Vertical Cemeteries

Building up is becoming a more frequent alternative for burial grounds to overcome a lack of land availability or provide more affordable interment options. Vertical cemeteries and their taller cousins, "skyscraper" cemeteries, are already a significant and growing trend in burial practices across the globe. Brazil's 32-story Memorial Necropole Ecumenica is currently the tallest in the world, though similar projects are underway and in development in both India and Israel. In Los Angeles, the Hollywood Forever cemetery added a 100-foot-tall building to accommodate more of the deceased.

Beijing has a goal of reducing the total land area for public cemeteries by about 30 percent by 2035 to balance land use needs for the living and the deceased. COVID-19 was a wake-up call for municipalities to rethink burials in the wake of looming health and environmental crises, with many acknowledging a need to rethink traditional burial methods. Planners may need to adapt zoning codes to accommodate these new burial structures when planning for the deceased.