Leisureville by Andrew D. Blechman
Leisureville: Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias is 95% about one place, so the “s” at the end of Utopias is a bit misleading. It’s about a place called The Villages down in Florida that’s absolutely gigantic and filled with retired people.
When I was a teenager, my grandparents wintered in Sun City, Arizona, which is what the other 5% of the book is about. Apparently Sun City was a second generation retirement community and The Villages is third generation. My grandparents loved Sun City and reading this book I could see why the people living in The Villages now love it. On the other side, the author makes many good points about why large retirement communities are a bad idea. He also makes it sound like buying into The Villages might be a bad idea.
It remains to be seen whether the Baby Boomers will want to live in these places which are both more social and more sterile than they’re accustomed to. I certainly can’t see my parents there, much less myself. But who knows what will happen when the time comes. Having a place away from children, and safe from the possibility of the children moving back home, could sound like utopia in another twenty years.