https://cass.si 27, wracked by existential terror :P Fri, 24 Oct 2025 19:34:00 +0000 https://cass.si/the-union-building-is-odd https://cass.si/the-union-building-is-odd Fri, 24 Oct 2025 19:34:00 +0000 I moved to Manchester a couple months ago now, it's a nice place, bigger than Bristol, smaller than London, a decent sized city where one could reasonably walk the diameter of the ring-road in under an hour. When I go outside in the evening to take in the brisk autumnal air, watch the sunset as its pink & blue tints fade to black (and to have a smoke) - I always notice the U+NION building off in the background. U+NION (<https://liveunion.com/>) is a skyscaper presenting fully erect and piercing into the Mancunian skyline, adorned with a great neon sign glowing it's great white hue - often handily acting as the lighthouse that guides me home since I no longer carry a smartphone on my outings. Doubly it serves many a young professional as their place of residence. A co-living space, gym, cafe/bar & club all rolled into one starting at 900 odd quid per month. For a young professional on a salary of ~30k that'd represent ~30-40% of a monthly income, bills included - not too bad all considered in the present day. The building itself is owned by Vita Group Holdings Ltd, self-proclaimed "urban development regeneration specialist" and "fully vertically-integrated developer, seller and operator of property investment products" [whose revenue & EBITDA in 2024](https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11963176/filing-history/MzQ4MjM0MjkwOGFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0) stood at £254.2m and £62.5m respectively. So what about it? it's just a business, why do I even care?. The issue I take is that I feel the U+NION's community aspect is structurally disingenuous, and scratching the surface reveals it a pre-packaged sense of authentic urban community cooked up in a boardroom with the aim of increasing tenant retention. Togetherness As A Service. I did some research and found that as a tenant, upon admission you're to take some sort of test and then algorithmically matched with the people who you're to live with, very helpfully replacing the messiness that comes with organically creating social relationships. I expect meeting your neighbours goes something like: _"Hello, The Algorithm™ has placed us in close proximity due to the quantatative overlap of our personality metrics and interests - lovely to make your acquaintance!"_. U+NION needs the people that live there to form connections as lonely, isolated or conflicting tenants are more likely to leave. Besides from a roof over your head, for £90/pm you can join _U+_, their residents membership - gaining access to staff-hosted community events, free laundry, additional spaces etc. Looking into their Instagram reveals that such community events are also primarily to the benefit of Vita Group: pub crawls route tenants between other nearby Vita Group owned buildings and bars, pizza nights source food in-house from Vita Group owned restaurants. The social life is a closed loop with all funds flowing upwards rather than between the local economy. Though they do also seem to intersperse non-profit-seeking activities like painting, yoga or knitting every now and then... so that's cool I guess. This comes across to me as a corporation mediating young people's social lives, and perhaps cynically - the community built within exists as a value-add to shareholders. The friendships tenants form are real, sure, and may outlast their tenancy, but still, their formation is algorithmically engineered and extractive. Just to be clear, I don't think U+NION is uniquely evil, but the trajectory _is_ the furthering of the commodification of community itself. They offer the aesthetic of community but retain all structural power - a multi-national corporation designs their social life to minimize churn and thus increase profits. Contrasted against history, previous generations of people formed communities through institutions they themselves controlled or co-created: churches (A neat example from history I learned recently from [The Green Ages](https://profilebooks.com/work/the-green-ages/) is the [Beguines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beguines_and_Beghards) of medieval Europe, they ran their own semi-monastic communities without corporate or ecclesiastical oversight.), unions, neighborhood associations, or housing co-operatives. Not that those don't exist anymore or were perfect, but increasingly socialisation is brokered through corporations, and U+NION serves as a shining beacon of an example. Vita Group has capitalized on a fertile opportunity for rent extraction created by two converging conditions: the atomized, isolated nature of contemporary urban life generates demand for community, and housing scarcity that eliminates alternatives, thus monetizing loneliness and necessity simultaneously. The building looms over the city, glowing its promise of belonging. What it actually illuminates is how thoroughly we're allowing capital to intermediate the basic human need for connection.