University-Linked Retirement Communities

Student Visions of Eldercare

Leon A Pastalan, Benyamin Schwarz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781135906856
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

University-Linked Retirement Communities focuses on the special attributes of a retirement community designed as an integral part of a university. It discusses the theoretical and practical aspects of such a retirement community, which provides a rich and varied context for older people to be exposed to new ideas and learning opportunities for personal growth. The book centers on the premise that knowledge of basic principles of human behavior helps clarify understanding of the relationship between environment and behavior. Grounded in current research in the field of environment and aging, the book helps readers consider how the environment lends different aesthetic experiences and activity patterns to people of different backgrounds and capabilities. Some of the major environment and design issues chapters address are:

• person-environment fit
  
• privacy
  
• personal space
  
• wayfinding
  
• barrier-free design
  
• healthcare
  
• personal growth
  
• site development University-Linked Retirement Communities was developed from a two-term course offered at the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning that dealt with aging and the environment. The book is divided into two parts. Chapters in the first section discuss a variety of issues, including the meaning of "community, " a day in the life of an elderly person living in a retirement community, site evaluation for a theoretical retirement community, and reviews of different physical components for a retirement community. The second section contains four student presentations of designs for a retirement community and comments on the projects from a design jury. This book is a valuable source of information for a variety of readers. University-Linked Retirement Communities is of interest to potential users of eldercare services and their families; service providers; designers, architects, policymakers, and developers dealing with the elderly; and educators and students of architecture, environmental design, and other fields who are involved in housing and care options for senior adults.

11PART ONE: BACKGROUND PAPERS

12Community and the Elderly

Melissa K. Lucksinger

It (housing) seems set up to crowd together unrelated and hermetic nuclear families whose only link with each other is that they have been brought together by some mindless central casting to play bit parts in an incomprehensible urban drama … with no attention to providing for community, ever.

—Charles W. Moore, Architect

INTRODUCTION

The majority of species exist in some form of community. Most do so instinctively because survival dictates this form of living necessary to existence. Human beings began with tribes, small communities, and/or large extended families; they experienced some form of commitment and desire to unify as a whole. In the beginning, unification was for defense purposes and eventually evolved to psychological needs. While modern life has advanced in most areas from a tribal existence, basic needs of security, stability, dependence and intimacy are being denied by the totally independent society prevalent in America today.

What is community? According to Webster’s it is defined as “a group of people residing in the same locality and under the same government … having common interests … common ownership or participation.” The word comes from Latin communitas, meaning “fellowship” and communis, meaning “common.” Modernized ideas of community involve social networks that replace the traditional nuclear family. Daniel Yankelovich writes descriptively about feelings of participation in a community; he states, “Here is where I belong, these are my people, I care for them, they care for me, I am a part of them, they share my concerns. I know this place, I am on familiar ground, I am at home.” Yankelovich’s reference to home does not mean a physical structure or a financial investment. Home implies security and comfort and can affect a person’s confidence and relationships with others. With the evolution of modern society and dissolution of the traditional nuclear family, the environment must step forward to help create a sense of home. In examining the environment the necessity for supportive communities emerges. Individual commitment to the community can enhance quality of life by creating social networks that provide for individual support. Although American society was founded on individual freedom, the need for community to elicit loneliness and create a sense of self-worth is urgent in today’s society.

UTOPIAN IDEALS

In Utopia commitment rather than coercion is the link which creates a self-chosen cooperative that operates according to a higher order of spiritual and natural laws. These laws assume that harmony and cooperation rather than conflict and exploitation are inherent human qualities. In Utopia individual and group interests are congruent ensuing mutual responsibility and trust. In essence, Utopia is “the imaginary society in which humankind’s deepest yearnings, noblest dreams, and highest aspirations come to fulfillment, where 13all physical, social, and spiritual forces work together, in harmony, to permit the attainment of everything people find desirable and necessary”(Kanter, p. 7). Critics claim Utopian plans are an escape from reality, however, they are also new creations; they reject the established order and the generally accepted norms of society in an attempt to achieve the perfect human existence.

The realization of Utopia has often been attempted through the organization of communes. Communes are typically value-based, communal societies. The vision, as suggested by the word itself, is of community. There is a voluntary conformity based on commitment of the individual to the collective whole. Through group solidarity the commune exists to serve its members, simultaneously implementing a set of values focused towards the attainment of certain ideals. American communes can be categorized as religious, psychological, or political entities. While differing in their ideological basis they present a variety of common values:

• rejection of established order as sinful, unjust, or unhealthy
• rejection of isolation and alienation
• the possibility of perfection through a restructuring of society
• a recreation of lost unity
• immediacy of actions to attain a goal.

The result in trying to achieve these harmonies has been the attempt at the Utopian community or commune.

An example of one such commune is the Oneida, Community of the Past. The members of this commune referred to themselves as the Kingdom of God on earth. Founder John Humphrey Noyes’ vision of Utopia became embodied in the Oneida community which was organized around principles of the primitive Christian church: “The believers possessed one heart and one soul and had all things in common” (Kanter, p. 16). As a religious based community Oneida embodied many of the common values discussed previously. In joining together to achieve these values they followed in the belief that an active sense of participation leads to success and harmony for the whole. Everything, material and spiritual, was shared with the community and in return the community supported the individual. Economic communism and communal living, to the point of complex marriage (free love), informed all aspects of group life. 14Family life was replaced by group life; while there was contact between biological parents and children it was kept to a minimum to discourage any kind of “special love.” Many parent-child relationships existed between unrelated children, and adults. To ensure “community spirit” and to fight egoism and selfishness they used public criticism. Oneida, as well as many other Utopian communities, was scorned and eventually dissolved due to their deviant behavior, which the outside world viewed as unacceptable. While the Oneida community represents a radical Utopian commune, they did satisfy their basic human needs of community. They banded together to achieve a “better, purer, and more moral life, which the rest of society would eventually adopt” (Kanter, p. 18).

Using the Oneida community as an example, the organization of social order within the Utopian commune often used undesirable means to attain social unity. Through the provision of spiritual and material needs, inherent destructive qualities such as competition and egotism are eliminated. While this is true to the vision of a Utopian community, maintaining total communal commitment often requires means beyond harmony, brotherhood, and peace. For example, in the Oneida community a young boy was reprimanded for showing special love for his mother. In punishment he was forbidden to see his mother for a week. While this is one type of social control, another is described as mutual criticism. This involved the individual periodically subjecting himself to a committee for criticism. The subject was to acknowledge criticism in silence and to confess to it in writing; after the experience an individual was ‘cleansed’ and was considered a better member of society. Although the members seemed to find these methods effective, they are a form of coercion to force conformity to social unity. These tactics reinforce the fact that there has to be some form of social control to create a ‘harmonious’ community.

As pointed out, the idealized community of the Utopian vision is often hard to implement. In fact, few communes have been able to stand the test of time. Setting logistic and economic problems aside, the main ingredient in communes, commitment, is extremely difficult to maintain. The members work for the community to survive and in return must achieve satisfaction through long-term involvement. Satisfaction and commitment to community can create safety, 15security, stable group relationships, and high levels of self-esteem and pride. A successful commune must have strong feelings of participation, a heightened sense of belonging to a group. The problem which arises is that group pressure and intense social control exist at an expense to the individual. Organizational problems arise that address this issue:

• how to maintain community without coercion
• how to make decisions to the collective satisfaction
• how to build relationships without exclusiveness
• how to create communal life with autonomy.

There is not an all-inclusive answer to these problems. A focus on the need for reciprocal relationships may be helpful; however, as the Utopian communes have discovered, the need for commitment, especially in deviant groups, is stronger than in general society. As George Simmel described, “The secret society claims the whole individual to a greater extent, connects its members in more of their totality, and mutually obligates them more closely than does an open society of identical content” (Kanter, p. 65). Members of Utopian communes have strived to overcome loneliness through shared dreams and to create meaningful life through a community goal. Their trials, tribulations and successes can serve as models for those trying to build community environments in today’s society.

KIBBUTZ

Mirroring the attempts of Utopian communes to create the ideal society of the future, the Israeli Kibbutz created a social system that can be quite advantageous. Martin Buber in 1958 called the kibbutz “an experiment that did not fail” (Rabin, p. 5). As an intentional community the kibbutz extends over 80 years. There are particular economic and social events that created an opening for this type of society. The large Jewish population evacuating Russia and the colonizing of Palestine in the years preceding the State of Israel provided the need for communal living. In settling the barren desert, young idealistic individuals knew that a collective settlement rather than traditional family homesteading was necessary for survival.

16Kibbutz life is based on total equality; the ultimate in egalitarian idealism. A homogeneous background made this more plausible, as well as their commitment to the ‘perfectibility’ of the human being. They sought to return to nature and rear a new type of being who would be less selfish, more secure, and more generous. In working towards these goals they have used the Marxist philosophy that people contribute according to their ability and consume according to their needs. There have been many benefits and downfalls of the system. For example, the establishment of a ‘total society’. The totality occurs because it is the kibbutz’s responsibility to provide for all the needs of the individual. In return the individual must commit to total participation. This combines two major functions of a social organization into one socioeconomic function. Is this positive or negative? It may be argued to either point; however, it is a solution to the need for commitment. Without the usual social and economic divisions that fragment a society the kibbutz stands a greater chance of maintaining commitment from its members. Analyzing on a cost benefit basis, if the quality of life in the kibbutz produces satisfaction for its members, they will work to maintain this standard. However, if the kibbutz members feel they have been ‘wronged’ the commitment to a total society will be severed.

Many studies have been conducted on the impact of living communally. In a study by Rabin and Hallahmi they presented data collected on the differences between being raised in the kibbutz society and the moshav (traditional Israeli settlement) nuclear family. While they were hesitant to make sweeping generalizations on the impact of a communal environment, they did find that it affected individual life. The kibbutz group demonstrated higher levels of self-actualization as a life-goal, lower levels of friendship intimacy, and viewed their parents more critically than the traditionally socialized group. However, there were many areas in which they found no differences, such as marital status, contribution to society as a life goal, present attachment to parents, and self-esteem. Once again these data can be interpreted in various ways, but some basic facts exist. The lack of extensive immediate family contact does not cause a deficiency in attachment and the continuity of the overall structure aids socialization in the kibbutz.

The kibbutz has a variety of failures and successes in its way of 17life just as other forms of society. Viewing the kibbutz’s positive aspects, society today could learn a great deal about the benefits of communal living. Sociologist Robert Bellah suggests “that our individualism has become unbalanced, creating a culture of separation which, if left unchecked, will collapse of its own incoherence” (McCammant and Durett, p. 196). To remedy the growing isolation and loneliness in our culture today, a look to the kibbutz for a renewed sense of commitment to the community can help guide the efforts that are necessary.

COHOUSING

Changing demographics are occurring across society leaving no one untouched. The ideological ‘nuclear family’ is almost extinct in American society today. While economic changes are striving ahead, social ideals are lagging behind. Factors at one time taken for granted–family, community, and a sense of belonging–are at a severe point of deficiency. Cohousing takes these ideas and redesigns the...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About The Editors
• Introduction Elders’ Utopia
• Part One Background Papers
• Part Two Student Design Presentations
• Afterword