The May-June 2000 issue Modern Maturity, the full-color monthly magazine published by AARP, highlights what they believe to be the 50 most 'alive' places to live in the United States. They focused on their newest members, the baby boomers, who will never really retire in the traditional sense of what their parents and grandparents experienced.

They conducted hundreds of interviews to search for the ten best places to live in each of five categories: Green & Clean, College Towns, Big Cities, Small Towns, and Quirky. A team of reporters, led by writer-researcher Elaine Robbins, looked for characteristics that appeal to the baby boomer generation: organic foods, civic activities, good hospitals, safe streets, lifelong learning opportunities, ethnic diversity, good transportation, and neighborliness.

The top picks, by category, were:

Green & Clean	Best runners up	Boulder, CO Bend, OR Annapolis, MD Bellingham, WA Coeur d'Alene, ID Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA Flagstaff, AZ Tucson, AZ Burlington, VT Boise, ID
College Towns	Best runners up	Austin, TX Charlottesville, VA Columbia, MO Madison, WI Princeton, NJ Iowa City, IA Bloomington, IN Las Cruces, NM State College, PA Ann Arbor, MI
Big Cities	Best runners up	Boston, MA San Francisco, CA Sarasota, FL Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC San Diego, CA Seattle, WA New York, NY Chicago, IL San Antonio, TX Minneapolis/ St. Paul, MN
Small Town	Best runners up	Asheville, NC Ashland, OR Silver City, NM Chestertown, MD Fort Collins, CO Biloxi/ Gulfport, MS Oxford, MS Texas Hill Country Prescott, AZ Naperville, IL
Quirky	Best runners up	Sonoma County, CA Key West, FL Reno, NV Hot Springs, AR Wilmington, NC Santa Cruz, CA Branson, MO Seaside, FL Bisbee, AZ Sioux Falls, SD

The chart of 'How They Rate' uses criteria labeled as Getting' Around, Good Eats, Health Options, Lifelong Learning, Multicultural, Safe Streets, Seriously Civic, Sports & Such, Vitality Quotient and what they call the Kitsch Factor (the number of klunky stores that sell t-shirts and tacky stuff).

Items of importance to the new "later life" lifestyles of baby boomers don't seem to be limited to golf courses and sunshine. Telecommuting, part-time work, mobility, entrepreneurship, volunteer work, and going back to school will be part of their retirement.