Battery Park City, the 92-acre planned community developed since 1980 on landfill along the west side of Lower Manhattan, is for many New Yorkers akin to a new guest bedroom added to the side of a beloved old house. It’s sleeker and more functional than the main residence, but it lacks the character and inspired disorder of the creaky old place, and you never set foot in there without a very specific reason.

For those who have chosen to live in Battery Park City, that reason is quality of life.

“We moved across the West Side Highway to the suburbs,” said Steve Yacker, a fashion retail executive, who in 2011 made the leap one block west with his family from a Chambers Street high-rise in TriBeCa. “It really is Smalltown, U.S.A., over here; all the parents know all the kids.”

Mr. Yacker’s new home is a three-bedroom three-bath apartment on the 17th floor of Liberty Green, a brick-and-glass tower at 300 North End Avenue. Though the $9,200 monthly rent is hardly cheap, his family’s southeast-facing corner unit affords a quasi-suburban way of life along with close-up city views no suburb can offer: the gleaming, faceted new skyscraper at 1 World Trade Center; the residential tower at 101 Warren, centerpiece of the development that houses the Whole Foods Market the family frequents; and the two Battery Park City baseball fields, where Mr. Yacker’s sons play in a league.