Everything goes in cycles and this is very true with the living patterns and habits of people in general.  For decades and generations people were fleeing the cities to move into the suburbs.  Cities were becoming dangerous places and the housing situation in the cities was becoming desperate.  In the last few years there has been a revival in the interest in urban living and suddenly people are moving back into the cities again. 

But this time it is not into squalid apartment projects or run down houses.  These people are moving into a new wave of upscale inner city housing that has taken root in the United States and has started to grow.  With a renewed interest in city living there has also grown a series of industries all geared towards urban interior decorating.  From new magazines on the newsstands to chic new urban interior decorating consultants that charge unbelievable rates that people looking for status gladly pay, there is a whole new world growing up around urban interior decorating and it is a very expensive world if you want to stay in it.

The idea of urban interior decorating has transformed from the early years of the 1900’s.  For example, when Italian immigrants started coming to the United States they would live in the apartment buildings in the big cities.  Since they could not plant gardens they invented flower boxes that allowed them to have a small garden outside their window.  From there other groups caught on to the flower box idea and soon they started popping up in the suburbs as well as the city.  Today a flower box seems to be a cardinal sin of urban interior decorating as the idea of what is old is now new certainly does not seem to apply at all to the new rules of urban interior decorating.

Wide Open Spaces

One of the key aspects of urban interior decorating that most decorators seem to go for is creating space in an apartment.  The furniture is designed to take up as little space as possible and the wall decorations are also designed to create the illusion of space.  It is this desire for more space that seems to consume many urban dwellers and the lengths they will go to create this illusion can be a bit amusing sometimes.  Just try and not laugh when you see an entire wall of an apartment lined with mirrors to create the illusion of space.  Maybe they should have just bought a house in the suburbs?

Creating your own statement in a rented apartment is the idea behind the new wave of urban interior decorating.  But even that can change as now people are buying apartments as opposed to renting them.  It makes you wonder when it all stops.

Tags: Creating Space, Urban Interior Decorating, Wide Open Spaces

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