Housing ideology and urban residential change: The rise of co-living in the financialized city

Tim White and David Madden’s research paper “Housing ideology and urban residential change: The rise of co-living in the financialized city” is published by SAGE Publications. It analyses co-living as a growing form of privately operated, for-profit multiple-occupancy rental housing and situates its rise within wider structural shifts in housing systems across Europe and North America.

The paper defines co-living as professionally managed, for-profit shared housing typically combining small private units with shared amenities and services (for example kitchens, social spaces, gyms, events, and community management). It is framed as a distinct segment of private renting that has expanded rapidly since the mid-2010s in large cities such as London, Berlin, San Francisco, and New York, and is now present across many cities in the Global North.

The authors describe contemporary housing change as part of a broader reorganisation around financialisation, commodification, and assetisation. They highlight that owner-occupation is declining while private renting is increasing in much of Europe and North America, and that these shifts are unevenly experienced (with stronger effects among younger households and working-class households). Within this context, real-estate capital seeks new “profitmaking opportunities,” and new tenancy forms emerge as “frontiers of rentability” expand.

To illustrate the sector’s growth, the paper cites secondary reports estimating that global funding in co-living increased by more than 210% annually from 2015, reaching over $3.2 billion by 2019 (JLL, 2019). It also cites estimates of around 7,820 co-living beds in the US in 2020, with more than 54,000 in development (Cushman & Wakefield / Kunthara, 2020), and a UK operational and pipeline total of roughly 24,000 units (Savills, 2022). It further cites industry claims positioning co-living as a fast-growing residential asset class with a market potential of $550 billion across Europe and the US over 10 years (Cushman & Wakefield, 2020).

The core argument is that co-living’s rise is supported by “housing ideology”: dominant ideas and knowledge used to justify and legitimise housing systems and their political-economic role. The authors identify four recurring ideological elements used by co-living firms and intermediaries to normalise the model and support profitability: corporate futurism (claims about being “the future” of urban living and “housing-as-a-service”), technocratic urbanism (expert-led narratives about density, optimisation, and sustainable city-making), market populism (rights-and-revolution language aligned with market logics), and curated collectivism (highly managed “community” narratives that differentiate co-living from stigmatised shared housing).

Co-living is frequently marketed as a response to housing crisis pressures and as an efficient, sustainable approach to urban density. The paper argues, however, that these narratives can obscure the underlying financialised and profit-driven tenancy relations, including flexible contracts, additional service fees, and strategies aimed at higher yields than conventional rental housing. The authors conclude that, despite co-living’s critical self-image, it does not constitute an alternative to financialised urbanisation; instead, it helps sustain and repackage existing inequalities, making careful scrutiny of housing ideologies important for developing genuinely democratic and sustainable residential alternatives.