I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the strange imbalance in our cities: shiny new high-rise office buildings keep climbing into the skyline while the affordable housing crisis down at street level keeps getting worse.
So here’s a possibility that’s been rattling around in my head—what if every new inner-city or close-in suburban office high-rise had to include one full floor of affordable rental apartments for every eight floors of commercial office space they build? And what if the second floor was always the first housing floor, so you’d walk into a tower buzzing with business on the ground floor and know that, just one flight up, someone was calling it home.
Imagining the Benefits
Think about it: offices and housing woven together, people living close to where they work, grabbing coffee at the same corner café, keeping neighborhoods alive after 5 p.m. when most office districts go silent. We’d be creating small vertical neighborhoods inside these towers—safe, convenient, and accessible for the people who actually make the city run.
And with post-COVID-19 vacancies still haunting a lot of downtown office buildings, requiring housing in new projects could help rebalance the market. It might even make our cities feel more like communities again, instead of just job hubs.
Why Modular Could Make It Possible
Here’s where this gets even more interesting: if these residential floors were built using modular construction, the whole idea becomes far more realistic.
Modular units could be fabricated offsite in climate-controlled factories, complete with plumbing, electrical, finishes, and even furnishings. They’d be trucked in and stacked into the high-rise’s residential floors like giant building blocks.
That approach slashes onsite construction time, minimizes noise and disruption in dense urban neighborhoods, and ensures consistent quality while the main building structure is still going up. Instead of delaying office tenants while the housing portion lags behind, modular construction could let developers install the apartment floors in weeks, not months—making the financial equation far less intimidating.
The Real-World Roadblocks
Of course, it’s still not simple. Residential space and office space operate on completely different financial models. Building codes, fire safety rules, plumbing requirements—they’re all different. Developers might fight it, claiming it makes their projects too expensive or too complicated.
And there’s the politics of zoning. Most cities still draw hard lines between commercial and residential uses, and changing that takes years of hearings, public comment, and the kind of bureaucratic patience few people have anymore.
Making It Feasible
But imagine if cities made it worthwhile. Offer extra height or density in exchange for affordable floors. Speed up the permitting process for mixed-use towers. Let developers partner with housing agencies who could help finance or even manage those apartment floors.
And by planning these projects around modular construction from day one, cities could give developers a clear, predictable path to building them quickly and profitably.
It’s Just Another Modcoach Idea… For Now
I’m not saying this is the answer. But as we keep talking about how to solve the housing shortage while office towers sit half-empty, it might be time to stop thinking of these two things—housing and offices—as separate worlds.
Maybe it’s time to ask a simple question: if we’re going to keep building up, why not build homes into the towers from the start—and build them faster using modular?
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With over 9,000 published articles on modular and offsite construction, Gary Fleisher remains one of the most trusted voices in the industry.
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