Staying Smart Learning Hot New Trends in Communities...Pop Up Communities and more

Technorati Tags: dementia, switzerland, world crunch, community

FIY this topic is so hot that Techonorati does not have any tags for it.  Who knew??

What did you learn today that surprised you?  Was it some hot new trend?  I hope it was an idea or trend that will interest us too.  Please share in the comments.  As for me, I learned about two new types of communities.  One involved a new meaning for "Pop Up" and another is a new concept in a nursing facilities that looked like a normal community but had walls so people could not escape wander away.  Both fascinated me.  Tweet it up if you find it interesting and have a great day!

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. from Wikipedia!

I spend a certain amount of time online just surfing...everyday. It is important because that is one of the places that I go so I can be in the know.  The definition above doesn't acknowledge that generations learn from each other. Young from the old and old from the young. In fact, I never cease to be amazed at the creative ideas that each new generation brings to our world.  That is why the internet is so important to a person like me.  I spend 6 months of the year with age mates. I could very easily loose the thread of thought that passes across the world population every day. And like most people, I want to know what is hot. So shoot me!

This week I saw two items I found very interesting.  One was because of the mention of Pop Up Communities and another was an article about a community in Switzerland for people that suffered from dementia.  I was unaware that either one existed.

Pop Up Communities
Remember last week/year/whenever the words "pop up" conjured the image of those annoying boxes that appeared on your computer screen to advertise insurance?  Now the two little words "Pop UP" have taken on a whole new meaning.  A Pop Up Community is simply a temporary community of people that gather in an unexpected place.  It can involve a total art show or just a patch of green turf and 8 lawn chairs set up in a parking lot.  Out there in the world the idea may have sprung from the simple food trucks that inhabit communities across our nation.  The trucks are traveling restaurants that appear near parks, at construction sites and in vacant lots.  A community or people that run and use them is growing.

Now the Pop Up Community concept has spread to other segments of our populations.  In fact The Street Blog wrote a piece about it just a few days ago.  They described the unconventional use of conventional spaces in this way:

Streets repurposed as public markets. Parking spaces as parks. Vacant storefronts as temporary art galleries. It’s never been hotter.

I read about a group that took over a retail street in their community that was almost abandoned.  Stores were opened as temporary restaurants, art was displayed on the streets and the "Pop Up Community" was dressed up for one day.  It was done to show how the street could be repurposed to become a functioning part of their community again.

I found this video on YouTube about a group in NYC that do that creates pop up markets on a regular basis.  Take a look and I think you will be amazed too.



Dementia Village, Switzerland
Here is a community of another kind.  I can barely even write about this even though it was fascinating in a "Truman Show" kind of way.  Switzerland is embracing the idea of building nursing facilities for people suffering from dementia.  They are communities with an altered reality.

It’s a village like many others. Street signs, front gardens with little gnome figurines, a restaurant, beauty parlor and supermarket. What is different about it is that the 150 men and women who live here suffer from serious dementia. They can move around freely in the village. But they can’t leave it. This is Hogewey, a nursing facility near Amsterdam that is considered a pioneer in dementia care. Care givers stay behind the scenes, and are dressed like gardeners, hairdressers, and sales people. from World Crunch

Really I don't know what it was about this that didn't ring true.  What do you think? Do you think that a village that will cost 17 million British pounds, houses 150 people and is not real in anyway is a good idea?  Is it just me or is this creepy in some way?

Have a wonderful day.

b