The Glenner Town Square development in Chula Vista, California will be one of the first "immersive facilities" in the United States, designed to trigger memories for Alzheimer's patients.
"There’s going to be a new town square in Chula Vista, a suburb near San Diego County, California," according to an article by Linda Poon. "But while most cities try to update their town squares to be trendy and modern, this one takes inspiration from the 1950s."
"Come 2018, when Glenner Town Square is schedule to open, that city hall will be surrounded by a park, a movie theater, a hospital, a diner, and more than a dozen other functioning buildings typically found in any city," adds Poon. But there's a fundamental feature of the town still missing from that description. Glenner Town Square is a replica of a functioning city, scaled down inside a 15,000-square-foot industrial building with a 24-foot-high ceiling.
"The fake city is part of 'reminiscence therapy,' an increasingly popular alternative to nursing homes and drug treatments for Alzheimer’s patients," according to Poon. Alzheimer’s patients from the San Diego-based nonprofit George G. Glenner Alzheimer’s Family Centers will be the primary visitors to Glenner Town Square. The most thorough examples of the developments designed for reminiscence therapy are located in Amsterdam, Cleveland, and another example planned for Rome, Italy.
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