Designing for Connection: What Communal Living Can Teach Us About Health, Housing and Belonging
- Savannah Fishel
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
Written by Andy Cameron-Smith on 09/12/2025 on Savannah Fishel's interactive workshop at the Healthy Homes Hub Winter exchange
For decades, conversations about “healthy homes” have centred on damp, mould, energy efficiency and insulation. Whilst they matter enormously, they are not the whole story. A home’s impact on health is also deeply social. Loneliness, for example, has been shown to have similar health effects as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It increases the risk of dementia, stroke and premature death. Yet we rarely design our homes with connection in mind.
Based on a presentation from Savannah Fishel at the Winter Ideas Exchange
This understanding sits at the heart of Savannah’s journey. With a background spanning politics, health policy and intergenerational practice, she now works with Innovation Unit, an organisation that co-designs and scales bold innovations in areas such as housing, health and social care. She has spent significant time researching alternative housing models such as communal living, intergenerational housing and co-living and advocating for a system that allows these models to flourish.
Why Communal Living Matters Now
Today we live with fractured family structures, an epidemic of mental ill-health, rapidly rising living costs, generational segregation and urgent climate pressures. Against this backdrop, our homes are not simply shelters. They can be potential engines of resilience and wellbeing, or of isolation.
The classic “nuclear family behind a picket fence” model works for some, but for many it is financially unattainable and socially limiting. Separation can breed loneliness; loneliness can breed illness. A healthy housing system must therefore support a wider range of ways to live together.
A Journey Across 54 Communities
To understand what works, Savannah has travelled across the US and Australia, visiting 54 intergenerational communal living projects from small, shared homes for single parents to eco-villages of 250 residents, from social housing with wrap-around support to market-rate developments redesigned for connection.
What united these communities wasn’t uniform structure but rather a shared principle, a private space balanced with meaningful shared space. In some projects, residents had fully independent homes alongside common rooms, gardens or shared laundries. Others lived together under one roof with collective kitchens or communal governance.
The Benefits: For Residents and Beyond
Her research has found a series of wide-ranging benefits for different groups:
For older adults
Reduced loneliness and improved mental health
A sense of security and “ageing in place”
Skill-sharing, belonging and purpose
For families and parents
A built-in village of support
Informal childcare
Reduced stress and isolation
For younger people
Access to mentorship and intergenerational friendships
Shared amenities they could never afford alone
A richer web of care
For society
More sustainable lifestyles
Reduced pressure on public services
Stronger, more resilient neighbourhoods
Neighbourisms: The Hidden Power of Small Acts
One of the most striking findings from her research is what she calls neighbourisms. These are the everyday, informal acts that strengthen community bonds. They are a collection of small actions that have profound impact within the community. Small gestures are often missing from modern urban life, yet they are abundant in communal living settings. This is because the environment is deliberately designed to enable them. Neighbourisms are not trivial. They form the social glue that keeps people well.
Designing for Connection: What Needs to Change
Her research identifies several key building blocks for intergenerational communal housing, three of which stand out for the UK context:
1. Embed connection into housing design
This isn’t only about large-scale co-housing initiatives. It can be as simple as:
shared courtyards
clustered mailboxes and laundry rooms
communal tool sheds
intentional walkways that increase “bump-ins”
These low-cost features can create high-value social interaction.
2. Invest in social infrastructure, not just physical infrastructure
Communities thrive when residents have support to self-govern, host shared meals, organise events and create rhythms of life together. Social spaces need funding, not just goodwill. Strong community life should be treated as seriously as building maintenance. Without it, public services eventually pick up the slack.
3. Incentivise alternative living arrangements
The UK urgently needs policy that validates more than one way of living. That means:
enabling co-ownership and shared equity models
recognising intergenerational living as a legitimate form of social care
rewarding developers who prioritise shared spaces and connection
overhaul restrictive planning rules that currently prevent the flexible sub-division and adaptation of large, existing homes to create secure, self-contained multi-generational or co-living accommodations.
A Collective Challenge
Savannah closed her session with a reminder that loneliness is not an individual failure but rather a structural one. Our economic systems often promote fragmentation at the same time as we seek to heal it. Large organisations can contribute solutions, but only if they focus on human connection, health and long-term resilience.
Communal living models show what is possible: healthier residents, stronger neighbourhoods, reduced public costs and a deeper sense of belonging. They show that there is more than one valid way to house a society. And designing for connection is one of the most powerful public health interventions we have.
