How Shipping Container Architecture Can Speed Up Urban Development

As commercial neighborhoods like shopping districts, industrial parks and mixed-use developments continue to grow, they each pass through distinct phases. Generally, building density and land value increase over time, while the consumer demographic shifts to reflect a particular neighborhood’s offering.

Within a city, the arrival of a new business or population might drive fallow parcels of land into renewal. Meanwhile, a city’s lateral expansion will push its edges onto vacant, underdeveloped lands.

Planners, Developers, Owners, Oh My!

City planners, real estate developers, business owners and commercial prospectors all take demographic shifts and economic trends of a growing city into account when they look to strategically place new projects.

Increasingly, these stakeholders are exploring the role shipping container architecture, in the forms of retail and hospitality spaces, can play to fast-track development in a growing neighborhood.

A New Equation

Mobile shipping container architecture can alter the urban development process by bringing prefabricated, versatile buildings into the equation.

The mobility of a repurposed shipping container is one of its greatest assets, freeing a business from the land on which it sits. Business owners benefit from the opportunity to pilot their concept or product in a new neighborhood, without committing to a building purchase or renovation.

Win-Win Solutions

Landowners, on the other hand, can lease vacant property to established retail and restaurant tenants, operating out of shipping containers, who have minimal infrastructure requirements. That business’s presence can pull traffic into the area, and encourage further development.

By working together to mobilize this concept, city planners, developers and business owners can facilitate urban renewal with shipping container retail and hospitality, diversifying underdeveloped areas and pulling in business.