The urban housing crisis reflects a paradox of contemporary capitalism. Cities today are more economically powerful, autonomous and entrepreneurial than ever yet the residents in these cities are bound to live and operate within the capitalist framework subjected to the capital that they invest for the basis of their survival. What housing lacks is the architecting of governance of the problem so clearly there is an issue that needs to be resolved on another level. 

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In today’s urban environment, land can be compared to the air and water as a necessity to living which is one of the main problems for affordable living or housing. General design guides come up with parameters defining what is the minimum livable square meter area required for a person but it doesn’t answer the question where those square meters are.

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There are solutions like “co-living”, a type of habitation where residents share common spaces and pretend to share values and intention. This mode of habitation is a form of ‘transient living’ which is not much different from 19th century boarding houses or New York apartment hotels with common spaces such as lobbies, dining rooms and rooftops, or present day’s dormitories.  Even though most of today’s dormitories and co-living spaces are commercial developments like private housing but their collective nature and temporary lifestyle makes them different.

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With the current pandemic of Covid-19, there is a new challenge and a potential threat that everybody faces from human contact or sharing spaces. In this case housing solutions like co-living also come under question because many of the facilities are shared by different people having different routines and activities. One cannot control nor have a say in other persons activities which makes others potentially vulnerable to virus transmission. Millennials prefer to live in these co-living spaces because of the affordability issue but this affordability could also become fatal.

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The co-living lead by developers can’t become a solution to the housing crisis but is part of the problem because it lacks the social intent of collective living. This issue is mainly linked to the bigger issue of affordable land and housing which cannot be solved by just sharing spaces, but governments need to intervene in taking the responsibility of providing housing that is affordable.