The Good Life in the Big City

Source: AARP Bulletin Today | May 28, 2004

Look around on the streets of America's cities, and you'll see more than a few gray heads. In the bustling downtowns, people in their 50s and 60s aren't just visiting the museums, dining at one of the trendy new restaurants and seeing a show before driving back to the suburbs. Some of them have happily given up the big house with all its maintenance chores and taken an apartment in town, where they can walk to work and then stroll home to change before sampling nighttime cultural offerings.

The newcomers have learned what the longtime residents of city neighborhoods have always known: The city is, as a recent report by the United Hospital Fund put it, "a good place to grow old." Whether they're new arrivals, savoring their liberation from lawn mowing and automobiles, or veteran urbanites, deeply rooted in communities they helped to build and surrounded by neighbors they have known all their lives, many older Americans find that the services they need and the amenities they enjoy are more plentiful and more accessible in the city.

The revitalization of downtowns and their appeal for newcomers have attracted particular scrutiny from urban scholars, public officials and developers. The 2000 U.S. Census showed a substantial number of cities reversing decades of population decline in the 1990s, with downtowns gaining residents even when the metropolitan area as a whole didn't.

"I've been to around 40 cities in the last couple of years, and in every one of them there is either a small and growing or a very large movement back downtown," says John McIlwain, senior resident fellow for housing at the Urban Land Institute. "There's no question it's a national phenomenon, it's happening even in Rust Belt cities, and it's fueled by two groups: young professionals and empty nesters."

At 61, McIlwain and his wife match the empty nester profile; they moved from the Washington suburbs to the city's Dupont Circle neighborhood five years ago, after their son went to college. It's not just the museums and cultural events that make living downtown such fun, he says: "It's the restaurants, it's the stores, it's the sense of vitality on the streets, the diversity of age and ethnic groups. It's a lively atmosphere to live in."

THE 24-7 CITY

Public officials have begun to understand the importance of residential development, he says. "Our studies have shown that it's the 24-7 cities that have had the strongest economic rebound, and mayors, city councils and city managers have all seen that; there's a pretty consistent view that we want to get people living downtown."

Those most likely to move and stay downtown are older, according to Mark Muro, a senior policy analyst at the Brookings Institution's Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. Singles get married and move out, but Muro's research suggests that downtown residents whose children are grown may find the appeal of city life potent even after they retire.

"I've done work in Arizona, where you have the classic Sun Belt retirement meccas," he says, "and they have begun to realize they don't offer enough of an option for the more sophisticated retirees, who actually want a more urban settlement. We also found that retirement isn't a cessation of all activity; it becomes a kind of multitasking where a lot of people are very happy to be, and prefer to be, in a city."

Del Webb, a company that has developed planned communities in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, is aware of this trend. The company, which practically invented the idea of retiring to a nice climate, has put its recent projects "closer to city centers," on the outskirts of New York, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, says Jim Zeumer, a vice president for the Del Webb parent company.

"We are looking at the concept of a high-rise Del Webb for people who want to be part of that urban infrastructure, who want the museums, the restaurants, the entertainment right outside their front door," Zeumer says.

Though downtown revitalization and the empty nesters who have helped fuel it grab most of the media attention, the quieter story is that older people have lived comfortably in residential urban neighborhoods for decades.

"We're city people; we're definitely not the kind of people who would sell our house and move to a golf course in North Carolina," says Maureen Flamini Houtrides, 61, who has lived since 1968 with her husband in a brownstone in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill section. "We've already raised our child, Jim is retired [from CBS News], and we have more freedom about our time." The Houtrideses have subscriptions to three theater companies, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the New York City Opera, as well as memberships in several museums.

Maureen, a former public school teacher who still works part time, is treasurer of the block association, whose steering committee members have all lived on the block for more than 30 years. Jim, 68, walks over the Brooklyn Bridge almost every day when the weather is good and in the winter also gets exercise by shoveling snow, not just in front of their house, but from the sidewalks of several neighbors, including a widow well into her 80s. "People take care of each other," says Maureen. "Brooklyn has always been a great place for neighbors."

NEIGHBORHOOD SAFETY

Older residents are frequently the backbone of a neighborhood, says Claudia Coulton, co-director of the Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change at Case Western Reserve University. "Neighborhoods are safer when there are older people around. They're experienced and knowledgeable, they know their neighbors, they've been around a long time, they're home; these are all things that raise a neighborhood's safety."

Lower crime rates in U.S. cities have unquestionably made downtowns more appealing to seniors considering relocation, and safer streets make older urbanites feel more comfortable about venturing out. Being stuck at home is not just emotionally difficult for older people, it is also a health hazard; a recent study in the British journal Ageing & Society found that lack of contact with others contributed to elevated blood pressure, higher mortality rates, even depression and suicide. In suburbs and rural areas, where you can't get around without a car, isolation is a very real problem for people who as they age are less willing or less able to drive.

"Aging Americans: Stranded Without Options," a report released in April by AARP in conjunction with the Surface Transportation Policy Project and the American Public Transportation Association, paints a poignant picture of older nondrivers, more than half of whom stay at home on any given day, "forgoing social and family visits, trips to church or synagogue, shopping excursions and even trips out to eat."

An urban environment enables seniors to be more mobile and more social, says Debra Alvarez, a legislative representative in AARP's federal affairs office. "Where there's more population density, that's where you're more likely to find public transit and more walkable communities, where services and offices and retail are closer to where people live and they can access them more easily."

Something as simple as strolling to the grocery store can help older people stay fit. Huffing and puffing on a treadmill isn't nearly as agreeable as window-shopping on Fifth Avenue, and you'll see a lot more of your neighbors on the street than at the gym.

"I actually laugh out loud when I come out of the subway at 11 at night," says Maureen Houtrides. "Brooklyn is so jumping! You come up the steps with 25 people, and you bump into 25 others as you come onto the sidewalk. Of course, they're all half our age, but who cares? There's so much energy, it's just great."

AGING IN PLACE

It's becoming easier for the older old to remain in their urban communities, says Fredda Vladeck, director of the United Hospital Fund's Aging in Place Initiative in New York. "People are living with less and less seriously disabling conditions. Even fragile older people can be kept at home with the right support." The Aging in Place Initiative brings together government and private agencies to provide the elderly with integrated services, including preventive health care and social activities, as an alternative to delivering assistance "one hip fracture at a time."

It's worked well in New York's densely populated high-rise apartment buildings, and cities like Baltimore, Pittsburgh and St. Louis are trying a similar approach. It will be a challenge, Vladeck remarks, to offer the same kind of services in the suburbs. "We want the residents themselves to support this program; a lot of this is about building community. When you think about being connected to one another in older life, where are the places that older people gather? In an apartment building they see each other at the mailbox. Where does that happen in a suburban community?"

Several decades separate an empty nester grabbing a latte on his way to work in the Chicago Loop from one of Vladeck's mailbox chatters in the Bronx. They're at different stages in their lives, and they make different uses of urban resources. But many of them see the city as their home, whether they've lived there four years or four decades. From the lobby of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, where quite a few of the bicyclists obviously had their training wheels removed 50 years ago, it's clear that the pleasures of urban existence are not just for the young.

Wendy Smith, a lifelong Brooklynite, lives in the borough's Boerum Hill neighborhood.