Building social connections

Toolkit of design actions to nurture wellbeing in multi-unit housing

Our neighbours are our closest source of social support and connection.

The homes we live in shape our connections with neighbours—for better and for worse. Hallways, lobbies, courtyards, and even elevators all have untapped potential to become social machines. Our new housing toolkit shows how.

Amid growing construction of denser housing, we’ve been studying buildings across Canada and beyond to explore the most impactful social design features—and how to implement them.

Explore the resources on this page to learn how homes can better support connection, resilience, and inclusion for all ⬇️ 

Architectural illustration showing an interior courtyard of a multi-unit building, with many residents playing, chatting, and interacting in the shared spaces

Introducing: The Building Social Connections Toolkit

In the face of growing challenges—including an acute housing affordability crisis, extreme weather, social isolation, and an aging population—our social connections are one of the strongest resources we have to chart a more sustainable, resilient path forward.

Happy Cities, Hey Neighbour Collective, and researchers from Simon Fraser University worked together with five local municipalities and one First Nation to co-create new policies to encourage sociable multi-unit housing design.

Building on the learnings from this project—and nearly a decade of prior research—we published a design toolkit of evidence-based strategies to nurture social wellbeing multi-unit housing. The design principles and actions equip policy makers, planners, designers, and community members to build and advocate for more socially connected, inclusive communities, drawing on long-term research and engagement with residents and housing industry actors—including non-profit housing providers, city planners, architects, and market developers. 

In 2025, we published a companion “Age-friendly edition” of the Building Social Connections Toolkit. The age-friendly edition is designed to complement the main toolkit, featuring extra guidance and an additional set of design actions to support aging in the right place and intergenerational relationships.

How to use this toolkit

This toolkit presents design opportunities to nurture social wellbeing in housing for people of all ages, backgrounds, abilities, household sizes, and incomes. The design areas are broken down into four toolboxes: 

  1. Social building edges

  2. Social circulation

  3. Social amenities

  4. Social homes 

These actions are designed to be flexible and applicable across the spectrum of multi-unit housing, including townhouses, multiplexes, low-rise apartments, and high-rise towers—and tenure forms—both market and non-market. These toolboxes act as a starting point for both designers and policymakers and should be considered in relation to local policies, building context and typology, budget, and the anticipated needs of future residents.

icon showing a simplified building edge with an isometric line drawing
icon showing a simplified amenity space with an isometric line drawing
icon showing a simplified hallway or corridor with an isometric line drawing
icon showing a simplified apartment unit with an isometric line drawing

Get inspired!

Explore groundbreaking case studies—featuring cities, housing providers, and architects that are building innovative homes and policies for social connection ➡️

Cover of the housing case studies volume 1 document, with text: Building social connections: Case studies to inspire socially connected multi-unit housing
Cover of the housing case studies volume 2 document, with text: Building social connections: Case studies to inspire socially connected multi-unit housing
Cover of the policy case studies document, with text: Building social connections: Innovative housing policy examples for social wellbeing
photo of several sticky notes pasted on a wall, that people have written ideas on. On a big piece of paper, a question is written: What would you like to be doing if you could?

Learn how to design for social connection in your community!

One unintended consequence of municipal zoning and housing policy? It’s incredibly difficult to design social features into new developments. To help overcome this challenge, we put together a series of three workshops for planners to gain practical tools to unlock the social potential of multi-unit housing in all types of communities. These workshops tackled two fundamental questions.

  1. What design principles and strategies can enhance social wellbeing in multi-unit housing?

  2. How can planners implement policy to enable sociable design—while maintaining affordability?

Interested in getting hands-on training for your municipality? Get in touch with us to learn more!

Explore the video series

In 2025, Happy Cities, Hey Neighbour Collective, and SFU Renewable Cities led national training sessions for planners to gain actionable tools to build policy that enables socially connected, resilient, and inclusive housing. 

Watch the video series to hear insights from these workshops, featuring Madeleine Hebert from Happy Cities and Michelle Hoar from Hey Neighbour Collective.

Project funders

Project funders include:

  • Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation (CMHC)

  • Vancity Community Foundation

  • BC Healthy Communities (Plan H)

  • Walton’s Trust

  • Max Bell Foundation

  • Metro Vancouver

  • BC Non-profit Housing Association

  • SFU Community Engaged Research Initiative. 

In addition, six Metro Vancouver jurisdictions (five municipalities and one First Nation) participated in workshops and contributed funding for the original Building Social Connections toolkit. We are deeply grateful to the City of North Vancouver, City of Vancouver, City of Surrey, City of Burnaby, City of New Westminster, and Tsawwassen First Nation for their support and participation.