Communities tend to sprawl. Winding streets stitch patchworks of shops, and rows of standalone houses together; sidewalks and roadways allow residents and visitors to meander from store to community center to home within minutes. When new residents flock to up-and-coming urban hubs, the neighborhoods they fill tend to swell outwards, with squat new houses marching out in blocks from city centers. It's common to see major cities - think LA, Austin, Chicago, and even New York - grow outwards. But what if the future of urban living isn't to expand our patchworks cityscapes further out, but to move them skywards?
High-rise living is already a staple in most major cities. The traditional residential skyscraper is near-synonymous with luxury living. These sleek modern towers offer unmatchable views of the cityscape, easy access to city centers and transportation, and upscale amenities that usually aren't available in low-altitude communities. Over the past few years, however, developers have begun to embrace a new mode of elevated living that condenses the offerings and community culture of an upscale urban neighborhood into a skyscraping high-rise that offers a multi-faceted and experiential style of luxury living.
The idea backing these aptly-named "vertical villages" is simple: tenants should not have to leave their building to shop, entertain, or engage with their community members.
Robert Rahmanian, co-founder of the full-service real estate brokerage REAL NY, sees the villages as a solution for changing residential preference. "Some tenants want everything under one roof so that they don't have to leave their building for any reason,” he explains, "The amenities in these buildings could include anything from retail shops and restaurants to dog-runs and bowling alleys."
Rahmanian points to One Manhattan Square, Extell's latest flagship property in New York City, as an example. This soaring 800-foot tower is a feat of glass and gardens on the Lower East Side that offers over 100,000 square feet of outdoor and indoor amenities. Residents can find almost any entertainment in the building, from shopping to bowling to playing basketball or billiards. The real draw, however, isn't in the amenities alone, but in the atmosphere they collectively provide.
As Dominic Brown, a real estate research lead in Sydney, Australia, commented for a Cushman & Wakefield article on the subject, “You effectively create a vertical community. The retail offers more than convenience; the right tenant emphasizes that local village atmosphere and occupiers buy into the concept of a café where the barista knows their order, or bank where the teller knows their name.”
Vertical villages are experiential and convenient - perfect for luxury-seeking urbanites in major cities. Their community-centered atmospheres and convenient amenities set them apart from traditional high- or low-rise city living and provide new options for discerning urbanites. As Robert Rahmanian notes “Creatively-composed projects like these present an innovative and unusual way to stand out from competing - but generic - residential towers."
They will undoubtedly draw tenants - but will that tenant appeal be enough to convince more urban planners to take a chance on the atypical commercial-residential composition that defines a vertical village? If the appeal was the only factor at play, perhaps not; however, the public and market pressures developers and their retail partners face today make the close-quarters communities vertical villages offer logistically and financially attractive.
Consider the urban planning perspective. As mentioned at the top of this piece, most cities tend to grow outwards, with more and more low-elevation buildings expanding around their fringes. The resulting sprawl leads to increased traffic jams and fatalities, worsening air and water pollution, and decreased agricultural capacity - none of which are particularly beneficial for the area's residents long-term.
Sprawl is inefficient; vertical growth is not. As Brown notes: "When managed well in an architectural and town planning sense, vertical communities offer high-quality living while occupying a smaller urban footprint than a hundred detached dwellings." In urban hubs with painfully low vacancy rates, having vertical villages will undoubtedly be beneficial for sustainably meeting population housing needs and urban growth.
The second major factor at play is market-based. Conditions have been more than rough for traditional retailers; increased reliance on online shopping venues have left many brick-and-mortar stores in the cold. According to analysts at Clark, more than 5,000 stores shuttered their doors in 2017, and around the same number will or already have done the same this year. Retailers are struggling to convince shoppers that they should visit a shop in person rather than making their purchases in a series of swipes and clicks.
Vertical villages, with their in-building retail opportunities, answers this convenience concern - and more. In these inclusive, community-based buildings, shopping is not only a matter of convenience but also one of social engagement; the proximity of these in-person storefronts provides another form of entertainment and community for residents to take part in. Rather than remain at home swiping through online retailers, tenants can embrace their vertical markets as a new kind of lively "downtown" in the comfort of their home building. Thus, vertical villages stand as an opportunity both for residential developers to attract tenants with a new type of in-home experience and retailers, who can access a reliable consumer base even as the online shopping craze continues.
In a time when residential planning is becoming ever-more important in growing cities, vertical villages are both an answer and an opportunity. In pressured markets like San Francisco and New York City, these inclusive towers might become the long-term, sustainable solution to urban expansion. Robert Rahmanian certainly believes this to be the case. “Given the residential convenience and the sheer lack of ground space available to traditional retailers, I have no doubt that vertical villages will appear in every major city in America,” he asserts. “I give it a decade before they dominate the mainstream of large-scale urban property development.”
He may just be right - but in the meantime, it will certainly be interesting to see how these new towers reach for greater heights.
