The coliving industry has spent years perfecting its pitch to residents - flexible leases, curated community, and spaces designed for connection. Yet, a quieter transformation is taking place behind the community programming calendars. Operators, developers, architects, and technology providers are beginning to close the loop between what gets built and what actually works, using data not as an afterthought, but as a design input itself. Coliving Conference 2024 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, brought together voices from across the value chain to explore how this shift plays out in practice - from the granular mechanics of access control to the radical proposition of letting future residents design their own buildings before construction begins.

How Data Is Closing the Design-Operations Gap in Coliving

Can design really predict how communities will behave? The answer is increasingly moving towards a ‘yes’ - but only when the design process begins with the community itself. Marthijn Pool, Co-Founder at Space&Matter and CommonCity Development, described an approach that flips conventional development on its head. Rather than designing a building and marketing it to prospective residents, his team uses a crowdbuilding platform to aggregate demand before construction begins. "We actually start establishing the social network before we start stacking bricks and mortar, which does contribute to a very strong sense of belonging in the building," Pool explained. This pre-occupancy data collection allows designers to tailor apartment sizes, shared facilities, and operational structures to the specific cohort who will inhabit the space.

The distinction between co-housing and coliving is one of ownership and empowerment. Pool suggested that even in rental coliving models, operators could increase residents' sense of ownership by consulting them on how amenities function and whether spaces need to be adapted. "I think if you really interact with your group of residents and give them a voice and influence in how the building is actually operated and programmed, they will feel more part of the community and the project itself, which may even make them stay longer," he noted. The insight is that co-creation with residents drives belonging, and data on resident preferences can guide both initial design and ongoing adaptation.

From Security to Revenue: Access as a Service

Access control used to be a security concern managed by facilities teams. Today, it has become a revenue enabler in what Alessandro Nacci, CEO at Sofia part of ISEO, described as “real estate as a service model”. In a sector with high resident turnover and unpredictable booking patterns, manual processes cannot keep pace. Nacci recounted a conversation with the CEO of a student accommodation provider managing 3.000 rooms in Milan who said he could not afford to speak with every customer, only those with problems. “Access control needed to shift from being just something used by the security manager of a company to something that needs to be fully integrated with the company processes,” he claimed. Modern access management systems integrate with reservation and invoicing platforms, creating automated workflows that reduce operational friction and allow staff to focus on hospitality rather than administration.

With operational data generated by access control, service quality can also be improved. Battery-powered locks can alert operators to maintenance needs before failures occur, while occupancy data supports safety protocols during emergencies. But Nacci cautioned against conflating data collection with immediate actionability. Insights about how a building's physical layout influences behaviour may arrive too late to implement without costly renovation. The real value lies in data that informs ongoing activities - which spaces are underused, when maintenance is required, and how systems communicate seamlessly.

Building Communities Before Buildings

Seth Rutt, Architect & Founder at Studio Multi, reinforced the importance of operator involvement right from the design stage. His practice is developing two large coliving schemes in east London, and the approaches slightly differ. For one project, the developer lived in a coliving building and data is subsequently aggregated through his lived experience. For the other, the operator from the very beginning "Just so much rich data has informed the brief", Rutt said, covering everything from room specifications and facility mix, to rental comparisons and demographic expectations. Advocating for all developers to integrate operators into the design team from the beginning, this practice ensures buildings are conceived not as abstract architectural propositions, but as operational environments catering to specific markets.

What works in one location may not translate elsewhere. For example, coworking spaces make sense near employment hubs like Canary Wharf, but see lower uptake in outer London, underscoring the importance of context-specific design informed by local data. Urban Bubble's portfolio data shows a typical demographic of 26-35 year olds with incomes approximating £ 40.000, information that fundamentally shape room sizing, amenity types, and location strategy.  

Integration as the New Infrastructure

The vision of data-driven coliving depends not on sophisticated analytics, but on basic integration. When access control, tenant experience apps, booking systems, and maintenance platforms cannot communicate, inefficiencies multiply and insights remain isolated. Erwin Buckers, CEO and founder at Chainels, described his company's tenant engagement app as a digital layer that captures data on how amenities and common spaces are used across 650 communities in 20 countries. However, its value emerges through integration. "If you have technologies that can easily talk together that are already integrated, the enhanced human interaction comes from the fact that a person can use the Chainels hub and seamlessly can open a lock even if the providers are different,", Nacci observed. This way residents experience a unified service, while operators simultaneously gain a coherent data picture.

Buckers emphasised that data collection must begin with clear objectives. "What we always do when we deploy the app is that we ask our client what is success - what do you expect from the common space, from a specific amenity - and then we can also start measuring it,", he explained. Without predefined key performance indicators (KPIs), data becomes noise. But when operators know what success looks like - whether measured in booking frequency, length of stay, or resident satisfaction - they can act quickly. "If you have the data, the decision can be made earlier and you can also be as agile as you want to be,", Buckers added. That agility allows operators to reprogram underused spaces, adjust pricing for flexible stays, and allocate labour where it delivers the most impact.

The Operator's Advantage

Through this lens, technology is not merely a substitute for human connection, but instead enables it. Buckers argued that digitisation should automate routine tasks so staff can focus on hospitality. "We believe that if you look at digitisation, you probably want to spend the time on human interaction and hospitality, and not on solving things that should be already in place,", he said. Predictive maintenance, automated access, and real-time dashboards reduce reactive problem-solving. They also create opportunities for third-party service providers - from laundry to local retailers - to integrate with the building's operations, fostering a sense that the community extends beyond residents to the surrounding neighbourhood. In fact, neighbourhood integration was a recurring theme, with Rutt noting that some European operators, including The Collective at Old Oak and in Canary Wharf, allow public access to ground-floor coworking and hospitality spaces.

What the Data Reveals

Data does not simply validate design decisions, it challenges them. Buckers described benchmarking 50 buildings across five countries to understand why amenities succeed in one market and fail in another, but the answers are rarely universal. Cultural expectations, local competition, and demographic composition all influence usage. However, patterns emerge. Operators learn which amenities justify their footprint and operating costs, which booking systems reduce friction, and which programming formats drive engagement. This knowledge, when fed back to architects and developers, shortens the learning curve for subsequent projects.

The coliving sector is moving from guesswork to evidence, from static blueprints to adaptive environments. Operators who define clear success metrics upfront and integrate digital tools from day one can act on insights in real time, reprogramming spaces and reallocating resources as needs shift. Architects who bring operators into the design process from the earliest stages create buildings calibrated to real markets rather than abstract typologies. Developers who involve future residents in design decisions foster belonging before construction begins, while those investing in integrated systems position their assets to evolve alongside tenant expectations. Technology providers who prioritise integration over feature complexity enable seamless experiences that free staff to focus on hospitality, rather than troubleshooting. As these practices become standard rather than exceptional, coliving will solidify itself as a responsive, community-centred way of living that improves with every data point. New developments are being conceived with this data capture in mind, and are creating a growing body of evidence that will inform the next generation of coliving design. The challenge, as the panelists made clear, is then ensuring that data serves both the community and the balance sheet.