There's this place in Florida called The Villages. It's an age-segregated community for retirees: one member of each household must be at least 55; children under age 19 who come to visit can stay for a maximum of three weeks. Everything is golf cart-accessible -- the actual golf courses, grocery stores, even the Wal-Mart across the highway had a special golf cart tunnel built to it!
Admittedly, there would be some nice things about this. No teenagers throwing parties. No traffic. No screaming kids at the movie theater. But really, what an odd place to live. It's the ultimate in manufactured living. Everything about The Villages is planned, supervised, and climate-controlled. There is even fake history! There are "old" trolley tracks that were never used or even useful, and furthermore are not even old. There is a fictional and now-defunct (?) "Cattlemen's Association" which never really existed, but was nonetheless the inspiration for one of the two town centers. An author writing about the subdivision wrote that the area consists of "people gladly trading a more diverse, complex environment for life with a simple, benign, and powerful developer." There is essentially no local government. Everything is owned by the developer, and there are enough people living there that they have basically taken over the government of Sumter County, Florida, and can do whatever they want with it.
Jealous? Maybe a little. But still, what a strange place to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment