Living Vertical: Life in an Urban Vertical Village (L.U.V.V.)

My mother and stepfather entered the atrium of the 1.5 million square feet complex. As we walked past the theater, Farm Burger, and the coffee shop, bakery, the bank, and waved at a fellow neighbor and his dog entering the locally sourced food and grocery market, my parents were blown away.

“That’s a grocery store over there? My stepfather asked.

“Wow, now this is something,” my Mom said. With her head held up high looking up, her eyes tried to take it all in at once. “I should be taking pictures.”

“Yeah, get some pictures,” My stepfather said. “Nobody is going to believe this.”

Whipping out her cell phone, she decided to do a video instead. The oohs and ahhs didn’t stop. We hadn’t even made it to see the pizza bar, the art bar, the art cafe, or the art gallery. “Well, it’s an entire neighborhood in one building, Roslyn explained. They call it an urban vertical village.

Instead of taking pictures, my Mother decided to do a video. Just an inch shy of five feet tall, my mother looked like a kid on the best field trip of her life.

“This is a totally different way of living,” she said to the camera as she began her first vlog.

We Discovered a Different Way of Living

Roslyn and I had decided we wanted a creative space and living space where we could start our new journey as content creators. We wanted a unique loft space where we could live and work.

While searching online, we ran across the idea of a vertical urban village. But all the ones we saw were “plans for the future,” except for a few in Japan. Future, I wanted it now.

“Wouldn’t that be awesome, and it’s so green” I said to Roslyn, showing her the future. Little did I know it really would be our future.