The question is no longer simply where we want to grow old, but whether the places we call home will continue to support us as we do.
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Climate Is Changing the Meaning of Place
As of this weekend, the World Health Organization has linked more than 1,300 deaths across Europe to a heat wave that began June 21. France alone has reported roughly 1,000 deaths, most among people 65 and older. As the eastern United States prepares for its own stretch of dangerous heat, those numbers should not be viewed as a European story. They are a preview of what happens when longer lives intersect with a warmer world.
For years, I have argued that your ZIP code may matter as much as, if not more than, your portfolio. Where we live shapes access to healthcare, transportation, housing, social connection, and the everyday opportunities that allow us to remain engaged as we age.
Climate is now another reason place matters. It is changing not only where people choose to retire, but how all of us should think about the communities in which we expect to spend a long and significant chapter of our lives.
Research supports that concern. Older adults account for a disproportionate share of heat-related illness and mortality, and researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have shown that the health effects of extreme heat often continue after temperatures begin to moderate. Heat leaves a physiological burden that extends well beyond the heat wave itself. That should give us pause as periods of dangerous heat become more frequent.
The Retirement Dream Has Changed
Climate has always influenced retirement decisions. For generations, Americans dreamed of escaping long winters, moving closer to the coast, settling in a college town, or finding a community that better matched the life they envisioned after work. Climate was an amenity, evaluated alongside taxes, housing costs, recreational opportunities, and proximity to family.
That thinking made sense when retirement was shorter and many people expected to spend little more than a decade after a lifetime of work.
Today’s retirement often spans 20 or 30 years. During that time, both people and places change. Insurance costs rise. Energy demands increase. Infrastructure ages. Extreme weather events become more frequent. Our own lives change too, our health, mobility, caregiving responsibilities, finances, and the ways we interact with our communities.
Climate remains part of the retirement dream, but it has also become part of longevity planning.
Place Is Dynamic Because We Are
This conversation is not simply about where people should retire. It is equally about where they choose to remain.
According to AARP, most older Americans hope to age-in-place. That is, to continue living in the communities where they have worked, raised families, built friendships, and established routines. Others will relocate in search of lower cost of living, proximity to family, or lifestyles. Regardless of whether someone moves or stays, the underlying question is becoming remarkably similar.
It is no longer simply, Is this where I want to grow old?
It is, Will this place continue to support me as I grow older?
My colleague in longevity studies, Ryan Frederick, has written extensively about place planning and the role community plays in health, purpose, and well-being. His work has encouraged people to think intentionally about where they will live during longer lives. I believe demographic change and climate change invite us to extend that conversation one step further.
Place planning should not become another retirement decision checked off a list. It should become an ongoing question and subject to continuous reassessment throughout longer lives.
One assumption underlying retirement planning is that if we choose the right place at age 65, the decision is largely settled. Longer lives challenge that assumption. A community that serves us well at 65 may look quite different at 75 or 85. Not necessarily because the community has changed, but because we have.
The grocery store remains nearby. The sidewalks are still there. The physician’s office has not moved.
What changes is us.
We may no longer drive comfortably after dark. Walking long distances may become difficult. A spouse may die. Caregiving may enter our lives. Several days of extreme heat may turn what was once a pleasant afternoon walk into a health risk.
The relationship between people and place is dynamic. It deserves the same periodic reassessment we give our health, finances, and retirement goals.
A Blind Spot in Longevity Planning
This perspective may help explain one of the most intriguing findings from the MIT AgeLab–John Hancock Longevity Preparedness Index. Across eight domains of preparedness, respondents gave their highest scores to Community. At first glance, that is encouraging. Most people feel reasonably confident about where they live.
I suspect respondents were answering a different question than the one longevity ultimately asks.
They were answering: Does my community work for me today?
Longevity planning asks something different: Will this community continue to work for me 20 years from now?
Most of us evaluate communities according to today’s needs. Is there a grocery store nearby? Can I reach my physician? Are there parks, restaurants, libraries, and friends close at hand?
Longevity planning requires us to ask additional questions. Will the electrical grid remain reliable during prolonged heat? Can healthcare systems absorb surges in demand? Will transportation continue to meet my needs if I eventually stop driving? How resilient is the community to flooding, wildfire smoke, hurricanes, or extended power outages? Are there infrastructure and services that are designed to meet the unique needs of older people?
The issue is not whether a community works today. It is whether it will continue to work tomorrow.
Place Preparedness
Place may matter as much as your portfolio. Climate doesn’t replace that idea. It reinforces it. If where we live increasingly shapes our health, mobility, access to care, social connection, and resilience, then retirement planning needs another dimension beyond financial preparedness.
That gap deserves a name. Place Preparedness.
Place Preparedness is the ongoing assessment of whether a community can continue to support its residents as they age and as the world around them changes. Housing, infrastructure, healthcare capacity, transportation, energy reliability, emergency response, evacuation and shelter, and social connection all become part of that assessment.
None of this is an argument against Florida, Arizona, California, or the coastal Carolinas, where in-migration and native population aging are now colliding in real time. Every region faces different opportunities and different risks. Nor is it an argument that everyone should move.
It is an argument that climate now belongs alongside finances, housing, health, and caregiving in the broader conversation about longevity planning.
For decades we have invested enormous effort in helping individuals prepare for retirement. We have encouraged people to save more, invest wisely, and plan for healthcare expenses. Those conversations remain essential.
Longer lives suggest they are no longer sufficient. We also need to prepare places.
Age-Ready Communities
Communities will increasingly compete not only on affordability and amenities but on resilience. Not just age-friendly, but age-ready. Housing, public health, transportation, emergency preparedness, reliable energy, healthcare capacity, and neighborhood design for the unique needs of older people will become as important to successful aging as sunshine and tax rates once were.
Five years ago, I argued that climate change deserved a place in retirement planning. That earlier conversation was largely about where to retire. The challenge today is broader.
Longer lives require us to think differently about place itself. Preparing for retirement is no longer simply about choosing the right community. It is about continually asking whether that community continues to fit the life we are living.
The future of longevity will depend not only on whether people are financially prepared for longer lives, but on whether the places they choose, or choose to remain, continue to evolve alongside them.
The next retirement risk may not be found in our portfolios.
It may be found in whether the place we call home is prepared for the people we are becoming.
