The living spaces described aren't communes in any way, shape or form. This is just paying to have roommates you don't know with some perks. actual cooperatives

The living spaces described aren't communes in any way, shape or form. This is just paying to have roommates you don't know with some perks. actual cooperatives/communes are occupied by their member-owners, who have full control over their space. It's laughable that this being marketed as edgy socialist living when it's just a big apartment with some nice branding. An actual co-op shares food purchases, requires labor like cooking and cleaning, and the members share democratic control over the house's finances. There is no actual reason why you need microleases - the co-op I live in has 6 month leases at a minimum, and on average most members live here for two years. People stay for so long because actual cooperatives foster a culture of cooperation and a community full of real friendships, giving its members a deep, lasting connection with the space and their fellow housemates. Microleases seem like they create a transitory and shallow culture with people coming and leaving all the time and not actually making any connection with the space, partially because you can't leave your mark on the space since you don't own it. There are very large and active communities of both residential and commercial cooperatives in Berkeley, Michigan, and Austin (where the co-op I live in is), and I think this is because there is cheaper land and individual houses. It's close to impossible for starting true residential cooperatives in downtown NYC because the landlord often owns the entire building, which would require an enormous amount of money to acquire, and would lead to enormous cooperatives which would be difficult to run. There _are_ very large, apartment-style cooperatives - there are at least 5 co-ops in Austin with over 100 people each - but there are many more that are house style with 15-30 people. I think the ones in Berkeley and Michigan tend to be closer to 30-40 people, but they're still just big houses. The cooperative movement is alive and well and has been for decades. Capitalists trying to jump onto the sharing economy bandwagon just dilute the message and create the wrong impression of what actual shared living is - raw democratic control over your space. Cooperatives have amazing potential in the internet age, but seem to have been largely forgotten by modern day technologists. A non-profit Uber, cooperatively controlled by both drivers and developers, is an obvious example of a great system that would work very well and be immensely popular with drivers. There are a lot of knotty problems to work out, but nothing insurmountable. If 100+ drug-addled college kids can democratically run an entire apartment complex successfully for 3 decades (and even make money, too!), surely today's technologists can build software that allow many more people to democratically run much larger systems.