Building for “young” seniors

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    Deane Simpson’s research was presented as a PhD Thesis “Third Age Urbanism” at the ETH Zurich, and has since been extended in the book “Gerontopia: Retirement Utopias of the Young Old” published by Lars Müller Publishers and launched in December 2014.

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    Deane Simpson describes his PhD research on “Gerontological urbanism: emerging forms of urbanism for the elderly demographic at the 2nd Holcim Forum: “Urban_Trans_Formation”, held at Tongji University in Shanghai in 2007.

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    Senior recreational vehicle community in the United States: the “young old” of today and tomorrow are active and mobile.

At the 2nd Holcim Forum, Deane Simpson explained how society is becoming increasingly older – and the wishes and needs of seniors are changing rapidly, particularly in industrialized countries. The “young old” of today and tomorrow are active and mobile. Sooner or later, this fact will affect the development of cities and districts.

Last updated: April 21, 2007 Shanghai, China

At the 2nd Holcim Forum, Deane Simpson explained how society is becoming increasingly older – and the wishes and needs of seniors are changing rapidly, particularly in industrialized countries. The “young old” of today and tomorrow are active and mobile. Sooner or later, this fact will affect the development of cities and districts.

In his dissertation Third Age Urbanism: Retirement Utopias of the Young-Old, New Zealand architect Deane Simpson investigates the relationships between demographic, social, and urban development – a seldom applied approach. The holistic way of thinking behind this dissertation at the ETH Zurich was one of the reasons the Holcim Foundation supported it with a financial grant at its Forum 2007 in Shanghai.

Deane Simpson shows that already today there are urban structures that have arisen to accommodate the changed third age of life, for example, “The Villages of Florida” near Orlando or “Urbanizaciones” in the Spanish Costa del Sol. “Huis ten Bosch” – a Dutch theme park in Japan that was transformed into a residential complex for seniors – with its spatially-related approach shows trends that are gaining increasing importance also in contemporary work on the aged community, says Simpson. Another consequence of the mobile, linked urbanism of the third age is mobile-home communities for seniors in the USA.

The 240-page research study, completed in 2010, has been praised by respected authorities: Researcher on ageing François Höpflinger, qualifies it as providing “new, sometimes path-breaking theoretical perspectives for understanding current urbanism processes of the third age of life.” Architect and dissertation advisor Marc Angélil, member of the Management Board of the Holcim Foundation, speaks even of the most enthusiastic judgment he has ever written about a dissertation: “It is an extremely important investigation of the global demographic challenges of our time.”

Further publication - Gerontopia

The extension of this work, Gerontopia: Retirement Utopias of the Young Old (Lars Müller Publishers - www.lars-mueller-publishers.com/en/young-old), was launched in December 2014.