I really enjoyed living on college campuses. They're one of the most wonderful environments that humanity has created: a large concentration of people living and working in close proximity (usually within walking or public transit distance), all working on different projects, but united by a common goal of learning and furthering of humanity's knowledge. There are constant events bringing people together to explore new concepts and meet new people and learn about other activities in other fields. There are group entertainment options. There are cafes and cafeterias. There are libraries, and shared equipment. There's everything you need all around you so that you can focus on learning and discovering your passions and preparing for the world.

Then, you get out of college, and you enter the real world. Now that you've discovered who you are, you can go out and implement your discovered self. You get your own unfurnished apartment, a blank canvas, to begin the rat race of consumerism, filling it with things. Now you get your own entertainment center, so you can watch movies by yourself, and your own kitchen gear, so you can make your own food, and your own library so you can buy your own books. You get to make your space your own, carve out a slice of unique existence.

We work so hard to carve out this slice for ourselves, that we now have everything we need in our little unit. We're an almost self-sustaining little pod. All we need is internet and Amazon delivery and we can pretty much never leave our apartment or house unless we need to leave to work or to meet people downtown or go on vacation. We succeed at completely isolating ourselves to our particular defined existence. We don't meet anyone we don't want to meet. We have only planned encounters, at home and work and through pre-ordained social outings. We've won! We conquered chaos!

But in this process we've lost something. We've lost community. We've lost chance encounters with other people doing things that we wouldn't otherwise run into. We've narrowed our focus and lost the ability to discover. And this stagnates us, prevents our growth.

And let's be real with ourselves, the existence we've carved out is not really that unique. We pretty much all buy the same basic refrigerator, and television, and blender, and lawn mower. They have minor variations but they're not particularly distinctive. So what is it all for? Our personality, our uniqueness, comes not from the tools of daily living that we surround ourselves with, but from our choices in decoration, in music, in the things we watch, the people we spend time with, and the way we dress and spend our time. There are many things that define us. But the ones that define us most probably aren't purchased in the household goods section of the department store.

As the suburban house dream dies, and less and less Americans (and probably other countries) can afford the single family household, and we convert on more apartment living, it begs the question: why do we bother with trying to faux isolate ourselves in micro pods?

I think there's a hybrid model here that hasn't been explored, that optimizes for what we want as adults: independence, uniqueness, and freedom, without sacrificing the things that we gave up from when we were in school: convenience and community.

I think this model looks like a long-term stay hotel with unfurnished rooms. I imagine something like modern luxury apartments, where there's an external entrance, and everyone's individual units are in hallways inside the complex. However, instead of reserving hundreds of square feet in everyone's rooms to the indistinctive common things that we don't care to define ourselves: kitchens, entertainment centers, dining rooms, the rooms are smaller, like a studio apartment or hotel room. And with all that extra space and cost savings, the adult dormitory has the most amazing shared resources that we have the technology for. Movie theaters, VR rooms, cafeterias with robot baristas, sports rooms, fighting ring, typical amenities like pools, gyms, spas. Event rooms for parties with decked out bars. Shared libraries with ceiling high books. Hydroponic gardens. Kitchens with all the gadgets you could never afford on your own. Escape rooms. Laser tag. Woodworking shop. Who knows! If we reduced the square footage of the average apartment by half, can you imagine all the cool stuff we could fill with that space for that cost? We could live in adult disney land for the same price we now pay for large apartments with endless soulless variations of the same kitchen island.

Finally, each of these living spaces could be themed. I know for my theme I would want to live with other people that are pursuing missions as their major priority in life. Missions to change how the world is, missions to make things better, to develop new technology, missions to spread awareness, missions to discover new phenomena. Whatever the mission is, I want to be around people that have them. Other themes could exist, too. I could imagine such a community living arrangement would be amazing for people that want to raise kids together as part of a community, or people that want to be around others that share similar passions for specific creative arts or technological efforts.

I think there's likely a community out there for just about everyone, and I think we'd all be a lot happier if we bumped into more new and slightly different and unexpected people in our day-to-day.