Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton
I've run into the term "the vertical suburb" for skyscrapers - particularly mixed-use ones.
While more common in other countries, larger residential highrises can end up with many amenities within—well beyond the typical gyms and maybe a coffee shop and/or restaurant on the first floor. Sometimes, they house doctors' offices, daycares, post offices, etc. In East Asia, it's common for entire floors to be set aside for mall-like atria. And, of course, they can also include considerable numbers of jobs.
The result of all this is while the building residents may still be making lots of pedestrian trips, they're relatively short and confined to the building. As a result, street-level vitality dies, as all of the vitality is instead turned inward.
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I don't see why that would warrant the name of vertical suburb when that's basically the opposite of how suburbs function. Suburban neighbourhoods - at least the common sprawl kind - are not self contained. In fact, they're notorious for having such poor access to shops, amenities, and services they people often need to make unnecessarily long and circuitous car trips just to access many basic needs. And even the rare things that are close enough to walk to may as well not be since the roads are often so hostile to pedestrians.
So basically we have on one hand very low density, single-use places with such poor access to amenities that people are forced to travel unnecessarily long distances in cars, creating the problem of excess traffic and sedentary lifestyles. And on the other hand we have high density places with such excellent access to amenities and services that people can not only walk most places but often don't even have to go outdoors resulting in
too little (pedestrian) traffic. Yet somehow someone saw these as similar things?
The only similarity I can see is that they're both separate from the wider city with suburbs being removed from the central city by distance and zoning restrictions and the highrise residents being (potentially) separated by not needing things outside their development. But being perfectly capable of accessing the rest of the city with great convenience if they need or desire to. But in every other detail they're basically polar opposites.