The apartment building has a stylish design, a fancy lobby, generous common areas and absolutely no parking. Instead there is an indoor bike parking garage with free rugged bikes. The developer speaks of 28 units and 94 beds, as if talking about a hotel. A quick look inside one of the apartments explains the puzzle: There are up to three bedrooms behind one entry door, each with its own bathroom. All share a kitchen and living area.  We are talking about co-living. The food-hall of housing, or the co-working space for living; not the type of co-living where a Millennial lives in the basement of his parents, the one that one doesn't want to mention, but the new urban trend of cool co-living.

Wheelhouse Baltimore: Attractive building in an attractive location. Co-living can be invisible (Photo: Philipsen)

This new urban trend has several upsides for a city: Density in areas of good transit, more people in the streets and yes, fewer cars are all things, especially shrinking cities can well use.  It promises savings to residents and extra profit to developers. Can it do all that? For an investigation into this question its necessary to look at current conditions of cities,
housing and demographics.

Co-living emerges at the intersection of a number of trends:

• Economics: Young people today enter a very uncertain job-market and are he......READ ALL