Analogue living isn’t a rebellion because tech exists. It’s a rebellion because the day-to-day stopped feeling human. Developments optimised for yield. Neighbourhoods optimised for throughput. Homes optimised for resale. Workspaces optimised for output.

What happens when the day-to-day feels hollow? We escape into digital. Doom scroll is sedation and hours dissolve into pixels.

Analogue living isn’t the end goal, it’s a signal flare. A moral line in the sand for operators, developers, brands and investors: model the numbers, but design for humanity.

The real end goal?

A culture where people don’t feel the need to escape their daily lives. Where homes, workplaces and urban spaces help us regulate, recover and reconnect. Where holidays are for exploration, not exhaustion recovery and the annual flu.

Urban opportunities

The rural retreats and analogue escapes are doing great things and have seen a huge increase in growth over the last six years. They are preventative healthcare in physical form and offer enormous benefit to biodiversity and regeneration programmes. Their existence, and popularity, is exactly why there are urban opportunities to take advantage of; using same narrative, with a different operational model.



Off-grid stays are a short-term fix to a longer term issue. After a few days away, you feel amazing, energised and inspired by the nature you’ve spent 36 hours basking in. Then you go home, to your house, your neighbours, your job, your everyday, and within 48 hours you’re back on the train to burn out.

That’s where the longevity play carries real depth. Urban developments that achieve the same goals as the off-grid stays. It can’t be a cookie cutter, carbon copy approach between rural and urban settings; the model doesn’t work in both locations. However there are significant opportunities to offer the same outcomes, for people to achieve the feeling of being energised and inspired, without needing to leave the city.

Customer lifetime value

The off-grid, rural switch-off in the woods is a journey. That act of leaving your day-to-day context is irreplaceable and absolutely part of what that works on a psychological level as well as a physiological level.

How do you achieve a zen state within fast-paced city life? You make it easier to form habits, rituals and connections with the schemes that offer those same benefits. You also have access to a captive audience. Nervous system regulation, grounding, social connection, environmental connection. It doesn’t necessarily look like luxury gestures. Little and often creates a subscription mindset where people will happily spend to access something every few days that gives them the feeling of: I feel so much better, I can’t wait to go back. Culture creates the largest customer lifetime value. It’s incredibly difficult to forge, and a moveable feast, though one that serves as a backbone to the success or failure of such developments.

Final Thoughts

The appetite has been proven by the off-grid community. The execution has yet to extend beyond the ‘special-occasion’ or members club business models within cities. The brands and operators who can do that open themselves up to shifting cultural norms and driving exponential value on a neighbourhood level.