Print edition: 
Robert Crummey, a 74-year-old retired dean at the University of California, Davis, ticks off the ways that Davis' Retirement Community keeps him and other residents in touch with campus life.
They work as ushers and docents at the school's performance hall, and they volunteer in campus research labs as well as the school's arboretum. Some, including Crummey, perform in the university chorus. Some audit classes on campus.
"The campus effect is considerable," Crummey said.
The 350 residents of Davis Retirement Community, which has no legal or financial connection with the university itself, may not realize it but they're on the cutting edge of what the continuing-care communities of tomorrow will look like: intergenerational, intellectually challenging and smack-dab in the middle of things.
Forget the notion of traditional, seniors-only, golf-based retirement communities tucked on the edges of distant suburbs. Some experts think the future of retirement living depends not on segregation but rather on social connection — specifically, what their residents have in common.
As usual, we can thank the baby boomers.
"For the past 25 years, we've mainly built retirement communities on the golf course or on the top of a mountain somewhere," said Andrew Carle, director of George Mason University's assisted living and senior housing administration program.
"That won't be enough for baby boomers. We invented 12 flavors of Coca Cola. We expect more flavors. There are 78 million of us demanding that. We'll congregate, but we want our own groups."
Some flavors of these niche communities have been around for decades, including not only faith-based senior housing but also a few more-colorful options, such as communities of senior nudists in Florida and assisted living for retired RVers in Texas.
But newer possibilities are beginning to spring up across the country.
Take the Crescendo at Westhaven, a country music retirement community scheduled to open in two years outside Nashville, Tenn. Or Fountaingrove Lodge, an upscale seniors' development opening this fall in Santa Rosa and catering to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender demographic.
Almost 60 percent of second-half baby boomers say they plan to buy a new home when they retire, according to the Baby Boomer Report. But downsizing doesn't have to mean moving to a continuing-care retirement community that includes several decades' levels of care, from independent living and skilled nursing to Alzheimer's assistance.
After all, only 16 percent of today's retirees have moved to seniors-only developments.
"What we hear from boomer focus groups is that people don't want to move away from the life of the broader community," said Sheri Peifer, vice president for research at Eskaton, a major Northern California senior-living nonprofit. "They want to live near their neighbors. They want to go to the church they've attended for years."
One promising option, she said, involves planned intergenerational neighborhoods of "livable design-certified homes," built to accommodate the needs of empty nesters but available to young, growing families, too.
Despite its founding almost 25 years ago as a nursing home for Chinese- and Japanese-speaking elders, the Sacramento area's Asian Community Center sites today offer housing, health and social service programs across cultural and ethnic lines.
"The notion of affinity retirement communities can go in many directions," said Donna Yee, ACC's chief executive officer. "Many people are realizing they can be retired for 30 or 40 years. They're taking care of their parents now and visualizing what this might say about their own needs as they get older.
"Sometimes, Plan B is that they want to remain among their peers, the people they grew up with and know."
University-based retirement communities are booming, with campus-related continuing-care facilities already dotting the landscape from Stanford and Penn State to the University of Florida and another 50 universities.
Typically, at least 10 percent of residents are emeritus professors and retired campus staff members.
"Baby boomers want active intellectual stimulation in an intergenerational environment, because we don't consider ourselves old," Carle said.
"That's the college campus."
