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America’s Most Livable Communities for Seniors
AARP Magazine recently announced it’s top cities for successful aging in the United States. Minneapolis and Saint Paul didn’t make it. Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts’ recent editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune sheds light on why.
AARP’s top 5 livable communities for seniors are Atlanta, Milwaukee, Portland, Boston and Chandler, Arizona. Atlanta’s regional commission is all over successful aging. In Milwaukee, they hosted a very cool senior housing design competition at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Aging Consortium and Aging Maven also highlights what’s occurring in Milwaukee in creating a livable community for all ages. Great stuff here for the Twin Cities and other communities.
An idea: Minnesota and other states could start developing criteria that make a community a good one for successful aging. Once you get/earn the designation you could put it on your population sign, e.g., Rochester, A Great Age Community. Would show that the community is a livable community for all.
For our Wisconsin readers: Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts will be giving the keynote address at HospiceCare Inc.’s annual conference in Madison at American Family Insurance’s headquarters on September 27th. The conference is entitled “The Boomers are Here: Are We Ready?” Kathryn’s presentation is entitled: “The Age Wave: America’s Opportunity for Transformation.” For more information on the conference, go here.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 10:02 am and is filed under Changing Aging, Innovation & Technology in the Age Wave, Livable communities, Resources, Senior Living Development, Vital Successful Aging, baby boomers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
August 23rd, 2007 at 8:48 am
One of the strengths of the senior housing in Minnesota are the different personalities of each senior community. Some of the independently owned communities that are not owned by large corporations really shine. How do implement standards for a “great aging community” that maintains each communities independence, and doesn’t become political or run by the large companies?
What one person considers a liveable community may not be a good fit for someone else.
Developing criteria that we all think contribute to successful aging would be an interesting exercise.
August 23rd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
I think this really comes down to giving people plenty of room to deliver for their customers. Yes, have key values, key measures that everyone works toward together, but an organization doesn’t thrive for its customers if it just applies a cookie cutter everywhere and everyone just does the same thing. People have to have room to innovate, create, and try new things to deliver what their particular customers want.
For example, at Ecumen, we do companywide customer research annually at all of our sites. We measure in a lot of areas, but 4 key areas are: Overall Satisfaction, Would people recommend Us to Others, Responsiveness of Choice and are We Creating a genuine feeling of Home. Out of this customer feedback our sites develop their focused strategies to deliver solutions. Yes, some ideas might work across all of our sites, but others might not. It’s all about delivering for your specific customers. Too many organizations forget that.