Bernice L. Neugarten, “Age Groups in American Society and the Rise of the Young-Old,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 415, no. 1 (1974): 187–198. Peter Laslett, A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989; U.S. ed. 1991).
See for example: Stephen Katz, Disciplining Old Age: The Formation of Gerontological Knowledge (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996); Chris Gilleard and Paul Higgs, Cultures of Ageing: Self, Citizen and the Body (Harlow, UK: Prentice Hall, 2000); and Martin Kohli, “Generational Changes and the Third Age,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Age and Ageing, ed. Malcolm J. Johnson (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
H. Gary Morse, “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow!,” The Villages Daily Sun, 2007.
Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London and New York: Verso, 2007), 328–44. Jameson identifies the “longevity” subgenre of science fiction—stories where certain characters live far longer or even indefinitely—as a striking allegory for class struggle. In these narratives, access to life-extending technologies is typically reserved for the elite, while the rest remain mortal, vulnerable, and expendable. For Jameson, this dramatizes a future in which even time and survival are commodified, with the power to live becoming the deepest expression of inequality. Aging itself is refigured as a site of class conflict, where the capacity to persist into the future is unevenly distributed. Rather than universal human experiences, life and death are reimagined as products of systemic privilege. In this way, Jameson sees longevity not just as a sci-fi curiosity, but as a political metaphor that exposes how capitalism might extend its reach into biology, turning the control over life’s duration into the most profound form of domination.
J. G. Ballard, Cocaine Nights (London: Flamingo, 1996).
Deane Simpson, Young-Old: Urban Utopias of an Aging Society (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2015).
Simon(e) van Saarloos, Against Ageism: A Queer Manifesto (Vancouver: Emily Carr University Press, 2023). Elizabeth Freeman, Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).
“Villager screams ‘White Power’at Trump Golf Cart Rally in The Villages, Florida,” posted June 15, 2020, by Villages-News.com, YouTube, 1:23, ➝.
“Sumter County,” Data Commons, ➝.
“The Villages, FL,” Data USA, ➝.
Marco D’Eramo, “Bunkering in Paradise (or, Do Oldsters Dream of Electric Golf Carts?),” in Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism, ed. Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk (New York: The New Press, 2007), 187–88.
Van Saarloos, Against Ageism.
For a concise account of the spatial–urban genealogy of homophily, see Laura Kurgan et al., “Homophily: The Urban History of an Algorithm,” e-flux Architecture, October 2019, ➝.
Yochai Benkler et al., Networked Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics (Oxford university Press, 2018).
“Tempers Boil Over as Democrats Square Off With Trump Supporters at Golf Cart Rally,” Villages-News.com, June 14, 2020, ➝; “Villager screams ‘White Power’ at Trump Golf Cart Rally in The Villages, Florida.”
“Villagers Paying Higher Amenity Fees and Seeing More Outsiders Having Fun,” Villages-News.com, March 29, 2025, ➝.
“Residents Divided Sharply on Value of Gates in The Villages,” Villages-News.com, February 21, 2021, ➝.
Freeman, Time Binds.
Ryan Grim, “The Villages Vendetta: How A Grassroots Revolt in the Iconic Retirement Community Ended With a 72-Year-Old Political Prisoner,” The Intercept, February 5, 2023, ➝.
Simpson, Young-Old, 236–43.
Ryan Grim, “An Exciting Update on Jailed Villages Politician Oren Miller,” The Intercept, November 10, 2023, ➝.
“Convicted Felon Oren Miller Released from Jail,” The Villages Daily Sun, ➝.
Grim, “The Villages Vendetta.” Ryan Grim, “Sham Conviction Overturned for Oren Miller, the Jailed Villages Politician Railroaded by Ron DeSantis,” The Intercept, November 9, 2023, ➝.
Van Saarloos, Against Ageism.
“Several Sinkholes Open Up, Forcing Residents Out of Four Homes,” WOGX, February 18, 2018, ➝.
Lauren Ritchie, “Commentary: Stop Letting Developments Such as The Villages Suck Up Water,” Orlando Sentinel, 30 June 2017, ➝; Chris Bodenner, “The Science Behind Florida’s Sinkhole Epidemic,” Smithsonian magazine, May 24, 2018, ➝; and “Letters to the Editor: The Villages’ Unconstrained Growth Comes at a Price,” Villages-News.com, September 10, 2023, ➝.
Bodenner, “The Science Behind Florida’s Sinkhole Epidemic.”
Bodenner, “The Science Behind Florida’s Sinkhole Epidemic.”
In terms of groundwater usage, The Villages held a permit in 1991 to withdraw 65 million gallons of water annually. By 2017, that number had escalated to 12.4 billion gallons per year. Ritchie, “Commentary: Stop Letting Developments Such as The Villages Suck Up Water.”
Bodenner, “The Science Behind Florida’s Sinkhole Epidemic.”
Craig Pittman, Oh, Florida!: How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016).
Meta Minton, “Villager Abandons Home After Sinkhole Saga Takes Its Toll,” Villages-News.com, July 10, 2025, ➝.
“Villages 101: Villages Couple Served Jail Time for Sexual Romp on Electric Box,” Villages-News.com, October 5, 2019, ➝.
Such a conceptualization of lifestyle follows demographically-informed practices of market segmentation, in which, according to Stephen Katz and Barbara Marshall, companies and instruments “transfigure the life-course into knowable, codable, and legible market trends, segments, and consumer profiles. As a result, aging as a diverse chronological process and age-related problems based on class, race, gender, and locality are obscured or disappear into coterminous market niches based on the vagaries of ‘mature’ consumer behavior.” Stephen Katz and Barbara Marshall, “New Sex for Old: Lifestyle, Consumerism, and the Ethics of Aging Well,” Journal of Aging Studies 17, no. 1 (2003): 5.
Stephen Katz, “Busy Bodies: Activity, Aging, and the Management of Everyday Life,” Journal of Aging Studies 14, no. 2 (2000). This neoliberal ideology of self-regulation, in which aging bodies are expected to resist decline and remain desirable, is spatialized in the “strip-hospital,” a commercial-retail typology prevalent in The Villages programmed with medical and body-correction services designed for car and golf-cart access. Simpson, Young-Old, 229–36.
Simpson, Young-Old, 204–19.
Ellen Langer, Counterclockwise (New York: Ballantine Books, 2009).
Langer, Counterclockwise.
“STDs Running Rampant in Retirement Community: Doctor Blames Viagra, Lack of Sex Education,” WKMG Local 6, May 27, 2006; Andrew Blechman, Leisureville: Adventures in a World Without Children (New York: Grove Press, 2009); “Villages 101: Villages Couple Served Jail Time for Sexual Romp on Electric Box.”
“Fact or Myth: Is The Villages the STD Capital of the US?” TopRetirements.com (blog), February 5, 2021, ➝.
Katz, “Busy Bodies.”
Ryan Erisman, “Hooters Breaks Ground in The Villages,” Inside the Bubble (blog), January 31, 2025 (updated), ➝.
“Letters to the Editor: Is Middleton part of The Villages?” Villages-News.com, November 4, 2025, ➝.
Marv Balousek, “Mark Morse: Church on Square to be Renamed in Honor of Sharon Morse,” Villages-News.com, May 14, 2014, ➝; Middleton website, mymiddleton.com.
