Illustration: Bulma Vilmante Juozaityte
Traditional retirement living is not for everyone, especially a generation accustomed to shaping its own future. Imagine telling the creators of Nineties ladette culture and the architects of the all-night rave that they’ll have to be content with a cross-stitch and a quiz show. As people enjoy longer, healthier lives, a growing movement is reimagining and redefining later life through innovative community-led cohousing that fosters independence as well as a greater sense of belonging and companionship.
Think about the street you live on. How many neighbours do you know by name? Do you feel comfortable asking them for help, or popping round for a cup of tea? You might say hello to a few, or notice if someone hasn’t been seen for a while, but would you feel able to check in on a neighbour if something felt amiss?
Now consider the older people in your neighbourhood, perhaps the ones you may have seen struggling with shopping bags, or those you don’t see when the weather is inclement. Then there are the really active ones who seem to have a better social life than you. And what about the kids you see on the school run, or hear playing in their back gardens but never on the street?
What people need from their neighbourhoods changes through various life stages. While some might find their community in work or family, for others, a lack of people they know right on their doorstep is adding to the epidemic of loneliness and isolation.
We’re living longer, healthier lives. For many people, the idea of spending our final years in traditional later-living models is not appealing. Conventional retirement communities or sheltered housing are not set up for generations used to making the world right for them rather than accepting what they’re told. However, living independently also has significant downsides as we age. Across the world, communities are coming together to create new ways of living, providing later-life independence for elders and bringing intergenerational living to all.
Botanical Place, West Byfleet Photo: Dave Lee / Retirement Villages Group
In more mature international markets, retirement living is embraced much earlier, with younger retirees viewing it not as a necessity, but as a lifestyle choice that enhances independence, wellbeing and social connection.
Terry Unitt
Head of Construction Delivery, Retirement Villages Group
What’s the issue with retirement communities?
The one-size-fits-all model needs shaking up to fit the needs of the generation about to retire. Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) defined the teenage dream in the Eighties, created all-night raves and Nineties ladette culture. They built portfolio careers rather than jobs for life; invested in their homes, making them fit for their needs. They made the world around them suit them. From café culture on the local high street to the best possible work/life balance, this is a generation that knows what it wants and has strived hard to get it. They created social media and streaming TV, festivals rather than fetes; their limited attention span is a commodity advertisers have fought to win. Trying to encourage them to be content with their later years while living in a small room, with little more than macramé and Countdown to occupy their time, will simply reinforce outdated ideas about ageing.
Born between 1946 and 1964, Baby Boomers – a generation more asset and cash-rich than any before – built a system in which owning your own house and creating des-res neighbourhoods outweighed a sense of community. This included outsourcing elder care to retirement homes, a cultural move ratified by government by not providing adequate elder care in the communities they had previously lived to enable continued independence in older age. This system has not moved on or modernised to suit the UK’s changing culture.
Designed to suit the needs of the many and to provide support for those who most need it, there will always be a requirement for the traditional models of sheltered housing and retirement communities. But, as with any accommodation, keeping costs down means losing the ability to modify to suit individual resident desires. One pioneering project challenging convention is New Ground, North London. Many of its active, elegant residents still work and make the most of their riot-grrrl era, empowering and pleasing themselves with “proper” yoga, activism, film nights and communal dinners. There is the odd mega-jigsaw, if and when they want; there are also lovers (men are allowed in for visits). All very punk. One resident was even photographed for a Vogue ‘rulebreakers’ issue.
“The women who started this were adamant that they didn’t want to sit in a dayroom singing Daisy, Daisy and Pack Up Your Troubles for the rest of their lives,” UK Cohousing Network’s Maria Brenton told The Guardian. “We were fiercely opposed to the ageism and paternalism, the infantilisation of older people by social care services.”
There’s not a huge amount of research on what this cohort wants out of senior living, but the USA’s Mather Institute has launched five-year study The Gen Xperience to look into it.
A notable generational shift: UK charity Ageing Without Children shows cohorts now approaching or entering retirement are substantially more likely to be childless than the generation already in retirement.
Source: Intergenerational England
CASE STUDY
Breaking New Ground in Barnet.
In 1998, a research study from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was presented to a group of women by research lead Maria Brenton. This introduced the concept of senior cohousing as developed in The Netherlands, and several women in the audience decided to act on the Dutch example and create their own women’s cohousing community in London.
Over 20 years, these women worked tirelessly to find housing associations, understand grants and developments, work with people who could advise and support their mission, until eventually the revolutionary New Ground CoHousing was opened in 2016.
It comprises a group of 26 women from all walks of life, ranging in age from 58 to 94, who now live separately but together in this community. It prides itself on not being a gated retirement community or sheltered housing but a space where they can live and work and thrive with each other, as well as being a part of the wider community of Chipping Barnet where they are based. Where this community, and others like it, differ from traditional retirement community models is the retention of independence but with the security of knowing that people will be looking out for you.
As the oldest New Ground resident, Hedi Argent, commented in a 2024 Guardian article, “We look out for each other; we don’t look after each other. We’re not changing dressings or other personal care. People who need carers still have them coming in.”
Ongoing engagement in the community
In the RIBA Journal, the founder of developer, designer and community-enabler KIN made the point that engaging with residents before building retirement communities can have greater long-term benefits than the current development model. “Community-led development provides a serious alternative to top-down, speculative housing,” Alex Whitcroft said. “This means that residents and/or local people are integrally and meaningfully involved throughout the design and delivery process and then take a long-term formal role in the ownership and management of the development, with community benefits protected in perpetuity.”
When these new systems are created, as in Denmark and other Scandinavian regions, it is partly due to governmental support and creating networks that allow these seemingly radical systems to thrive.
Community-led development provides a serious alternative to top-down, speculative housing.
Alex Whitcroft
Director and Founder, KIN
It’s also worth noting that these ‘new’ ways of living are very much the norm in many global majority countries. “Asian communities, which have more of a culture of supporting the multi-generational family, are particularly good at making later living sociable,” Terry Unitt MRICS, a senior project manager at Retirement Villages Group, said in the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors magazine Modus. “Singapore has the excellent Kampung Admiralty development, which combines a shopping centre and community plaza at the lower levels with age-designated and family housing on the floors above, creating an intergenerational community.”
Unitt feels that seeing residents not simply as participants, but creators of community, is key. “We actively encourage people to bring forward their own ideas, establish clubs, lead activities and shape village life in ways that reflect their passions and personalities,” he continues. “Through newsletters, internal social platforms and friendly competitions between villages, ideas are shared, celebrated and often replicated across the wider RVG community of which we now have 18 villages across the country.
“As the next generation of retirees arrives with increasingly diverse interests, expectations and life experiences, we expect retirement living to become even more dynamic, imaginative and individual. Our role is to create the spaces, opportunities and culture that allow those ideas to flourish.”
Photo 1: The Community Plaza is a fully public, porous and pedestrianised ground plane, designed as a community living room. Architect: WOHA; Photographer: Patrick Bingham-Hall
Photo 2: Aerial view of Kampung Admiralty captures the landscaped roof terrace among the neighbouring housing developments. Architect: WOHA; Photographer: K. Kopter
What is cohousing?
Cohousing is not a new concept, particularly in global majority nations. For much of the world’s population, it is normal to have several generations living in close proximity to each other, sharing needs and assets across family and friends. In the 20th century, this style of living came to Europe, particularly the Scandinavian regions, where cohousing communities began popping up. These spaces saw groups of like-minded people band together to create what they felt their neighbourhoods were lacking. The first cohousing community was founded in Denmark in 1972, housing 27 families near Copenhagen, and it is now estimated that 1% of the Danish population lives in such spaces. These developments were designed to provide a mix of communal areas for people to gather, engage and play, as well as private living quarters for families of various sizes and ages. With accessibility at its heart, the benefits of living in such a way began spreading across Europe, with the first cohousing scheme opening in the UK in the 1990s.
In the UK, Brighton’s landmark Hedgehog Housing Co-op was an early example of community-led, eco-friendly self-build housing, and it’s thriving today. Built over two years using Walter Segal’s pioneering construction method, the timber-framed homes were designed to be assembled by people with little or no building experience. The 10 households who would eventually live there each contributed 30 hours a week of labour, creating not only affordable homes but a strong sense of community.
People who are attracted to cohousing usually want purposeful closeness to their neighbours as a big part of their lives. It’s not just about alleviating loneliness – it allows people to become part of an ecosystem of families and individuals.
Mellis Haward
Director, Archio Architects
Images: Angel Yard by Archio – a model for sustainable, multi-generational cohousing shaped by residents.
Why is this being talked about now?
Previous generations in the UK and similar societies have generally followed very traditional routes: 2.4 children, house in the suburbs, one or two nine-to-five jobs, before a long retirement. But the generations currently approaching retirement age have spent a lifetime challenging the status quo and creating family units, working practices and a society their grandparents wouldn’t recognise. It seems only normal that they’d treat their later years in the same way, rather than simply accepting the restrictive models handed down by their predecessors.
The breakdown of traditional relationships, the ‘squeezed middle’, the cost of living, climate resilience, and political upheaval, means that there are many factors to consider when it comes to what people need in their later years. What’s more, society is much more multicultural now, making the one-size model of elder care even less likely to fit all.
The problem is material as well as cultural: there’s a housing crisis in the UK. Many of the boomer generation occupy ‘empty nest’ housing stock that’s much needed but isn’t being released into the market, creating stagnation. This desire to keep hold of the houses they’ve worked hard to purchase and maintain is, in part, due to the challenges faced by their children and grandchildren trying to get onto the property ladder. Boomers are keeping hold of their homes to provide their offspring with somewhere to live in this uncertain economy. However, by working in partnership with those people getting older to find out what they want from their later-living lifestyles, retirement communities could be modernised, allowing this generation to feel more comfortable leaving their homes for something that fits how they’ve lived before, but with the added security of community.
As Mellis Haward, director of Archio Architects, commented in a 2024 article in The Guardian, “For so long we have all been slaves to the housing market and it’s really hard to create intentionally cohesive communities within that. People who are attracted to cohousing usually want purposeful closeness to their neighbours as a big part of their lives. It’s not just about alleviating loneliness – it allows people to become part of an ecosystem of families and individuals.”
Having said all this, making spaces for individual needs or desires within an already stretched budget can be impossible to achieve. How do you ensure that your more active residents are getting what they need as much as someone who’s got significant elder health problems? Cost of living in these spaces can be prohibitively expensive, and those entering these communities through choice rather than necessity need to feel as though they’re not modifying their lives but enhancing them.
Bridport Cohousing CLT Photo: Rebecca Noakes
What operators are dealing with.
“One of the challenges facing the UK retirement sector today is that people are choosing to move into retirement communities later in life than ever before and, often, new residents do not make the transition until their late seventies or eighties,” says Terry Unitt, Head of Construction Delivery at Retirement Villages Group. “In more mature international markets, retirement living is embraced much earlier, with younger retirees viewing it not as a necessity, but as a lifestyle choice that enhances independence, wellbeing and social connection.”
People should be able to live comfortably in the knowledge that their home can adapt and age along-side them without the need for costly interventions or modifications because those considerations have been built in from the outset. We are also seeing more developments being located closer to town centres than ever before, reflecting the fact that older people do not want to lose their sense of purpose. They remain valuable contributors to our economy and communities.
The communities we create must be designed not only for today’s residents, but for future generations and their evolving needs and wants in mind. That means building with adaptability at their core, creating places that can evolve, modernise and respond to changing expectations over time. The real opportunity lies in balancing aspiration with practicality: delivering vibrant, inspiring environments that resonate with the next generation of retirees, while ensuring developments remain commercially sustainable within a still-evolving UK retirement market.
The market is shifting and the entry to seniors housing is now sold more as a lifestyle than a needs-based move.
Gary Touyz
Vice President, CBRE Canada, Seniors Housing & Healthcare Group
Age-in-place rather than urgent necessity
Many of these newer communities allow for people to make the choice to live there while they’re still active and able, rather than being placed there out of necessity. As Gary Touyz FRICS, vice president of CBRE Canada’s seniors housing and healthcare group, says, “the market is shifting and the entry to seniors housing is now sold more as a lifestyle than a needs-based move.” Making the move to an integrated retirement community (IRC) or assisted living development earlier on in life, before it becomes a more urgent necessity, allows people to ‘age-in-place’ – something Touyz believes is a positive change. As Terry Unitt commented in a Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors article, “Areas like lift lobbies, or breaks in corridors, ideally with a small seating space and access to natural light, offer people the chance to stop and sit, take in a view that might be different from their home, but keep away from the busier and more formalised amenity spaces.”
This isn’t a problem that can be solved overnight, but it is something that operators in this sector should be exploring to make the most of existing and newer built spaces. In the short term it could be as simple as bringing in activities that suit more youthful residents as well as the older ones. In the longer term it means exploring how spaces can be adapted and modified to ensure that as Gen X ages, it can do so disgracefully.
continue the conversation
References and further reading
Why later living design must prioritise social wellbeing | Source: Modus | RICS
Our Ageing Population | The State of Ageing 2025 | Source: Centre for Ageing Better
“We have brothers, sons, lovers – but they can’t live here!” The happy home shared by 26 women | Source: The Guardian
The Gen Xperience: Year 1 Report | Source: The Mather Institute
Share this article on LinkedIn