The hottest buzzword in wellness seeps into real estate
style criteria, and they help others remake themselves to promote longevity. The initiatives — often funded by health care systems and insurance companies with a vested interest in a hale and hearty population — promote solutions such as smoking bans, biking paths and group activities that foster a sense of belonging.
Eighty places in the United States — from Bakersfield, California, to Corry, Pennsyl- vania — have adopted these initiatives, called Blue Zone Projects. Some developers take inspiration from Blue Zones even if they are not seeking official certification.
But in some cases, it appears to be more a mar- keting strategy than anything else, joining a flurry of real estate certification programs and having little to do with the modest way of life that Blue Zones is meant to reflect.
A luxury hotel and condo- minium project in Miami is using the Blue Zones moniker for a medical facility on the premises that will offer plastic surgery. And there has been pushback in some quarters, including a part of Phoenix with a large minority popula- tion. Some nonprofit groups there wrote a letter criticiz- ing an effort to organize a Blue Zones initiative, saying it would compete with plans already in progress, drain- ing resources and funding.
“This is like Lifestyle Medicine 101,” said Janelle Apple- quist, an associate professor in the Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Com- munications at the Univer- sity of South Florida. “This is stuff we’ve known forever. They’re just repackaging it.”
Buettner defended his company’s approach, say- ing it was based on exhaustive research and that instead of trying to persuade individu- als to change their behavior, as other wellness programs do, it focuses on changing the environment to make healthy choices easier.
“On the surface, it might look like what’s been done before,” he said. “But every single component of what we do is underpinned with evidence.”
The Blue Zones phenom- enon started when Buettner learned that the Japanese island of Okinawa produced the oldest people in the world, and in 1999, he set out to learn why.
Within a decade, he and other researchers had iden- tified four more blue zones: small communities in Italy, Costa Rica and Greece as well as Loma Linda, California, which had a high proportion of Seventh-day Adventists, many of them vegetarians. (The “blue” in blue zones came from the ink marks made on maps pinpointing places where centenarians were concentrated.)
Buettner distilled what residents of the blue zones had in common and set out to spread the gospel in books, articles and talks. He founded Blue Zones to manage all these activities and is now chair.
“I never set out to be a longevity guru,” Buettner says at the outset of his Netflix series.
Some questioned his claims and data. And since his initial investigations, some of the original blue zones have lost their longevity edge as processed foods supplanted meals made with homegrown ingredients and the sedentary ways of modern life took hold.
Despite the growing popularity of blue zones, some organizers are finding resistance.
Equality Health Foundation, a nonprofit spinoff of the Equality Health primary care platform, has been working to organize a Blue Zones Project in South Phoenix, an area with a mostly Black and Hispanic population that has lower incomes and lower life expectancy than predominantly white areas nearby.
Tomás León, president of the foundation, said he was seeking to raise $10.5 million for the initiative.
But some local groups have expressed concern that Blue Zones will duplicate efforts they have underway and that the fundraising drive will siphon off money that otherwise might go to their projects.
New kids, baby clothing store opens in Huber Heights
Kids and baby apparel store has opened a new location in Huber Heights. Located at 8289 Old Troy Pike in the North- Park Shopping Center, the store is situated just south of Kohl’s. Carter’s is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mon- day through Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
Along with its namesake brand, Carter’s, Inc., is the parent company for brands including OshKosh B’gosh, Skip Hop, Little Planet, and Simple Joys.
The company announced plans in 2023 to open 50 new stores, offset by the planned closure of approximately 10 stores that year due to lease expirations, and an expectation to have 1,000 or more U.S. locations by 2027.