Home is where the heart is, according to young people

IKEA’s annual Life At Home Report shows a steady decline of comfort, trust and meaning in the idea of home. In 2016, people longed for more privacy in their own homes. In 2018 a whopping 1 in 3 people said there were places where they felt more at home than the space they lived in. In 2019 only 48% of people felt a sense of belonging in their own h

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Reconceptualized in this way, “home” is untethered from land, family, and lineage. It is siphoned off from the liberal fetish of homeownership — that quintessential image, derived from a short-lived American postwar prosperity, of a picket-fenced house with parents, kids, car, dog. Of course, the feeling of home is not a substitute for actual shelt... See more

And so I think when young people talk about what’s plaguing them— situationships, not getting on the housing ladder, even the climate crisis—what they are often getting at is the transience of everything. Everything uprooted. Everything unstable. They don’t feel attached to anything, anyone, anywhere. They don’t even feel like the Earth will stick ... See more

we’re at risk of losing the shared temporal rhythm required for a well-functioning society. I think the same could be said for our shared sense of place. If community is key for climate change resilience and adaptation, we ought to focus more on committing to and investing in the places we inhabit. For younger generations like mine, this may mean h... See more