Luxury markets have developed in other parts of the world with poor air quality, too. For Wired, Akanksha Singh described the “pay-to-breathe” economy in India, where air-filtered spaces are accessible only to affluent people. In China, the sociocultural anthropologist Victoria Nguyen reported, underground bomb shelters have been converted into communal breathing areas, while wealthier Chinese can afford to go on “lung wash” vacations. For many others, on bad-air days, activities that used to take place in parks—playing cards, exercising, reading the paper—now take place below ground.
In New York, the fixation on air began during the pandemic. During Covid, ventilation was king. Outside air, and lots of it, could prevent the spread of airborne viruses. During a wildfire, the opposite is true: Outside air is noxious, and ventilation is less important than maintaining a seal and cleaning the air you’ve got inside.
This is what makes the technology in these high-end buildings, objectively speaking, so impressive: the ability to bring in, filter, and clean outside air, while also sealing off the outside world when needed. The seal is tough for leaky, drafty older buildings, especially those that date from the turn of the century: better for pandemics, but bad for smoke and pollution. During the 1970s, a global energy crisis prompted architects and engineers to create more airtight construction out of plastic, pressed wood, and vinyl rather than wood or stone. The new designs decreased ventilation, so unless such buildings can filter the air that’s brought in, the air quality suffers. This makes truly clean indoor air a complicated, and expensive, dance: You need the ability to toggle between outside and inside air, seal off individual apartments, and still provide high levels of filtration and—if desired—disinfectant technologies, such as UV light. Usually, building a 50-story condo would cost $800 to $900 a square foot, Roe said. The Charlotte cost around $1,200 a square foot.