Last week, I was invited to a French podcast titled “Being useful” by SudRadio. Which allowed me to showcase why Coliving makes sense in today’s society.

1 – Share resources to create collective value

Throughout the pandemic, 98% of my time was confined to my home. Which allowed me to truly reflect on the criteria I wanted for my future apartment:

• A comfortable workspace for remote working rather than settling with the coffee table in the living room
• An outdoor space to get fresh air, and feel like an urban farmer while planting cherry tomatoes
• A gym to do jumping jacks without kicking every object in the room
• A super equipped kitchen to simmer good food

The problem is, if I wanted this in Paris, a location known for being one of the most popular and demanding in the world,  I would need to be a millionaire.

The reality is that I don’t need my own fitness center, movie theater, or rooftop terrace just for myself. By sharing them with my neighbors, I could access these spaces and so could others.

Coliving is a way to rethink housing and our relationship with private and collective space. It’s ultimately the sharing economy applied to residential living. 

With designed spaces that are recognized for being both beautiful and smart, the coliving philosophy is not about density at all cost. Each sqm of private spaces are optimised to increase the usage value for tenants and each sqm saved is added to create these exceptional common spaces that you would not be able to get alone.

When you see sqm differently and keep in mind human interaction, you can make the most of spaces that are typically lost in buildings: basements, twisted ground floors, rooms with no windows, attics. We turn them into a cinema room, laundry, gym etc.

This allows us to distribute the value of high-quality spaces differently: instead of creating one apartment with a 150 sqm rooftop for one tenant, we turn it into a common area available for all tenants in the building to enjoy.

2 – Make the rental experience enjoyable

We know the renting process in a large city is a nightmare. Filling out applications and providing hundreds of supporting documents to convince one of the many landlords why they need to accept you as a tenant is exhausting. Asking your parents to be your guarantor when you are 30 years old can be difficult and on top of that, competing with dozens of other applicants to visit a poor-quality studio is not the greatest situation. 

The number one reason individuals choose coliving is because it is convenient. Booking with us is paperless and easy, done in 7 minutes with our own platform that we developed to ensure our processes are smooth. From booking online to making safe payments, hiring extra in-house services, subscribing to community events, and even connecting with current and future tenants. With this, we provide transparency allowing our colivers to have full control over their experience.

3 – Fight loneliness

+50% of the households in Paris, along with other large European cities, are composed of single people or couples without kids. Technology has a promise to keep us connected, but the consequences of being on the screens cause people to miss out on what is happening in front of them, hence this increased feeling of loneliness. So much so, that both the United Kingdom and Japan have created Ministries of Loneliness to fight this health issue. 

We crave connection, yet most of us living in large cities don’t even know our next-door neighbor. 

Re-learning to live together is possible. Coliving is a housing solution that is changing the game. Our buildings are designed to maximize positive interactions and foster human connections while limiting classic cohousing issues (noise, cleanliness…).

Being part of a community can have a huge impact in your life. You have the chance to expand your social network, and allow yourself to experience new opportunities and even pursue a more meaningful, emotionally fulfilling and sustainable lifestyle. In our coliving spaces alone, we have had the pleasure of seeing couples meet, people changing careers, others creating entrepreneurial projects together and genuine friendships being created. As a result, 95% of our residents feel happier and 85% feel less lonely since living at Urban Campus. We are chosen because of the convenience, but people extend because of the human aspect our business model believes in. 

We constantly work to improve our tenants’ satisfaction. We listen to them, we look for new services and partnerships. We create an environment so our tenants are encouraged to be a part of our community with values of mutual aid, personal and professional growth, aspects that we believe to be critical in ones everyday life. 

“If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together”. African Proverb.