Stop Saying ‘Community’

Start Creating Belonging

The Problem With ‘Community’

The word community is overused. It’s lost all meaning.

This poses a real problem for anyone trying to shape the future of cities or work. Planners, designers, operators, and landlords keep reaching for community as a bridge between the abstract world of assets and the real experience of people living and working in places.

At best, it fails to evoke the warm, fuzzy feeling it’s meant to. At worse it comes across as ‘boomer talk’ and ‘cringe’, especially to the ascendant millennial workforce and decision makers who have been bombarded with ‘community’ marketing since they first started using MSN messenger.

But We Still Crave Connection

The strange thing is that, despite the apparent bankruptcy of the term, it’s desired more than ever.

Why?

There’s no single answer, but it seems to be the result of multiple loneliness-inducing megatrends:

social media atomization, the pandemic hangover, the relational black hole of early parenthood, the rise of remote work, and a growing demographic of single-person households.

Signals of a Deeper Longing

NeueHouse NYC

And that longing is beginning to express itself: In the boom of members clubs across New York and London. In the rise of dating clubs disguised as running crews. In the unexpected revival of ancient rituals, like bathhouses.

If community has lost its magic, what word should community-minded brands, operators, and place-makers use instead?

The word ‘belonging’ is superior in every way.

It names the thing we truly want: not just to be near others, but to feel comfortable with them.

A feeling of belonging is the relaxed feeling that washes over you in the absence of otherness and formality, it’s the familiarity you feel at the local pub, it’s the welcome you receive from old friends, it’s the rush of serotonin you feel with your family it’s what defines a ‘home away from home’.

The Limits of Third Spaces

Office building café

Third spaces — cafés, gyms, libraries, even many office buildings with communal areas — are often framed as modern gathering points, but they’re usually too transactional to create true belonging.

They might facilitate proximity, but they rarely foster emotional safety. You show up, swipe your card, grab a drink, maybe nod at someone across the room — but you’re still performing. You’re still anonymous.

Belonging requires more than shared square footage. It needs intimacy, unguarded moments, and a sense that you’re not being sold something. Third spaces are designed for throughput, not depth. They can host connection, but they don’t generate it on their own.

Designing for Belonging

So how can designers, operators, and landlords cultivate true belonging?

It starts by dropping the word community.

Then asking better questions:

• ‘Who exactly is supposed to belong here?’

• ‘What would these people need to see, smell, and hear to feel a true sense of belong?’

• ‘What can we borrow or steal from the places that they normally feel they belong?’

• ‘How long does it take to cultivate a feeling of belonging?’

If you can’t answer those questions in 2025, you’re not going to make it.

Because, as the immortal theme from Cheers reminds us;

‘ Sometimes you wanna go Where everybody knows your name And they're always glad you came You wanna be where you can see (ah-ah) Our troubles are all the same (ah-ah) You wanna be where everybody knows your name’