Expat's Choice

I google image searched "astoria park pool" and one of the results was this.

It seems that every urban place in America is going through the process of being condo-fied. And as more and more condos go up, developers turn towards more and more esoteric names. Condo names used to be accorded to developments on the basis of their fanciness-sounding-quotient, hotel-ish names like "The Wentworth" or "The Carlyle" were in vogue for much of the history of condo naming. Alas, there are only so many names with a fancy veneer to affix to the front of your "tower" or "estate." The function of the condominium name is to confer brand identity not only on the housing unit but upon the buyer. The buyer becomes not so much the owner of a fairly homogeneous apartment in a building called "The Carlyle," the buyer becomes "the type of person who would live in the Carlyle," and the buyer is distinguished from the buyer #2 who bought an identical unit in "The Wentworth" because the two names roll off the tongue differently. It's kind of a Machiavellian way of manipulating reality through language. In the traditional baptism condos, the main thing that is given to the buyer through the condo's name is (personal and consumer) identity. But in cities I've lived in recently, I've seen so many ads on public transportation and in other public venues for places like the Oro, the Aria, the Castings, the Beaux Arts Lofts, Lager House.......You won't just live inside an apartment, you'll live inside a big airy idea, with three bathrooms! And these places are so aggressively marketed that even a humble consumer like me who will probably never occupy an income bracket high enough to purchase one of these grand ideas can tell you what the amenities for the Oro are (a purple swimming pool, if you must know).

In the ad culled from the "astoria park pool" google search, "Astoria Park" towers are marketed to Americans living in Singapore through the website expatschoice.com. Here, potential Americans buyers are offered the chance to negate geographic specificity through this particular condo name.