May 2021
“In the world of 2021, coliving is on its way to become mainstream. Starting as a niche industry, it has gathered the attention of operators, investors, developers and public officials alike. We believe that coliving has the ability to heavily influence the way we live.”
– Co-Liv Summit
On May 5th and 6th 2021, the virtual edition of Co-Liv Summit live-streamed from Paris, France, gathered the worldwide community and leaders to catalyze innovation within the coliving industry.
Fluxus CEO Fanyu Lin who serves on the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Connected World joined the panel “Bringing coliving to the world: major organizations sharing their innovative housing agendas” together with Alicia Regodon from UN-Habitat and Jack Rentiera, Co-Chair of Urban Land Institute’s Europe Living Concepts Product Council. Moderated by Matt Lesniak from Co-Liv, the panel presented this topic through multiple lenses including technology governance, innovation, community, humanitarian effort, real estate development and investment.
The World Economic Forum’s Council on the Connected World was formed in 2019 to strengthen global governance and innovation of Internet-of-Things (IoT) and related technologies, to maximize the positive benefits, and minimize harm, for all of society. The Council published a Report and developed The Global Action Plan, followed by a Roadmap, taking the most critical challenges identified in the report and transforming them into five actions to mobilize the international community around. One of the action areas is “Combatting Inequity” by accelerating adoption of connected devices and systems among small and/or under-resourced enterprises and communities. Fanyu Lin talked about the initiative under this action that is addressing how to leverage data from the connected homes to aggregate social, economic and environmental benefits, and generate insight for new financial models which de-risk investments and incentivize the building of smart and sustainable housing. With connectivity as an enabler, coliving can be well-suited to foster inclusion, diversity, support and resource-sharing in underserved communities. With data and frameworks to measure success, we can demonstrate coliving model as an effective housing solution and an expression of a new way of living together in our increasingly interconnected world.
The UN-Habitat is the United Nations’ focal point for sustainable urbanization and human settlements, leading the methodological developments of guides and tools for the urban-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators and targets. Alicia Regodon noted that housing is not just a roof, it is a human right and contributes to health, dignity, safety, inclusion and well-being. Coliving is an innovative housing solution in an urbanizing world. However, any model has to be adapted to the needs of people from different cultures and communities, with a deep understanding of human dynamics, which is illustrated in the Agency’s documentary “The Human Shelter’.
The Urban Land Institute (ULI) is the oldest and largest network of cross-disciplinary real estate and land use experts in the world, committed to setting standards of excellence in development practice. Jack Rentiera spoke about coliving as a new asset class through the real estate development lens. The organization formed a Taskforce working on the definition of coliving, which will serve as a foundation to unlock investments, showcase financial viability, and assist public officials with building the right frameworks for coliving to flourish legally.
The consensus among panelists is the importance of building community, achieving sustainability, and measuring environmental, social and governance (ESG) in an effort to bring coliving to the world as an innovative housing solution.
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