Building social connections: Multi-unit housing design toolkit
A toolbox of design actions to nurture wellbeing through shared spaces in multi-unit housing, published by Happy Cities and Hey Neighbour Collective.
Socially connected homes and neighbourhoods nurture greater physical and mental health, community resilience, and social trust between diverse residents. (Happy Cities)
Our neighbours are our closest source of social support and connection.
The homes we live in play a significant role in encouraging and creating opportunities for positive neighbourly interactions. In particular, evidence shows that the design and location of common spaces in multi-unit housing—including common amenities, circulation spaces, and outdoor areas—can make a big difference in our connections with neighbours, and are closely connected to the social wellbeing of residents.
As governments across Canada push to build denser housing faster, it is critical that we design new homes to support community wellbeing, social connection, sustainability, and inclusion for everyone.
Introducing: The Building Social Connections Toolkit
Over 2023 and 2024, 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—Happy Cities and Hey Neighbour Collective have published a new 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 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.
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:
Social building edges
Social circulation
Social amenities
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.
Stay tuned for more updates and resources as we roll out the launch of this toolkit!
About this project
This toolkit is part of the Building Social Connections project, in which Happy Cities and Hey Neighbour Collective worked with six local jurisdictions to co-create new policies to support social wellbeing in multi-unit housing. Happy Cities and Hey Neighbour Collective collaborated on the vision for this toolkit, building on project learnings and prior research, policy, and engagement by each organization. Happy Cities led the research, writing, and design of the toolkit, with detailed content review from Hey Neighbour Collective and external reviewers.
The project included three phases:
Phase 1: Measuring the impact of the City of North Vancouver’s Active Design Guidelines
Phase 2: Co-creating housing design policies to support wellbeing in multi-unit housing
Phase 3: Developing the Building Social Connections policy and design toolkit
Project funders
This project received funding from the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation (CMHC), Vancity Community Foundation, BC Healthy Communities (Plan H), Metro Vancouver, BC Non-profit Housing Association, and SFU Community Engaged Research Initiative.
In addition, six Metro Vancouver jurisdictions (five municipalities and one First Nation) participated in workshops and contributed funding. 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.
