I absolutely adore the concept of co-living, it's especially great for people who have moved cities or countries and don't have an established group of friends.
When I moved cities for work after university, I moved into a long term backpackers hostel. I ended up living there for a year, until I actually moved again and moved overseas. Sure, sharing a room with 3 other people wan't great, but it was amazing to live in this building with all these other (mostly) awesome people. It was a long term hostel, so most people were there for 3-6 months, so there was a lot of churn, but it wasn't like I had to make a new group of friends every day. There was no financial necessity for me to live in a hostel, I could more than afford to move into an apartment, but I just didn't want to.
Because of living there for so long, I now have friends all over the globe.
I now live in an sharehouse with 3 other people, and I really miss living in a hostel. I miss the dumb shit we'd get up to. I miss the massive shared dinners with 15 people. The thing that I miss the most though is that there was always something to do and someone to do it with. Even at 3 in the morning, there would be someone in the lounge to hang out with. Living in a shared house (where my housemates are very quiet), I feel massively understimulated.
Obviously co-living isn't for everyone, but I think that there are a lot of people who would really benefit from it. I find it hard enough living with only a couple of people, I couldn't possibly imagine living on my own. I guess I like coworking spaces for the same reason, as bad as they are for productivity, I really miss working in a coworking space now that I work in a small office with ~10 other people. In a coworking space of 200 people there's always someone that shares your interests and there's a different relationship between co-workingspacers and colleagues. We used to have a daily quiz at the coworking space, and a group of us would do the crossword, there was also a group who'd go to the gym together, and even a motorbike riding group.
There's a great TED talk on cohousing [1], which is a similar concept, but based more around having several families living in self contained apartments, but with a lot of shared space and activities. To me, that is the ideal kind of living situation, everyone has their personal space, as well as having communal space and activities. I've been living in my current house for 6 months, and the only reason I've even met one of my neighbours is that I accidentally stole their fridge.
I think that as people become more and more mobile, moving cities and even countries more often, it's important that we have these opportunities for socializing and meeting other people. It's seriously hard to meet people in a new city or country. With more people working remotely as well, loneliness is a growing issue.
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/grace_kim_how_cohousing_can_make_u...