In recent decades, architectural and urban discourse addressing the phenomenon of population aging has been dominated by an undifferentiated view of old age focused upon the limitations of the older-old through paradigms such as “care,” “accessibility,” and “universal design.” Young-Old differentiates the demographic group of the same name as a petri dish for experimental forms of subjectivity, collectivity, and urbanism. In investigating this field of latent novelty, the work documents phenomena ranging from the themed urban landscapes of the world's largest retirement community in Florida and the mono-national urbanizations of "the retirement home of Europe" on Costa del Sol, Spain, to the Dutch-themed residential community at Huis Ten Bosch, Japan, and the networked nomadic urbanism of the senior recreational vehicle (RV) community in the United States. Young-Old employs text, drawings, maps, diagrams, and photographs to unfold both the escapist and emancipatory dimensions of these socio-spatial practices.

Deane Simpson is an architect and urbanist teaching at the Royal Danish Academy School of Architecture, and at the Bergen Architecture School (BAS) in Norway, where he is professor of architecture and urbanism. He received his master’s degree in architecture from Columbia University and his doctoral degree from ETH Zürich. He is a former unit master at the Architectural Association in London, faculty member at ETH Zürich, and associate at Diller + Scofidio in New York. His writings have appeared in journals such as Volume, Arbitare, the Architectural Review, Monu, and Archithese, and publications such as Explorations in Architecture (Birkhäuser, 2008), Urban Transformations (Ruby Press, 2008), Deviations (Birkhäuser, 2008), Infrastructure as Architecture (Jovis, 2011), and Imperfect Health (Lars Müller, 2011). He is coauthor of Diller + Scofidio (+ Renfro): The Ciliary Function (Skira, 2007), and coeditor of the forthcoming Atlas of the Copenhagens (Ruby Press, 2014).