Can you imagine Indian seniors living in a retirement village as happy as this? Mind you this is not a promotional video shot with actors; but residents & staff creating one for friends & family! They have assisted living & care options in addition to independent living. Look up their website @
We are "homo sapiens" social animals thriving in groups (except for Robinson Crusoe like characters surviving on their islands by themselves).
So how did we end up turning into these pathetic paranoid creatures; prisoners in our own homes?
Need the social media to be social!
Dreaming of living in your own castle sanctuary as far away from the city as you can afford; with the freedom afforded by your chariots?
Replicate that vision a few hundred times in a neighborhood & you have your suburban sprawling subdivision. Do you know your neighbor living next door? Does it matter to you or are you content with the illusive safety of your second amendment rights & your ammo stockpile?
Automobile homes
Henry Ford mass-produced cars using the assembly line business model during the industrial age & it fostered sprawling suburbs with cookie cutter homes constructed similarly! The cars that were supposed to be our slaves "Transformed" into our masters!
Our homes, neighborhoods even cities & the nation are designed & built primarily with cars, vehicular movements, traffic studies, infrastructure etc. taking priority over human beings. The industrial revolution is long gone & we live in the information age now yet we dwell in these snout houses designed for cars. Living our pathetic zombie like existence sitting in front of a TV with a beer in one hand & the remote in the other or may be staring @ a digital computer/smartphone/ipad screen! Where is the "homo sapien"?
Would you be content living anonymously in a builder/developer designed speculative home for what may be the last couple of decades of your life?
Consider the exponential power of Metcalfe's "Network Effect"!
If you are the first person buying a fax machine, and none of your friends, family, associates, business partners, colleagues, vendors, suppliers have them then you might as well trash it; since it would be useless for you. Two people buying fax machines would share one connection, five would have ten connections, a dozen would have potential for sixty six & so on!
You will not hear a tree falling in a jungle, if you are not there no matter how thunderous the sound. It is only when more & more of your tribal members old or new, start interacting & spreading your "Idea Virus"(Seth Godin); it will gain any kind of momentum. Is your idea VIRAL?
Traditional interruption marketing (TV commercials, print ads etc.) is obsolete since we have all learned to ignore it. You need permission based marketing like Apple announcing it's new products over a two hour event, you would be dying to watch it; if you are their fan! In fact having to do anything else (like work) during the webcast would be an annoyance for you.
Check out this genius marketing video for Google search. If you are an Indian or Pakistani senior citizen, who grew up during the partition; see if you can resist the urge to share it with your friends your age:
If you are a Trekkie / Potterhead or a Whovian how long can you keep any news about Star trek / Harry Potter / Doctor Who to yourself?
Where in the world is your Shangrila, your Vrindavan, your Gokul?
Is it just an imaginary place? You bet it is! It lives in your heart & soul & in your dreams. After all of your hard work & toil & a never ending quest; will you let a builder or investor design-build it for you? Will you settle for just a "good enough" model for your "forever home"?
You think asking builders successful in building senior communities (with close to 20,000 homes) you can't go wrong, right? Sure if you wish to live in an anonymous suburban sprawl! It probably won't look much different from where you live now (may be with a clubhouse thrown in); so why bother moving then?
If you said Indian neighbors, think again. If you are seeking investors as well as winter birds just to fill the spots, how cohesive your community would be? For them it would be more or less an extended stay time-share kind of environment! Then again we are all transients in this world (what a morbid thought)! Why be fussy over just a shelter; though it may very well be your last one?
If your home is your castle (may be not as ugly as in this picture) & your car your chariot for freedom; you have unfortunately turned into a redneck American! With that kind of mentality you may need to exercise your second amendment rights & buy a gun or two as well! Imagine living with neighbors who think just like you & replicating their castles up & down the street. Hell of a neighborhood it would be, right? Cohousing community would be a bad choice for you in that case!
Or you could end up in one of the cartoonish homes you were drawing up in second or third grade! They would be frugal. You are shooting for $80 per square foot cost, are you not?
OMG what happened to your lifelong dreams of living in your Vrindavan?
