MADELEINE BRAND, host:
Let's go now to the desert in this country. Sun City, just outside Phoenix, Arizona was the nation's first community built especially for active senior citizens. It turns 50 this week, and it's still active itself. It has changed, though, along with our ideas about retirement and aging. NPR's Ted Robbins reports.
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Unidentified Woman: Welcome to Sun City.
TED ROBBINS: I'm inside the first model home in Sun City, Arizona.
Ms. ROSEMARY SCULLY (Guide, Del Webb Sun Cities Museum): And as you can see, they ate in their kitchen.
ROBBINS: Rosemary Scully is a docent at what is now the Del Webb Sun Cities Museum. She's giving me a tour of the white-brick bungalow with its original pink-and-gray tile counters. It doesn't take very long.
Ms. SCULLY: This is really a very small home.
ROBBINS: What is the square footage of this house?
Ms. SCULLY: I think it was 840, or something.
ROBBINS: The sales price back then: $8,500 - $600 extra for air conditioning. The homes were on one level with wide, accessible doorways, long before it became the law. The real attractions, though, were outside the house: 11 golf courses, eight rec centers, dozens of arts, crafts and activity clubs. The typical residents were a married couple, no longer working.
Mr. JERRY AXTON(ph): So this is the front door. You're welcome to come in.
ROBBINS: Now, people like Jerry Axton are more the norm. Axton lives in Sun City Festival, the newest Del Webb community in the area. His house is twice the size of the original Sun City home.
Mr. AXTON: And here, we've got a little center circular entryway. You can go right or left.
ROBBINS: You may be able to hear in the background the 62-year-old with his white hair in a ponytail is not alone. He lives here with his wife. Two daughters and a nephew are visiting for the holidays, and he's not retired. He runs a furniture manufacturing business from here.
Mr. AXTON: In fact, in my entire neighborhood here, everyone is active, either employed, working, doing some kind of community service or working in a job.
ROBBINS: A lot want to work or have to work because pensions have pretty much disappeared, along with savings and the recession. Older Americans live longer now than they did in 1960. So the former golden years, maybe a decade or so, now last up to 30 years.
Marc Freedman, who wrote a history of the Sun City phenomenon, says no one even knows what to call people over 60. They are, he says, in uncharted territory.
Mr. MARC FREEDMAN (Author): It's - in which they're neither young nor old, in which they're neither in midlife nor in traditional retirement. As a result, it's forcing retirement communities to provide an array of products for people over the age of 60.
ROBBINS: Sun City communities now have Internet cafes, continuing education classes, and lots of singles. Residents don't necessarily think of themselves as old. The communities are still largely white, and many of the original activities like golf remain.
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ROBBINS: The driver for marketing to older Americans in coming years will be 70 million baby boomers, an unprecedented aging population. But that doesn't mean places like Sun City will explode in number or size.
Gary Engelhardt is an economics professor at Syracuse University who specializes in housing and aging. He says it's still not what the majority of people want.
Professor GARY ENGELHARDT (Economics, Syracuse University): There's a very strong demand by older individuals to age in place. They want to live in the house they've lived in for the last 20 or 30 years. And they want to stay there and they want to make it work there.
ROBBINS: Not that Engelhardt is down on the Sun City concept. He says it's made a huge contribution to society.
Prof. ENGELHARDT: There are a lot of choices now, many more choices than 50 years ago. And it's not known, but my guess is that there'll be even more choices when the baby boomers go through. And that's probably a good thing.
ROBBINS: Life after 60, like Sun City at 50, is no longer the endpoint, but rather the beginning of a new phase of life.
Ted Robbins, NPR News, Tucson.
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