A 21st-century version of dormitory living for adults is emerging as a way for city dwellers to deal with expensive real estate, social isolation and environmental pressures.
Rebecca Dracup, an environmental engineer at Stantec-owned Wood and Grieve Engineers, said co-living was a growing trend around the world.“Millennials are very much drawn to this, those with some disposable income, out of university but craving the social aspect they used to get in their university college or share house,” Ms Dracup said.
Other co-living operators include Urbico is planning to open sites in Glebe and Randwick in 2020 and Caper Living, which opened a building in Newtown in January and has other inner west properties in the pipeline. Caper Living is looking for new properties in Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth and Adelaide.
UKO Stanmore has 33 double rooms, each with an ensuite bathroom and kitchenette, a shared courtyard with bean bags, a barbecue and herb garden, a larger communal kitchen and dining room, a laundry room, on-site parking, communal bicycles, free GoGet membership and an optional cleaning service. The venue has a host who runs optional social events such as community dinners, movie nights and yoga classes.
"It's well known that the quality of people's relationships determines their health and their mental health,” he said. “From the point of view of population growth and urbanisation, developers have been focused on building more and more apartments, they've been focused on creating places where people sleep, not places where people live."
“There’s the potential for lower land use, less material used in construction, shared facilities that will again reduce the consumption of electricity and water, and more efficient utilisation of space," Ms Dracup said.