TRENDS

  The next generation of seniors wants a different type of senior living community. 

This next generation will expect, at a minimum, the best of what current communities offer: 

• Residential and universal design throughout,
• Independence with the ability to age in place, 
• Access to quality health care if needed, and 
• Personalized and high-quality programs and services.

However, in addition, we also believe they will desire communities that offer:

• Intergenerational programs and services to provide greater connection to the surrounding neighborhood and the community at large, and
• Design that creates a true feeling of neighborhood and sense of place by incorporating placemaking, new urbanism and mixed-use elements.

In other words, communities that don’t look or feel like traditional “seniors housing”.

See below for recent writings, whitepapers, resources and presentations about senior living projects incorporating intergenerational design and programming and placemaking.

It has been an honor to serve on the SAGE/AIA/DFA Intergenerational Task Force (IGTF).  

A few materials created by task force are below.

• Link to summary of the initial IGTF survey

• Link to a "roadmap" of various types of intergenerational elements to consider using in your project

• Link to the IGTF presentation at the Environments for Aging conference

• The Intergenerational Task Force Whitepaper - in process - to be posted 2026

I wrote this based on a review of more than 50 senior living communities around the country that have incorporated intergenerational elements, recent literature and publications on the topic, and interviews with community CEOs and senior living architects. Extensively footnoted and hyperlinked, it is meant to serve as a primer for those wanting to learn more about this fast-evolving trend.

Link to Intergenerational Experience Whitepaper

Before embarking on the master planning process, it is crucial to determine if  you are genuinely prepared to start. Having led and/or participated in dozens of master planning efforts over the years, if you start the process before you are ready, your master planning process will inevitably get delayed, bogged down, or detoured. I wrote this short checklist to provide you a list of seven questions to determine if you are really ready.  Includes sample RFPs for master planning team members.

• Link to Pre-Master Planning Checklist 

A whitepaper to which I contributed setting forth the best practices for undertaking the master planning process

• Link to Team-based Master Planning Whitepaper

I have seen many master planning efforts go too quickly into design and drawings, then discover the numbers don't work, and then have to start back at the beginning.   This short paper discusses the three tried and true simple words that should be your mantra through the master planning process.

• Link to a Master Planning Mantra

A pictorial essay / whitepaper on how to create a better connected, more meaningful, and more marketable community by incorporating five timeless intergenerational and placemaking design principles. 

• In process - to be posted summer 2026

• Graduate Real Estate coursework, University of Wisconsin - Madison, WI

• Juris Doctorate, University of San Diego School of Law, San Diego, CA

• Bachelor of Arts, Edgewood University, Madison, WI

• State Bar of Wisconsin, Member

• Leading Age Wisconsin, Member

• SAGE, Member

• Habitat for Humanity, Past Board Member & Volunteer in Madison & Des Moines

• Kendal Corporation, Newark, DE - Interim Vice President of Development

• Essex Corporation, Omaha, NE - Regional Regional Development Director 

• Life Care Services, Des Moines, IA - Project Project Development Manager & Operations Resource Manager

• Horizon Senior Services, Madison, WI - Development Project Manager

• DeAnaza Corporation, Beverly Hills, CA - Vice President, Acquisitions

• Married with 3 children

• Hobbies include reading & writing (C.S. Lewis & Symbolic World fan), triathlon, music & film, and outdoors