Do people shape the city, or does the city shape people? The rise of single households in Copenhagen
1.3 million Danes choose to live alone, increasing demand for more flexible housing and accessible public spaces.
“There are a lot of people now working on developing concepts for more interesting, smaller apartments,” states Silje Erøy Sollien, postdoctoral researcher of the Danish Royal Academy Institute of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape.
However, the city is not changing as quickly as people’s needs because the housing market is still standardized.
Graph showing the number of households divided by the number of people living there (Statistics Denmark, 2026). Visual by Sabina Marian.
“The result of it right now is that people who want to live as singles share normal apartments that are actually designed for families,” says the researcher.
However, living alone does not mean that people want to stay in solitude.
“If a lot of people live alone, they want to meet somewhere (...) if you took photographs of public spaces 30 years ago and now, you would see a lot more people in the new ones,” explains S. E. Sollien.
The increasing demand for such “third spaces” is also changing the way the city is developing.
As S. E. Sollien points out, Copenhagen now has more public spaces for people to socialize: “There are much more rooftops in Copenhagen than there have been before.”
The downside is that housing is becoming more expensive in all major European cities.
“Often the money dictates too much rather than people's needs. Housing should be homes, not just investment objects,” emphasizes S. E. Sollien.
This story is for an audience in urban Europe and could be published on bbc.com and politico.com
