It’s 2019 and the term coliving is buzzing in the news. For many, it seems to be a new concept, while historically speaking, coliving has been existing as a living concept for centuries.

What we are experiencing is not the rise of a new term. Rather, we are witnessing the growth of an industry, and more specifically, the birth of a movement.

The following articles will explain what coliving is, how coliving has been growing over the last decades, and what coliving means as an industry. It attempts to shine a light on a term that is being used in too many ways, and offers a blueprint to understand coliving in a twenty-first-century context.

Ultimately, coliving is nothing new. What we’re about to discover is that it’s the term’s significance that is changing dramatically.

A Growing Trend

The term coliving has been buzzing in the last couple of years since early adopters started believing in the concept as an alternative to current housing models. Between May 2017 and January 2019, Google shows a rise in interest for the term coliving of more than 400% — and the trend seems to only have started (yes, kind of looks like Bitcoin in early days).

The downside of popularisation is that terms can mean nothing and everything at the same time. Especially at the early stage of an industry — in which some players are trying to define the term by creating meaningful services around it while others are taking the name as a trendy label — one must rethink what coliving truly means before getting into the game of words.

Terms can also be misused if influencers lack understanding. Back in 2017, an article provoked social media harassment on how coliving ironically just “invented roommates” — making fun of coliving itself and showing its lack of originality.

Let us therefore first look at how coliving is being used in our modern context.

If you would like to read more about Co-Living, we recommend reading Gui Perdrix’s article.