High Density Housing with luxury
The advantages of high-density housing are undeniable. 1
Because high-density housing is compact, its ecological footprint is smaller.
Smaller buildings and apartments consume less in the way of building materials. They occupy less space. More land is saved for recreation, agriculture, and conservation. They consume fewer resources and promote in-person socialization.
Because distances are walkable, there is less need for motorized vehicles and the pollution, stress, and waste they bring, as well as more opportunity for exercise and for social and economic interaction.
Overcoming High-Density housing Objections
Unfortunately, many people have negative impressions of high-density housing.
There are two main reasons for this. On the social and emotional level, people in Western cultures have come to equate more living space with greater prosperity, believing that “a man’s home is his castle”—and the bigger the castle, the greater the success.
People enjoy owning space where they can spread out their belongings and enjoy their favorite activities.
The second reason many people dislike high-density living is that people in modern Western cultures place a high value on privacy. We don’t enjoy having our senses assaulted by evidence of other people around us. Additionally, we don’t like the idea of our neighbors being able to see, hear, and smell us.
NewVistas captures the advantages of high-density development while eliminating the negatives. Calculated on a basis of 75,000–100,000 total inhabitants in 2.88 square miles, an entire NewVistas community will average 40–55 people per acre, and twice that within the 46 neighborhood blocks.
Yet innovative community design and technology support an enjoyable and sustainable quality of life within these neighborhoods.
The Magic of Transforming Spaces
While living space is limited to 100 square feet per person, space will be transformed for multiple uses throughout the day, effectively more than doubling the amount of space available.
Efficient use of storage and easy access and placement through robot technology mean that residents will have all the space they need for many activities.
Convenient walkable access to a variety of community areas and amenities means that residents won’t need to have space available in their homes for everything they might want to do.
At the same time, efficient community design and use of technology will make it easy to have privacy whenever residents want it. Unlike traditional high-density housing designs, NewVistas housing is designed so each apartment looks out over expansive green space, thus the name NewVistas.
Additionally, NewVistas employs advanced technologies to reduce residents’ awareness of their neighbors, including vacuum-pack insulation between units to block sound, rubber spacers for vibration isolation, LED lighting specific to small areas, and graphite and other microfilters to eliminate odors at the source.
At a basic level, while NewVistas technically qualifies as high-density housing, it won’t feel high-density.
Missing are the high-rise apartments, noise and traffic congestion, and window views looking out on concrete and asphalt that we associate with city centers. Instead, NewVistas residents will enjoy privacy, green space, and open vistas.
- For a discussion of the advantages of cities and what makes for more attractive cities, see The School of Life, “How to Make an Attractive City,” 26 January 2015, https://youtu.be/Hy4QjmKzF1c. While approaching the issue from a different perspective than NewVistas, the discussion of key features that make an attractive city includes many points of agreement with the NewVistas approach.[↩]