The Rise of Micro-Living and Its Implications for Urban Development

1. What Is Micro-Living?

Micro-living refers to a lifestyle centered around compact, efficiently designed living spaces… typically between 15m² and 35m² that maximize functionality while minimizing spatial and environmental footprints. It’s not just a housing typology, but a cultural shift: from ownership to access, from isolation to community, from excess to essentials.

2. What’s Fueling the Trend?

Several converging factors are accelerating the rise of micro-living, particularly in urban centers:

• Housing shortages and skyrocketing prices

• Growing single-person households (students, expats, digital nomads)

• Flexible lifestyles and remote work

• Environmental consciousness and demand for low-impact living

• Desire for community and shared amenities

• Hospitality-first eco-resorts

• ….

Micro-living is not about sacrifice, but about rethinking how we inhabit space.

3. Micro-Living as an Urban Solution

In the context of urban development, micro-living has wide-reaching implications:

A. Densification Without Overcrowding Micro-living enables cities to house more people in less space while preserving or even enhancing quality of life through smart design and shared resources.

B. Reclaiming Underused Land Because modular micro-units can be installed quickly and temporarily, vacant lots, rooftops, and forgotten corners can be activated into vibrant micro-communities. Brownfield sites or city-owned land can host pop-up housing villages for students or seasonal workers.

C. Accelerated Construction Timelines Modular micro-units can be prefabricated off-site and installed in weeks instead of years—a game changer in cities facing urgent housing needs.

D. Affordability and Inclusion By reducing unit size but enhancing shared common areas (kitchens, coworking, green spaces), micro-living creates a new kind of affordability, where access replaces excess. This is especially relevant for students, young professionals, migrant workers, and retirees seeking autonomy with social ties.

4. The Design Challenge: Quality in Small Spaces

Micro-living demands clever architectural design, not just shrinking the square meters. Key principles include:

• Transformable furniture

• Built-in storage

• Visual continuity (light, materials, flow)

• Access to communal kitchens, lounges, gyms, veggie gardens, workspaces: the “third spaces” of daily life

When it’s conceptualized by empathy, design should address not just physical space, but psychological comfort.

5. Impacts on Policy and Planning

The rise of micro-living is pushing governments and planners to adapt:

• Zoning reforms to allow smaller units

• New models for land tenure (like emphyteusis)

• Support for co-living and communal infrastructure

• Rethinking metrics of habitability: it's no longer just about square meters, but quality per square meter

6. CO-HO’s Role in This Movement

At CO-HO, we embrace micro-living as a tool for rehumanizing cities, at the core of our experience-first strategy:

• Our 30m² to 60m² modules are designed for functionality, comfort and circularity.

• We don’t just build homes—we build shared experiences through curated common areas.

• Our micro-villages support multi-generational living, environmental sustainability and social inclusion.

We closely work with Kitehouse and OIKO villas with whom we share common values on the potential of off-site prefabrication and eco-sustainable modular homes.

7. Looking Forward

As cities grow denser and resources scarcer, micro-living isn’t a trend… it’s a necessity. A shift. But done right, it can also be aspirational. It invites us to ask:

“How little space do we really need—and how much community can we gain?”

We must act with a modular, sustainable, circular and affordable approach for Belgium and Europe. From multi-purpose facilities to intergenerational urban villages, we must create places where people can live well, not just be housed. Places that heal, that connect, that respond to today’s environmental and social challenges. Places where people can belong to and not just be guests or passing visitors. 

In our humble opinion, the city of tomorrow is not built on applied technologies or vertical green gardens. It’s a matter of vision. A vision where density no longer rhymes with stress, but with intensity.

Where public space becomes a shared community hub, not just a place we pass through.
Where every single square meter tells a story carved in marble, shaped by a mix of uses, spaces, and people.
Places where we care not only for the walls, but above all, for the connections they foster.
Where nature reclaims its rightful place, not as mere decoration, but as a true ally.

We are at a turning point: housing crisis, climate change, shifting expectations from new generations, we no longer have the luxury of imagining the city as a fixed object.
We must dream it, yes… but more than that, we must repair it, reinvent it, and make it desirable again.

Let’s dare to believe in a vibrant, viable ecosystem, one that most specifically our nation can offer to achieve these shared goals. Boundaries apart, we must feel lucky. 

Maybe that’s how we should envision our future cities. Make it happen by some people, with other people for all the people.

We’re here to build the future, today…