The rise of the Subscription City
In tomorrow’s cities, you won’t just live somewhere – you’ll subscribe to a lifestyle.
As flexibility becomes currency and experience becomes product, the city is transforming from static infrastructure into a curated, on-demand ecosystem. From housing to transport, workspace to wellness, entertainment to education, the next generation of urban life will be modular, personalised, and pay-as-you-go. No ownership. No friction. Just seamless access to what you need, when you need it. This isn’t just the rise of convenience, it’s a reprogramming of place. Welcome to the Subscription City – where identity, not post or zip code, determines how you live.
We’re already seeing the foundations. You can rent a bike by the minute, a car by the hour, and a desk by the day. Your phone unlocks access to fitness studios, electric scooters and shopping deliveries. What used to be fixed is now fluid. What used to be owned is now streamed. We’ve decoupled utility from permanence – and we’re only getting started. So, what are the visions and the pragmatic realities for the built environment and are they aligned?
The vision
Housing is leading the charge. Build to rent, co-living and lifestyle-led schemes are shifting the home from asset to experience. Residents subscribe to amenities, concierge services, pet care, coworking and curated events – all delivered under one roof.
As urban populations grow and car ownership declines, Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is becoming the default. In Helsinki, users can already access a single app that bundles buses, bikes, trains and taxis into one monthly fee. The same is happening in Amsterdam, Paris, Seoul. No need to own anything. Just tap, go, and arrive.
Coworking spaces are now more than a desk, they’re ecosystems. Pay monthly, drop in, plug in. Meet your future co-founder over oat milk lattes. Book a meditation room before your next pitch. Work isn’t where you go – it’s what you connect to. And the office? It’s becoming a service that flexes with you.
This isn’t sci-fi. It’s already happening. Sidewalk Labs (an Alphabet initiative) was designed as a data-rich, adaptive neighbourhood prototype in Toronto. In Japan, Toyota is building Woven City, a fully connected, 175-acre urban prototype powered by AI, hydrogen and autonomous mobility. And in the UK, the rise of 15-minute cities is pushing planners to consolidate access to every essential service within walking distance, effectively turning every local area into a curated, living subscription.
What are the implications for developers and their supply chains seeking to meet the demand for this way of urban living? And this demand is growing. Today’s urban dwellers don’t just want access, they want autonomy. 76% of Millennials and Gen Z say they’d rather rent everything if it meant more freedom and less friction.
Unlocking the vision
In the same way that data is the lifeblood of smart, connected cities, data is the key to designing and delivering their social, physical and digital infrastructure.
The Subscription City requires the built environment to align with outcomes. This requires an understanding of the data value chain across a broad range of outcomes, from a city level down to the individual asset level and the component level within each asset.
For new assets, including substantial new urban areas, the smart and connected city may well be within reach. RLB supported the masterplan of Masdar City, Abu Dhabi’s pioneering eco-city for sustainability, clean energy and business innovation, which included flexible design solutions that will allow future more sustainable technologies to be incorporated as they develop.
The challenge becomes magnified when the city is not new but predominantly based on existing assets. What’s needed is agreed standards, open protocols and effective measuring and monitoring – not traits that have been easy for the industry. A recent report of the UK government articulated the problem well: “The maintenance backlog of government properties reached at least £49 billion by October 2024. The poor condition of property is responsible for affecting service delivery… The government’s efforts to tackle the backlog are undermined by incomplete and inconsistent data.” (Condition of Government Property, Committee of Public Accounts)
It would be hoped that when capital works are procured, the disparate parts of data, built environment and outcomes would be resolved. Yet industry practice is mixed, according to RLB’s Procurement Trends survey of the UK construction market. Tender documents often define the ‘what’: the components of a building, the bricks and mortar, often in great detail and in volumes or gigabytes of drawings, models and reports. But they seem to be failing to define the ‘how’ and the ‘why’.
Key information is typically missing, from sustainability objectives to the outcomes that future users are looking for and the measures that will be used to monitor them. RLB’s industry-wide survey shows that most contractors are seeing badly defined information requirements which results in poor operational data and, as a result, many are reporting that projects are failing to achieve objectives.
For too long, procurement has been less about achieving the desired outcomes and more about getting a project across the finishing line. It should not be about the bricks and mortar, it should be about the better health outcomes, educational attainment, homes where people can flourish, and workplaces where people are at their most creative and productive.
It requires understanding of how to use information to make joined-up decisions and deliver value in terms of better outcomes. As data-driven decision-making, and ultimately AI optimisation of the built environment (enabled by good data), becomes the norm, it will help pave the way for a more outcome-based procurement model.
It also calls for more collaborative ways of working across supply chains, and more connected thinking between asset owners and operators and service providers. Built assets must not be planned in isolation, but as part of a holistic approach to creating smarter, better, high-performing infrastructure.
Best practice is coming, and standards are being defined. From Australia’s Gold Coast’s Digital City Programme to the work of NIMA in the UK and the CORENET X portal in Singapore.
From vision to reality
If we can improve the way we plan and procure urban infrastructure based on effective information management, the potential is enormous. For the first time, we can design cities that learn. Spaces that adapt in real time. Streets that change based on footfall. Parks that shift based on season. Mixed-use blocks that flex with demand. And residents who engage with their city like a co-creator, not just a user.
In this world, urban life becomes modular. The fixed becomes flexible. The public becomes programmable. The built becomes behavioural. You’re not just living in a place – you’re living in a service that gets better the more you use it.
This can translate into commercial advantage. Imagine living in a building where your rent includes bike share, community dinners, coworking, therapy credits and language lessons. One London operator recently reported that residents using its lifestyle services were 36% more likely to renew their leases. Why? Because convenience is sticky. Because home isn’t just where you sleep – it’s where your lifestyle lives.
Of course, architecture still matters. But it’s no longer the end product – it’s the interface. A stage for curated interaction. A portal to participation. The real value lies in what the building unlocks, not just what it encloses.
And maybe that’s the point when it comes to designing, procuring, building and operating the Subscription City. It’s about using data to unlock better outcomes for users so they can lead their lives exactly the way they want to. Data is the key, and it needs to be a thread from earliest design to measured outcome for the subscriber.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
Paul Beeston
