The best places to grow old aren't in Florida or Arizona, according to a report released today by the Milken Institute, a California-based think tank. Phoenix's woeful transportation system, which offers few travel options for people too old to drive everywhere, disqualifies that purported haven for retirees. No, the best places for the fast-growing 65-plus demographic are ones more like, well, New York City.
The greater New York metro area, which ranks fifth in the Milken Institute's survey, is buoyed less by its world-class hospitals than by its transportation system, which earned a perfect 100-point score. Those who grow old in New York can easily maintain their independence thanks to a robust transit system. The city's density means even people who can't walk as far as they used to have access to neighborhood amenities, and its increasingly safe streets are especially important for this particularly vulnerable group of pedestrians.
The Milken Institute says its rankings provide the most comprehensive and data-driven view of what makes an aging-friendly city, using 78 quantitative indicators. New York's high score is largely the result of its senior-friendly transportation network; it put up middling scores in many other categories and, predictably, fared quite poorly in terms of housing affordability. Utah's Orem-Provo area, which boasts extremely healthy habits and relatively walkable towns, came in first.
Noah joined Streetsblog as a New York City reporter at the start of 2010. When he was a kid, he collected subway paraphernalia in a Vignelli-map shoebox.
Before coming to Streetsblog, he blogged at TheCityFix DC and worked as a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Toledo, Ohio. Noah graduated from Yale University, where he wrote his senior thesis on the class politics of transportation reform in New York City. He lives in Morningside Heights.
New York City's congestion pricing tolls are one historic step closer to reality after Wednesday's 11-1 MTA board vote. Next step: all those pesky lawsuits.