Right after New Year’s, I saw an ad at a Tokyo subway station for an apartment tower that proclaimed all units had been sold on the first day. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to live in an ultra-high-rise. It seems strange to want to pay so much to live with perhaps 500 other households, each room stacked one above the other, sometimes reaching 50 floors. In the United States, for example, low-income housing is usually built in such a fashion.

If I had the money, I would prefer to buy a house. If I were very rich, I’d buy land and build one.

Recently, I began to perhaps understand why such “tower mansions” were appealing.

I remembered being intrigued a few months ago by an automatic e-mail from Google+ saying my friend had invited me to join the online networking service and had added me to one of his “circles.” I didn’t join, for the same reason I don’t have a Facebook account: I don’t want to live an online life with my personal data floating in cyberspace. What had caught my attention was the idea of circles, levels of exclusivity that help the user manage access.

I ignored the invitation. My initial reaction was how silly it was to place different contacts into specified groups to direct them to the part of yourself you wanted to show. Then I realized that I have three personal e-mail accounts, not including the one for my cellphone; depending on my relationship with someone, that person would only know one of the three addresses.

In effect, I am controlling the level of access to me and in turn the amount of attention I pay to my contacts.

This inclination for exclusivity seems to be an inherent human trait. Exclusivity grants access and attention, privileges and priority. It is the root of a selective group mentality, us versus them.

We all seem to have a desire to seek such exclusivity, to be separated from “regular” people, to be discriminate in our choices. If we have the funds, we’ll pay a little extra to gain that separation in first class on an airline or with a “green car” train seat.

Yes, tastes and feelings will vary. So where is the exclusivity in living in a high-rise apartment building?

Maybe it’s like the green car: just enough separation at an acceptable cost. It may also be better than living in a community of single-family houses.

Communities, like circles, tend to have access to private information. In a housing community, neighbors can see if you own a car, what kind of car you drive, who visits, whether you are home, how long you are on vacation.

In an apartment tower, neighbors don’t form a community. Each tenant is an individual sharing the perks of urban living, without having to grant access to anyone else. Life remains private, hidden from view.

In such a living situation, one can manage privacy with ease.

Yet, just as I want to maintain my freedom in cyberspace, I want to have freedom of movement, meaning location and services are important to me. Many of these tower mansions are situated around Tokyo Bay and access is inconvenient. With Tokyo not winning the 2016 Olympic bid, those areas have not been built up.

I’ll search for a different level of exclusivity.

Main Page　｜　Japan Times Online　｜　Subscribe　｜　link policy　｜　privacy policy

Copyright  The Japan Times. All rights reserved.