumerates and maps metropolitan areas based on income criteria in Metropolitics: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability, Brookings Institution, 1997. Orfield argues that a political coalition of core city residents and those in inner ring suburbs can renew their neighborhoods by redirecting public resources, like highway monies, that he argues unfairly flow to outer ring suburbs. In The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping the American Landscape, Random House, 2000, Joel Kotkin posits that the Internet and high-tech industry have spawned new metro configurations.

[10] Health problems and impairments are only partly correlated with chronological age. Individual "older" elders can be healthier and less impaired than individual "younger" ones. More education correlates strongly with other positive indicators, for instance.

[11] Martin Wachs, "Mobility, Travel and Aging in California," a report prepared for the California Policy Research Center Project on Strategic Planning for Older Californians in compliance with SB 910, July 2000.

[12] ACES web site and access to CDC reports is located at www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/aces.htm

[13] Based on information from the RWJF web site (http://www.rwjf.org) and a telephone conversation with Marya Morris of the American Planning Association, who is scheduled to conduct one such study.

[14] Interview with Martin Wachs, May 2001.

[15] Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place : Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons,and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, Marlowe, 1989.

[16] Lloyd W. Bookout, "Building Community in America's Suburbs," Urban Land Institute report, 1997.

[17] Del Webb Corporation, National Baby Boomer Survey, The Face of Retirement in the 21st Century, October 1999. The telephone survey queried 400 Boomers 48 to 52 years old and 400 people aged 65 and older in 1999. They refer to the first group as "leading edge" Boomers.

[18] Mark Freedman, Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America, Public Affairs, 1999. The book offers a thorough history of Del Webb and the Sun City "Golden Years" concept.

[19] Interview with Mark Valentine, Packard Foundation, May 2001.

[20] On Boomers' reported desire to continue active involvement, see for example, J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman, Rocking the Ages: The Yankelovich Report on Generational Marketing, HarperBusiness 1997.

[21] Del Webb, it should be noted, has also taken an interest in New Urbanism and designed some age-integrated developments.

[22] Craig Witz, "New Homes for Seniors," Urban Land, May 2001.

[23] Donald D.T. Chen, "The Science of Smart Growth," Scientific American, December 2000.

[24] Interview with Todd Zimmerman, March 2001.

[25] Dan Solomon is the Coliseum Gardens architect. Information on the Salt Lake City plan, called "Envision Utah" can be obtained at www.calthorpe.com. In surveys and focus groups, residents chose somewhat more compact TOD development over traditional sprawl.

[26] Witz 2001.

[27] American LIVES 1995.

[28] Myers etal, 2001.

[29] Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation, Northpoint Press, 2000.

[30] "Empty nesters" – parents whose children are grown and gone – attracted attention in the 1990s when some of them traded in their large lot suburban homes to move to urban neighborhoods with more cultural amenities – a significant movement according to Zimmerman. One attraction is downsizing to a more manageable home and lot size.

[31] Telephone interview with Victor Regnier, February 2001.

[32] AARP, "Baby Boomers Envision Their Retirement," a study by Roper Starch, February 1999.

[33] One ULI participant referred to this as the "software" side of community development. Bookout, ibid.

[34] AARP, "Accessory Units: Model Ordinance," 2000.