Inside the $28 Million Alzheimer's Village Where Participants Can Shop, Farm, and Socialize Freely

In the south of France is the construction site of the country's first "Alzheimer's village," a $28 million community that will house 120 people and features amenities such as shops, a gym, a restaurant, and a small farm, allowing residents to walk freely and maintain a social life, reports Newsweek. The village is scheduled to open in 2019, and former mayor of the Dax commune Gabriel Bellocq says the goal is to make residents "feel at home in an environment that could remind them of life in the good old days." The settlement is designed to emulate a lifestyle outside hospital walls in southwestern France, with about 200 plainclothes carergivers and staff. Residents will be confined to a 12-acre, gated piece of land, at the urbanized corner of sub-Pyrenean farmlands and forests. Included in the settlement's design are four different housing complexes that resemble the area's medieval "bastide" villages. The new community in Dax is to be based about 50 miles from one such bastide. "This is an experiment, validated by the Regional Agency of Health and the Ministry of Health which intends to use this village to study the evolution of Alzheimer's outside the medical environment," Bellocq notes. Local residents will be prioritized for admission into the village, which will depend on both medical referral and application.