High Density Housing with luxury

The advantages of high-density housing are undeniable.Because high-density housing is compact, its ecological footprint is smaller.

¹

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 minimal 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 a negative impression 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

Each participant has complete privacy as they prefer. An apartment building four apartment modules, and a podium floor that is used for storage and parking, before the community transitions to being car-less.

Each apartment building floor has 32 bed-bath modules, with each apartment having at least 2 such modules. This means that every participant has a private bath, bed space, and, if they wish, a private or shared family room.

Efficient use of storage in the ceiling and in the podium floor means 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.

Unlike traditional high-density housing designs, NewVistas housing is designed so each apartment looks out over expansive green space, thus the name NewVistas.

The partitions that separate apartment modules can effectively blockk sound, smells, vibrations, and any other thing emitted by a neighbor, resulting in total privacy when desired.

Therefore, 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.

1. 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.[↩]