Context
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.
What the paper calls “co-living”
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.
Housing-system backdrop: decline of owner-occupation and rise of private renting
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.
Investment, scale, and growth indicators cited for the co-living sector
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).
“Housing ideology” and the four pillars used to legitimise co-living
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).
Implications for sustainability, equity, and urban housing policy debates
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.