Well, here I am in my South Beach San Francisco high-rise apartment, looking out at the Bay Bridge, feeling surprised but pleased with the situation. If you had asked me two months ago where I would be living now, I would have bet serious money that I’d still be in the Oakland house that we own and have lived in for the last twenty years, in the same historically Italian-American neighborhood where my maternal grandparents met and lived in the thirties.
And I would have lost that bet.
If you’re wondering why we moved, read my previous post. This is about how we ended up here. The literal answer is that we didn’t have time for a long housing search, and many of the high-rises had available spaces at lower-than-usual rents (still expensive, but within our range). Covid has created additional availability and emptied out San Francisco in general. Many people lived here only for work, and remote work has triggered a migration to the East Bay and up the coast in search of larger living spaces, more green space, lower rents, etc.
But there’s also a figurative, or mental-model answer to the question of why we ended up here. Recently I was describing the apartment building amenities to Spesh. He commented “You’re moving into the ringstation.” This was an astute reference to the ringstations in my Reclaimed Earth series, which Spesh has read (good friend that he is). And he’s absolutely right. There are many similarities: the density, shared facilities, complex organizational systems, and so forth.
So I’ve been thinking and writing about high-density living for years. The trend continues in my new novel Saint Arcology, which (and I don’t think this is a major spoiler), features an arcology. And also the World One luxury high-rise in Mumbai.
My subconscious was pulling me here, I’ve realized. And so far I like it. Initially I thought our apartment was the same size as our house, but it’s actually nearly half-again as big. Having not moved in a long time, I’d forgotten that a space looks bigger when your furniture is moved in, not smaller.
Maybe I was sick of weeding and gardening?