The aging of American society is not a transitory phenomenon caused by baby boomers, said Jack Rowe, professor of health policy management at Columbia University, in a recent conference at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. “It’s a permanent structural change induced by greater longevity.” Core U.S. institutions, including housing, “are not engineered for the society we’re going to have,” he said.

Portland, Oregon, developer Mark Desbrow formed Green Light Development to pioneer a 45-unit independent living cooperative, called the Sheldon Cooperative. Read about some of the advantages the independent cooperative housing model offers buyers, as well as developers, compared with the more traditional models and services offered by condominiums.

“We are looking at a likely future of remaking places, including retrofitting suburbia instead of endlessly building new subdivisions at the edges, and interspersing agriculture at a variety of scales with community building,” says Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, founding partner of DPZ/Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company. Read what she sees as the future of new urbanism.