Neighborhood Design, Universal Design

Bob Moos of the Dallas Morning News has been on a housing tear with his last few articles.

The first one is about Baby Boomers fashioning their own neighborhood communities:

Cohousing catching on in U.S.
Cohousing communities aren't cookie-cutter projects. Each is unique. Prospective residents are intimately involved in the planning, though they may rely on an architect and developer to handle the technical aspects of design and construction. Projects usually consist of 20 to 30 households … The latest twist to the nascent trend is cohousing exclusively for people 55 and older.

And it's a twist on what Brent Green talks about in Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers. But I'm not getting into it here. Read the book or track him down and ask him.

The second article is about universal design and aging in place:

Couple's house is home for good
Incorporating universal design in a home under construction is far less expensive than modifying it later … "Why not spend a few thousand more to build an age-friendly bath now and save yourself the $20,000 to retrofit it later?"

This is a big issue with just about everybody in the housing industry. I wrote something about it not too long ago - and spoke about universal design at last year's NAHB convention.

UD is coming. It's just too early for most Baby Boomers to consider it. However, many are missing the boat now if they happen to be designing their forever dream house. Without some serious nods to universal design, in ten years they might find themselves living in their forever nightmare house.

Mary Furlong's Turning Silver Into Gold

This week Mary Furlong’s Turning Silver Into Gold: How to Profit in The New Boomer Marketplace will finally be released. I’ve been diving into my Advance Reader Copy over and over for almost a month – mostly because it’s so much fun to paddle and splash around in. This is no dry, static business tome. It churns and whirls.

Mary has put together a book that no one else could have. For over twenty years she’s been deeply immersed in academia, the internet, and the real world of business. Few can claim to be a specialist in all three. Add to this her two-decade+ focus on aging – and now on Baby Boomers. This isn’t a book anyone could just throw together with a bunch of haphazard research and a cavalier keyboard. Mary lives it.

The quick version of what TSIG is: Hundreds of companies targeting Baby Boomers are profiled. If you have any interest in Boomers and business and all the opportunities, this is what you need to read. You’ll find out what’s going on. It’s that simple.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Boomers have concerns and interests including health, investing, entertainment and travel, sexuality, entrepreneurship and technology, religion and spirituality and a vast array of philanthropic and social commitments. The title's silver may mean hair color, but the gold represents wisdom as well as wealth, "and how they will transform their financial worth into good works." … Furlong displays a genuine grasp of boomer sensibilities, especially those of decency and happiness and the common good; when she speaks of value added, it is not just the markup but how the product or service adds to the pleasure of living right and well.

Let me add to the above: Mary has this wonderful egalitarian approach to business. When she talks about companies, small biz entrepreneurs get as much ink as the multi-nationals. In her eyes, they’re equals.

Along with Turning Silver Into Gold, Mary co-sponsors The What's Next Boomer Business Summit – an annual event. This year it’s in Chicago, on March 5th and 6th. She also hosts The $10,000 Boomer Business Plan Competition and Boomer Venture Summit, usually in the early summer. I was at the first of each in 2004 (a combined event), and the Boomer Business Summit in 2006 (where I hosted a table at The Authors' Luncheon). They were all great.

Editorial reviews and more about Mary Furlong's Turning Silver Into Gold on Amazon.com.

New Dove Real Beauty Spots in England

Go read Dick Stroud's post about the Dove Real Beauty television campaign in England. (This is where the campaign originated, by the way.)

I love all this mature women stuff. And I'll be blunt. And piggy. (And "Sure, Chuck. In your dreams.") As far as interesting and sexy, I'd be all over Helen Mirren or this Dove model and not all over Paris Hilton or Britney Spears or name them all. (Although Scarlett Johansson is kind of cute.)

Jimi Hendrix energy drink in works

Jimi Hendrix energy drink in works

The concept is irking some Hendrix fans, many of whom still consider him the greatest guitarist of all time.

"To see his image and the beautiful feelings it has created during my lifetime cheapened by base advertising ... is very disappointing to me," said bassist Michael Balzary, better known as Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Consider me irked.

Boomers Age with a Bang

Laurel Kennedy of Age Lessons has come up with some fun and slightly wacky - but not necessarily off the mark - predictions for products and services. For entertainment value I culled the wackiest ones - but check out the article for more down-to-earth prophesies:

Boomers Age with a Bang

Traditional retirement-friendly sports such as golf or tennis will get competition from throwbacks from the Beaver Cleaver era. Goofy "retro sports" such as tether ball, flag tag and even hopscotch will re-emerge on the streets and in "micro-developments," with cul-de-sacs dedicated to such activities.

Hopscotch at sixty? That would result in more than just an occasional scraped knee. I'd classify it as an extreme sport. Bringing back sling-shots and pea-shooters would be safer.

A couple of Madam Kennedy's prognostications were previously conjured in the crystal balls of futurists Brent Green and Yours Truly, complemented by the requisite incantations, waving of arms, and swaying of torsos (although for the general public we simply wrote them down in our books so we wouldn't scare anybody). Soothsayer Brent, for example, talked at length about Baby Boomers and their soon-to-be rekindled political and social activism in Marketing To Leading-Edge Baby Boomers, first published in 2003. A second edition was released last year.