The Rise of the Roommate | The Walrus

The return of multigenerational living arrangements is already changing the built landscape. A 2016 survey by a real-estate consulting firm found that 44 percent of home buyers were looking for a home that would accommodate their elderly parents, and 42 percent wanted one that would accommodate their returning adult children. Home builders have res... See more

The unprecedented rise of urban dwellers living on their own challenges normative ideas about home and raises questions about how this change in social structure and lifestyle affects cities as a whole. While the causes of living alone seem apparent—shifting social values, the flexibilization of labour, new demographics, increased wealth, and chang... See more

Like many millennials, Ury is experiencing what’s becoming an aspirational lifestyle: living within walking distance of close friends. As more people work remotely, friends, rather than offices, are becoming the central compass around which people are seeking to orient their lives. Online, friendship is having a big moment: Videos on social media a... See more

When hyper-individualism kicked into gear in the 1960s, people experimented with new ways of living that embraced individualistic values. Today we are crawling out from the wreckage of that hyper-individualism—which left many families detached and unsupported—and people are experimenting with more connected ways of living, with new shapes and varie... See more

Rather than an important rite of passage, maybe living alone is just one experience of many that can shape a person. By emphasizing it—not just individuals living on their own, but individual, nuclear families, too—I wonder what kind of society we’re aiming to create.

The CEO did not acknowledge that the reason millennials might be interested in experiences—like the experience of renting things they could never own—was related to student loan debt, or the recession, or the plummeting market value of cultural products in an age of digital distribution. There were no crises in this vision of the future. There were

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