Communal living brings the village back to the city

  • Liveable and Sustainable Cities, Unravelling Cities

The concept of communal living is not new: the oldest way of living is living in a village. For Future Living Specialist Kimmo Rönkä, communal living is based on cycles in people’s lives. With many proven benefits and opportunities, why haven’t we already adopted this concept broadly in Finland?

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After reading the IPCC reports a few years back, Kimmo Rönkä realised he had to spend the rest of his career as a planet saver. Beacuse of that and his extensive experience around future of living, we interviewed him on our Unravelling Cities podcast about communal living  – the concept that brings the village back to the city in a sustainable way.

Communal living is based on cycles in people’s lives

The concept of communal living is not new: the oldest way of living is living in a village. For Kimmo, communal living means bringing the village back to the city. He even uses the word urban village instead of suburb. After the COVID-19 pandemic, people realised that we actually need our homes to be more than just places to sleep. But in addition to increasing the apartment size, homes could also extend to the neighbourhoods.

Kimmo believes that the key to communal living lies in the cycles of people’s lives. The living communities shouldn’t be only for seniors or only for students; a good communal block consists of all of the lifecycles from children and families to the elderly. With communal spaces, sharing is made possible and not everyone has to own everything on their own. But besides the “sharing economy”, it makes the “helping economy” possible. 

In communities, different generations help each other. And as older people tend to be more active in the morning and younger ones in the evening, even the same spaces could be shared and utilized effectively during the day. So besides the increasing social capital that communities bring, they also help with the circular economy when spaces are not built to be empty. 

Kimmo Rönkä
Kimmo Rönkä, photo: Iconic Creative Oy

There are no fast wins in adopting the new

With many proven benefits, why haven’t we adopted communal living concept broadly in Finland? Some individual pilots have been going on, but it’s not a trend yet.

We are all human with habits that are difficult to change, so there are no fast wins in communal living. Kimmo tells about a case where he learned from an inhabitant that it took them two years to get familiar with the concept.

“But once we do it, the benefits will show. It’s the helping economy that is growing there. And it’s both wonderful and it saves money for communities and cities”, he says.

Transitioning to this intergenerational community is a learning process. Also learning to live in a more green way, by teaching one another. Kimmo suggests that the communities could even have a community coach to help with this.

“Living in the village is the oldest way of living and circular economy is the oldest economy. 200 years ago, when we were living in villages, we saved all the material and at the same time, we lived in that community. So my idea is that without the connection to the community, we can’t do the climate change work that is needed fast enough. If we do it by focusing on the individual level, it’s too slow”, Kimmo says.

Another crucial fact is that the real estate industry wants to have a fast return on investment. And as the impact on communities is difficult to measure, jumping into pilots will not lead to adoption on a bigger scale.

“Our real estate and construction businesses are product-oriented. We should think of this concept as a service, not as a product. And traditionally construction companies have their business models so that they build and then leave it”, Kimmo says.

From housing operators to living operators

Changing the way the industry works is not easy, but there are possibilities for businesses like property owners, Kimmo says. With communal spaces, more satisfied inhabitants and higher occupancy rates can be achieved. He believes that the co-living branding we see now in other countries will eventually become mainstream in Finland as well.

“Now they don’t see this as wide as they should. They are housing operators, when they should be living operators”, Kimmo suggests. 

In a neighbourhood approach, the importance of services is emphasised. A block could be a perfect platform for different services, making it a good business as well. For example, if a car-sharing service is offered in a block, the amount of parking spaces can be decreased.

“Maybe some kind of next-level user-driven developer is needed as well, who would develop affordable communal housing. For example, in Helsinki, families don’t have enough money to buy flats and rents are getting too high. But if there was a communal block where you don’t need so much space of your own, you would have all the abilities around the block. I call it new affordability based on communal housing”, Kimmo says.

When it comes to housing and living, the public sector has a huge responsibility as well. Now cities sell individual plots to different developers who do their own business without a bigger, more comprehensive plan of the neighbourhoods. 

“Instead of a small building, we should think about bigger blocks. This means that there are two, three or four developers who work together, and one architect who designs the whole block. There shouldn’t be borders based on architecture. There is only one flow in the block and that’s called living”, Kimmo says.

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