When I try to explain what we're building, the person across from me usually translates it back into something they already know.
"Ah, it's a residence."
"Ah, it's a student housing thing."
"Ah, it's a kind of group home."
"Ah, it's a long-stay bed and breakfast."
"Ah, it's a commune."
None of these translations is right. And it's not a quibble: it's the signal that we're missing a word, that we're missing a mental category, and that without a mental category it's hard to build a sector.
I want to give you the category.
Two models, and nothing else
For the last hundred years, in the West, we've cultivated two dominant housing models.
Model 1 — The independent house. Single dwelling unit, autonomous access, fully private spaces, individual maintenance and management. Maximum privacy. Maximum burden. Maximum self-organization required. The "homeowner" model.
Model 2 — The condominium apartment. A private unit inside a collective building, shared stairs and elevator, condominium rules, a building manager. Privacy is high, shared management covers only structural matters (roof, façade, entrance). Social life: optional, usually absent.
These two models, on their own, served a fairly standard 20th-century life: born in a family, you study, you work, you get married, you have children, you grow old. The home accompanies these phases.
The problem is that human life today no longer looks much like that trajectory. And the two models, on their own, are no longer enough.
Who falls between the two
Try to make a list of the people who, today, are NOT well served by either of the two classic models:
- people who are single by choice or by circumstance, who want neither the responsibility of a whole house nor the isolation of a small studio;
- people working in hybrid or remote modes, who need spaces designed for the full day, not just for the night;
- people recently separated, who don't want to live again the way they did at twenty;
- people newly arrived in a city, who need time to orient themselves before signing multi-year contracts;
- widows and widowers with fifteen years of life ahead, in a home designed for four people who are no longer there;
- people without a family network in the city where they live.
This is a large slice of the adult population. We're not talking about an exception. We're talking about millions of people.
The two classic models, faced with these situations, offer mediocre answers. The independent house is too big, too expensive, too solitary. The standard condominium is anonymous; it offers no relationships, no services, no flexibility.
There's a huge space between the two.
That space is called CoLiving.
CoLiving as a third model
Let me try to define it precisely.
CoLiving is not: a prettier shared apartment; student housing for adults; a residence with a community manager; a group home; a long-stay B&B.
CoLiving is a housing model in its own right, with specific characteristics:
1. The unit on offer is not the apartment, it's the room with attached services. When someone enters, they choose their room (or small private apartment), and with it they access a set of common spaces and services that are an integral part of the experience, not accessories.
2. Common spaces are designed for use, not display. They are not "the condominium hall" used twice a year. They are real kitchens, lived-in living rooms, study rooms, laundries, terraces. They are the heart of the project, not the decoration.
3. Services are included. Cleaning, maintenance, utilities, internet, reception, ordinary upkeep. The resident does not administer: they live.
4. Active management exists. A person or team that takes care of the community, organizes rhythms, solves problems, welcomes newcomers, says goodbye to those who leave. Not a building administrator: a community manager.
5. Permanence is flexible but real. It's not a hotel (nights). It's not a four-plus-four contract (years). It's a horizon of weeks-to-months-to-years, chosen by the person. Flexibility is designed, not endured.
6. Community is design, not accident. People enter knowing they will live alongside others, not as a side effect but as a choice. Rules of cohabitation are clear before someone moves in, not after.
All of these things together — not one at a time — are what distinguishes CoLiving from earlier models. Miss one of them and you slide back into a different category (hostel, residence, condominium, group home).
Why "third model" and not "alternative model"
A small terminological dispute matters here.
CoLiving is often presented as an alternative to the house or the apartment — as if it were a niche option, an exotic variant. It isn't. It's a model that responds to needs the other two don't cover. It doesn't replace the other two: it sits alongside them.
Exactly the way the condominium apartment, at the start of the 20th century, didn't replace the independent house. It made possible ways of living that the independent house alone couldn't allow.
If we all lived in independent houses today, cities would be different, the countryside would be different, the economy would be different, mobility would be different. The same goes for CoLiving. If it became a widespread model — not the majority, but widespread — some things would change a lot.
What would change
Imagine an Italy where CoLiving represents even a single-digit percentage of housing in mid-to-large cities. Not the dominant model. Just a meaningful slice. What would change?
A person relocating for work wouldn't need three months to find a home. They'd have a decent option available in two weeks.
A person recently separated wouldn't be forced back into a single's apartment in the suburbs. They'd have an option that puts them back in contact with other adults.
An elderly widower wouldn't be forced to choose between a care home and total solitude. They'd have an intermediate option — dignified, alive.
Cities would be more lived in the evening, because there would be semi-collective spaces alive even where there are no families.
Buildings that are currently underused would refill: obsolete hotels, inadequate residences, historic palaces that no longer work as offices.
Entrepreneurship in the sector would have scalable, replicable, financeable models — and so it would grow.
None of this is utopia. In several Western markets — particularly the UK, the Netherlands, and parts of the US — the sector is already past its earliest definitional phase, with established operators, dedicated investment vehicles, and tracked market data. In Italy we're behind, but not for deep cultural reasons: for reasons of vocabulary, regulation, and habit.
Vocabulary is the first infrastructure
To build a market, you first need to build the words.
As long as we keep calling CoLiving "a kind of student housing" or "a kind of residence," we will keep confusing it with other things, regulating it as other things, selling it as other things.
This is why I say: CoLiving is not a compromise between the independent house and the apartment. It's a third thing, with its own dignity, its own rules, its own users.
When we call it by name, building it gets easier.
And living in Italy, for many people, gets a little less hard.
Closing
I run CoLivingOne in Rimini as the operational lab for this idea — a real building with real residents, where we test what works and what doesn't.
I write here once a week. Some weeks I think out loud. Some weeks I share what we're learning. All weeks, I'm trying to build the vocabulary first, because the vocabulary is the infrastructure that lets everything else come.
If you're building, operating, or thinking about CoLiving in Italy — or anywhere else where this third form of living needs a name — I'd like to hear from you.
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If you're a builder, an operator, or an institution exploring this third form of living — write to me. I read everything.