No, that’s neither a spin-off from “The Walking Dead” nor an Alt-Country band. Zombie Flats is the name in London for 20,000 or more rarely occupied, hyper-expensive apartments or condos in the posh precincts of the capital. The phenomenon is a sign of our times with its growing income inequality, and it is far from restricted to London.
An article some time ago in “The Washington Post” identified a number of world cities characterized by absentee plutocratic residents — Singapore, Sydney, Dubai, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Miami, and San Fransisco among them.
Typical of this odd situation is a 40-block rectangle of the most desirable real estate in the world in Manhattan — from 49th St. to 70th between 5th Avenue and Park Avenue. Of the tens of thousands of residences in this elegant high rise stretch, a third or more are vacant 10 months of the year.
What gives? Some of these properties are investments whose owners are waiting for them to appreciate. Some are simply one of several residences for globe-trotting moguls or idle scions of the ruling class, not to mention Saudi sheiks, Russian oligarchs, Latino drug kingpins, African tyrants or Asian billionaires.
As that list suggests, many such properties owned by foreign buyers are a hedge against a sudden change in political fortunes at home. If Xi Jinping, Recip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin or Prince Mohammed bin Salman should suddenly decide you have outlived your usefulness, it’s nice to have a little penthouse or townhouse bolthole to fall back on.
The trouble is, the Zombies are driving up prices and taking up space in cities that are starving for affordable housing. As wealth increasingly concentrates, the people who actually maintain the lifestyles of the rich and infamous are driven out.
Police can’t afford to live where the ruling class congregates. Neither can firefighters, limo, taxi and bus drivers, school teachers, yoga instructors, baristas, waiters, chefs, repairmen, delivery men, cleaning people and retail employees. The list grows longer and longer.
Cities used to be celebrated for their diversity, a yeasty mixture that fostered innovation. Now they are turning into homogenized enclaves as the lower orders are driven further and further away by unaffordable prices.
Is this sustainable? Perhaps not. Is it good for a democratic republic? Almost certainly not. But the ironies inherent in the situation may also limit the trend. Some Silicon Valley potentates have begun to worry about their safety in the event of civil unrest, earthquake, tsunami or economic crash.
One has been described as confident in his ability to escape any social, economic or environmental unpleasantness. He has acquired a fortified estate in New Zealand. When trouble threatens he could be aboard his private jet in under fifteen minutes and fly away to safety.
Good plan. But what if his chauffeur, private pilot and bodyguards, or the men who fuel the jet or control air traffic decide their surviving the apocalypse is more important than his doing so?
Perhaps there’s a design flaw in engineering a world in which whole cities become gated communities where the economically fittest are served by a plebeian class, a sans culottes or serfdom made up of their supposed inferiors.
Perhaps a design for living that aims at the survival of all is safer in the long run than a Hobbesian war of all against all, a zero sum game of winner take all.