Cooperative Aging

Lasell Village in MA

Lasell Village  is an independent living community that is affiliated with Lasell College, a small liberal arts school in Newton, Massachusetts.  Although the community offers continuing care, the focus here is on lifelong learning and intellectual enrichment, rather than physical diminution.  Lasell Village is located on the college's campus, and residents must commit to taking 450 college class hours per year.  The give and take between elderly and traditional students provides value to both populations.

 Here  is an article about Lasell Village written by one of its residents who also has a professional background in senior housing (and, interestingly, is the mother of Obama senior adviser David Axelrod).

Retiring to a college town

  There's an interesting trend of retirement communities being developed by, in conjunction with, or just near university campuses. The concept is that the target market of baby boomers is one that is looking for lifelong learning, and cultural and intellectual stimulation.

    This formalization of association with the college town echoes an existing informal one.  College administrators and college town realtors have known for years that alumni are frequently drawn back to their college setting in retirement.   In many ways a college community is perfect in offering intellectual and cultural stimulation, often in conjunction with a bustling college center. 

    At Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, for example, retirees can find a small but charming downtown, along with senior discounts on film series, concert series, and local repertory theatre performances.  In addition, Dartmouth runs the Institute for Lifelong Education at Dartmouth (ILEAD), a program of peer-led continuing educaiton programs for adults, where it's not unusual to find a seminar on international diplomacy being taught by a former ambassador, who the following day may be a student in a class on the history of ballet taught by a retired ballet company manager.

    Dartmouth is also home to a continuing care retirement community, Kendal at Hanover, which counts retired Dartmouth alumni and professors as the largest single proportion of its population.  Increasingly, other university/developer partnerships are developing their own retirement communities.  Here's an article, and another one, about this trend.