The Co‐’s of Co‐Living: How the Advertisement of Living Is Taking Over Housing Realities

Abstract

Co‐living penetrated the urban realm both as a housing format and a neologism with fluid meaning. The co‐living concept was developed by various companies in the early 2010s claiming to provide a valuable alternative to flat living in highly competitive rental markets. As a real estate product, co‐living consists of all‐inclusive rental plans of furnished rooms con-nected to fully equipped communal areas, conceived both for short‐term and long‐term stays. The few realized buildings combine collective spaces as laundries and co‐working spaces with rooms as small as nine square meters. This kind of layout explicitly targets the urban middle‐classer willing to live simultaneously together and apart. Differently from other housing formats, co‐living is promoted through the jargon of sharing economy more than one of real‐estate agencies. The co‐root is commonly explained in companies’ recurring website section “What’s co‐living?” as collective‐living, convenient‐living, and community‐living. The emphasis on communitarian living echoes the semantics of co‐housing. However, co‐living com-munities differ radically from co‐housing ones, based on a bottom‐up initiative of inhabitants subscribing to a contract of cohabitation. In contrast, a co‐living community is generated exclusively through economic accessibility. This article gives a critical insight into the mutated meanings of housing in the digital era by analysing co‐living companies’ narratives and their spatial counterpart in realized buildings. The evidence collected by co‐living promotion contributes to addressing a broader shift in real estate towards emphasizing the experiential dimension of lifestyle over space and shelter as primary housing features.