Apartment Communities and Their Names

An article written by Caroline S. Latham of RealFacts discusses the names of apartment communities and how they could have received their name by destroying what was once there.

The famous sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld pointed out that people tend to name the things they build for what was destroyed in the process of building. An example might be a tall office tower called The Ocean View, which blocks that very view for most of the city’s residents, or an apartment called Quail Ridge, where no quail have been seen since the construction workers arrived.

Looking at the Realfacts database of more than 12,000 apartment complexes we find that the most popular thing to name a community after is Park. There are currently 937 communities that include the word Park in their name. Second most popular is Wood with 857 communities, and then Point/Pointe with 649 communities. Other popular words in community names include; Creek (620) Lake (438), Hill (387), and View/Vista (523).

Of course, not all names need to commemorate the destruction of an asset. There are 19 communities with Ocean in their names, and presumably they’re still located near an ocean……