Together: Towards Collaborative Living

Front matter

TU Delft OPENnaioıo publishers TOGETHER Towards Collaborative Living DARINKA CZISCHKE MARIJE PEUTE & SARA BRYSCH

Färdknäppen (SE) Calico (BE) Amsterdam (NL)Brussels (BE) Ecodorp Boekel (NL) Knarrenhof® Zwolle (NL) SPACE-S (NL) Startblok Riekerhaven (NL) Copenhagen (DK) Le Village Vertical (FR) Vienna (AT) Barcelona (ES) AT - Austria BE - Belgium CH - Switzerland DE - Germany DK - Denmark ES - Spain FR - France NL - The Netherlands SE - Sweden UK - United Kingdom [ro*sa] (AT) Map pinpointing the city cases and project cases displayed in the book

Färdknäppen (SE) Calico (BE) Amsterdam (NL)Brussels (BE) Ecodorp Boekel (NL) Knarrenhof® Zwolle (NL) SPACE-S (NL) Startblok Riekerhaven (NL) Copenhagen (DK) Le Village Vertical (FR) Vienna (AT) Barcelona (ES) AT - Austria BE - Belgium CH - Switzerland DE - Germany DK - Denmark ES - Spain FR - France NL - The Netherlands SE - Sweden UK - United Kingdom [ro*sa] (AT) Färdknäppen (SE) Calico (BE) Amsterdam (NL)Brussels (BE) Ecodorp Boekel (NL) Knarrenhof® Zwolle (NL) SPACE-S (NL) Startblok Riekerhaven (NL) Copenhagen (DK) Le Village Vertical (FR) Vienna (AT) Barcelona (ES) AT - Austria BE - Belgium CH - Switzerland DE - Germany DK - Denmark ES - Spain FR - France NL - The Netherlands SE - Sweden UK - United Kingdom [ro*sa] (AT)

Contents

PREFACE 8 HOW TO READ THIS BOOK 12 COLLABORATIVE LIVING: WHAT’S IN A NAME? 14 WHY TOGETHER? 32 CASES: PROJECTS 50 ROLLING UP OUR SLEEVES: TOOLS FOR COLLABORATIVE LIVING 68 CASES: CITIES 94 ACTION!

THE POLITICS AND POLICIES OF COLLABORATIVE LIVING 106 PATHWAYS TOWARDS COLLABORATIVE LIVING 122 CONCLUSION 144 NOTES 149 DOCUMENTATION CASE STUDIES 152 INDEX 154 IMAGE CREDITS 155 ABOUT THE AUTHORS 156 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 158

Preface

9PREFACE I was working in England in 2013 as director of an international housing charity when my attention turned to the potential of collective action in housing. I attended a hearing with Raquel Rolnik, the then United Nations Special Rapporteur on Housing, where she was listening to civil society representatives describing the acute housing crisis in their country. Raquel asked: ‘And, what are the people doing about it?’. The audience, I sensed, did not expect such a question, and seemed unsure how to react. As a fellow Latin American, I did understand what Raquel was getting at: if institutions are not working, how is society selforganising to act? The activism and resourcefulness of people in developing countries, in the face of state and market failure, is well described by the likes of John Turner in his seminal work about self-provided housing. I asked myself the same question: what are people in Europe doing when they are confronted with the shortcomings of housing institutions? After my encounter with Raquel, I discovered that collective action in housing was experiencing a renaissance across Europe through a variety of self-organised and self-managed collective housing projects, including cooperatives, cohousing, and Community Land Trusts. So, after ten years of working in the field of social housing in Europe, I decided to shift my focus to the study of what people are doing to provide housing by themselves, for themselves, together with others. This move was prompted by my realisation of the limitations of established housing provision actors, from government to the market, to respond to mounting housing exclusion amid multiple societal crises. This is how, in March 2015, I came to the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the TU Delft. Thanks to being awarded the Delft Technology Fellowship, I started a research strand on collaborative housing in Europe. I visited dozens of such projects all over Europe talked to residents, architects, planners and researchers; I stayed in these houses and joined their communal meals. I became fascinated by the ideals, commitment and resilience of these groups, and by the creativity and innovation of their social organisation and architectural designs.

Another milestone took place in the summer of 2017 , when I visited the Vitra Design Museum’s exhibition ‘Together! The New Architecture of the Collective’, curated by Ilka and Andras Ruby. I was impressed by the quality of this work and by its appeal to the public. Back in the Netherlands, I discussed the idea of bringing the exhibition to Delft as a way of kickstarting a debate about the possibilities of collaborative living forms in the Netherlands. This was the beginning of Project Together!, a partnership between the TU Delft, the municipalities of Delft and The Hague, the Province of South Holland, architecture firm Inbo, Platform 31 and the Dutch Ministry of the Interior (BZK). Although the COVID-19 pandemic stood in the way of bringing the Vitra exhibition to Delft, Project Together! organised a knowledge programme in the autumn of 2021. We invited thinkers and doers from the Netherlands and abroad to exchange their knowledge and experience about collaborative living in a series of activities. The highlights of the ideas and discussions held during those weeks are documented in a short movie and in this book. The goal of our book is to bring the knowledge and inspiration from Project Together! to a larger audience. We want to spur a new approach not only the current housing crisis, but to a number of connected societal challenges, whereby residents are at the centre of the planning, design, management, and governance of their living environments.

This book centres on developments in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands, while recognising that collaborative living forms also exist in other parts of the world. Amid the doom and gloom of current global events and the wider need for a transition to a more sustainable way of living, we believe that this book can send a positive message on what we can do to improve the way we live.

Project Together! is the collective work of many people who are passionate about fundamentally changing how we think about and build our living environments, where collectivity and sharing are central. Their names are acknowledged at the

PREFACE end of this book. I would like to especially thank Vincent Gruis, who believed in Project Together! and in my capacity to steer this ship into port despite the turbulent pandemic times. Last but definitely not least, Marije Peute and Sara Brysch, my co-authors in this book, have provided crucial support and inspiration throughout the process.

Darinka Czischke Delft, April 2023

HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

13HOW TO READ THIS BOOK The book is structured in five chapters that loosely follow the structure of the knowledge programme, Project Together!, which took place in the autumn of 2021 in the Netherlands. Over the course of six weeks different activities were organised around three themes: why collaborative living matters; how collaborative living comes about; and the action required to create more collaborative living environments in the future. The text is complemented by separate case boxes and two sets of cases: cities and projects. They are referred to throughout the book, and the geographical location of the cases is shown in the inner front and back covers.

In addition, QR codes have been included for online resources, notably the Co-Lab Mapping project, the Project Together! movie, and short videos about collaborative housing projects.

COLLABORATIVE LIVING: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

1 COLLABORATIVE LIVING: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Imagine a neighbourhood where residents discuss how they want to live. They meet regularly to exchange their views on things like how to make best use of the scarce space to provide new homes for those who need them; ways to live more sustainably, to reduce their environmental footprint; and how to make housing more affordable for people of different income levels. But they also think about the future, about how they can stay in their homes when their children fly the nest, and they grow old. Many of those living on their own feel a bit lonely, both young and old. They realise that they can actually benefit from pooling their resources to achieve common goals; they can share more and own less. They can collaborate to build not only a home, but also a community. This is what we call collaborative living.

Intentionality Common vision Sharing spaces and (social) activities Collective decision-making High level of resident involvement Collaborative living Figure 1 Defining characteristics of collaborative living forms

1 COLLABORATIVE LIVING: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Collaborative living refers to a wide range of practices of collective self-organisation that people engage in to plan, organise, build, and manage housing for themselves in collaboration with others. This term is closely related to the concept of ‘collaborative housing’,1 which has become popular since the 1990s, when researchers on both sides of the Atlantic started to study the re-emergence of these housing forms in Western societies. Our choice for ‘collaborative living’ in this book reflects our aim to go beyond the building and out into the neighbourhood scale. As examples in this book will show, housing projects based on the principles of collaboration and sharing often contain non-residential functions that people in the surrounding area can enjoy, thereby creating the conditions for vibrant and socially connected places.

In the Netherlands, collaborative housing emerged in the 1980s in the shape of ‘Centraal Wonen’, the Dutch version of the cohousing model that originated in Scandinavia in the late 1960s. More recently, the ‘wooncoöperatie’ (housing cooperative) has been gaining ground, and cluster homes for seniors, such as the Knarrenhof® model, are increasingly popular. Elsewhere in Europe, collaborative housing models include ‘Bofeaelleskab’ (Denmark), ‘Kollektivhus’ (Sweden), ‘Baugruppen’ (Germany, Austria), ‘Genossenschaften’ (Switzerland, Austria, Germany), ‘Habitat Participatif’ (France), ‘Miethäusersyndikat’ (Germany and, more recently, variants in Austria and the Netherlands), ‘Community Land Trusts’ (England, Belgium, France) and ‘Cooperativas en cesión de uso’ (Spain) and many other local variants. To identify what constitutes collaborative living, projects have to comply with five main characteristics [ figure 1]. First, the group develops a common vision of how they want to live together. Second, next to their own private space, residents share some common spaces, social activities, and a number of practical tasks, for example, cleaning common areas or cooking meals for the whole group. Third, residents choose to live like this, in other words, they are not forced to share out of necessity. Fourth, all of this requires collective decision-making by the group, starting as early as the conception and design of the project and continuing to the day-to-day management and maintenance of the project once it is inhabited. Fifth, (future) residents are involved throughout the different stages of the realisation of their project.

Figure 2 Conventional versus collaborative housing provision Individual household - self-contained home - fully private spaces Self-builder Developer Shared home by necessity, short-term - small private spaces - shared common spaces Shared home by intention, long-term - private spaces - shared common spaces - shared social activities - collective decision-making - collaboration Landlord Collective self-builders OR Collective commissioners + OR Collaborative housing Conventional housing (individual ownership and private rental) Individual household - self-contained home - fully private spaces Self-builder Developer Shared home by necessity, short-term - small private spaces - shared common spaces Shared home by intention, long-term - private spaces - shared common spaces - shared social activities - collective decision-making - collaboration Landlord Collective self-builders OR Collective commissioners + OR Collaborative housing Conventional housing (individual ownership and private rental)

1 COLLABORATIVE LIVING: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

What Makes Collaborative Living Different from Mainstream Housing?

Living collaboratively is about people coming together with a shared vision of how they want to live. They put their time, skills, and personal resources into a process of co-production of their private and common living spaces. In contrast, mainstream housing developments provided by the market consist of private self-contained units, either for owner ship or rent [figure 2]. In the private rental sector, shared accommodation is becoming increasingly common in cities across the world, especially with worsening housing affordability. Shared living in the conventional rental market consists of a house or flat rented by someone together with others, often strangers, sometimes friends, on a temporary basis. This type of living arrangement is typically found amongst students or young professionals. In this case, each person has limited private space, usually only their bedroom, and shares most common areas. This housing is generally provided by a landlord, either private or institutional. In collaborative living, people deliberately choose to live in close contact with others and to share a number of facilities and activities with the other residents. 2 Architecturally, in most collaborative living projects, each household has exclusive use of private spaces: the bed - room, a kitchen and a bathroom, and a small sitting and dining room. In addition, households enjoy a number of generous shared spaces, such as a common kitchen and dining room, a laundry, and even a carpentry workshop, a gym and, in Nordic countries, usually a sauna. In some projects, private spaces can be smaller than in traditional dwellings if they share facilities normally found in a home, such as a washing machine, guest bedroom, etc. Furthermore, residents self-organise in committees to carry out a number of maintenance and management tasks as well as social activities for children, the elderly and whoever else lives there.

Collective decision-making is the most complex characteristic of collaborative housing: since the group is in charge, they need to make all of the decisions about the house together. In many cases, collabo - rative housing projects are built entirely or partially through self-build with residents themselves putting a lot of their own effort into the undertaking: they contribute their ‘sweat equity’ to build the common home.3 There are also projects where residents are not involved in the building phase, for example, housing for the elderly or for people with limited time, as well as in projects that are developed in partnership with a social housing provider, an architecture firm, or a construction company [see chapter 3].

A New Term with a Long History ‘ I would say that not living together is an anomaly. It’s normal, and it always was normal, to live in larger communities together.’

Ilka Ruby, curator, at the BK Talks, Project Together! While the labels that we give to collaborative living forms are fairly recent, collective self-provided housing and shared living forms have a long tradition. Throughout history, communal living forms were the norm across the world. Only after the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century did the modern nuclear family and the single-family home become a dominant way of living, built on the separation of domestic and productive spaces. 4 In the nineteenth century, housing cooperatives emerged in Europe as part of the workers’ movement. A milestone was the crea - tion of the cooperative principles in 1844 by the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers’ Society, a group of workers who pooled their collective capital to set up a grocer’s shop offering food at affordable prices. The seven cooperative principles set up by this group are regarded as the origin of the modern cooperative movement. Ever since, cooperatives have spread across the world and proved a resilient model based on mutual help and solidarity, declining in and regaining popularity at different points in time. Housing cooperative sectors in Europe that originated in this period and that continue to play an important role today include those in Switzerland and Scandinavia. In Switzerland, housing cooperatives were established in the second half of the nineteenth century to provide dignified housing for impov - erished industrial workers. In Zurich, from 1895 to 1919, housing cooperatives built around 1000 apartments, equivalent to around 4 per cent of the total housing production. In the 30 years after that, housing cooperatives built one out of three apartments, reaching an all-time peak in 1948.5 Similarly, the cooperative housing movement in Scandinavia arose from the labour and tenants’ movement in the 1920s. After the Second World War, the Swedish and Norwegian governments both supported housing cooperatives. By 1980 the main cooperative housing organisations in Sweden, HSB and Riksbyggen, comprised around 375,000 housing units and 13,000 estate-based housing associations throughout the country. 6 Swedish, Danish and Norwegian cooperative housing share similar legal structures, where

1 COLLABORATIVE LIVING: WHAT’S IN A NAME? residents own shares and exclusive user-rights to apartments in democratically governed housing associations. Unlike Sweden and Norway, in Denmark the expansion of cooperative housing is a relatively new phenomenon.7 Today, cooperative housing (‘private andelsboliger’) accounts for almost 8 per cent of the Danish housing stock and around a third of all housing in Copenhagen [see city case, p. 100]. Cohousing is another popular collaborative living model, which often takes the legal form of a cooperative. Originating in Denmark in the 1960s under the name ‘Bofaellesskab’, the community stands central in this approach. Each attached or single-family home has traditional amenities, including a private kitchen. Shared spaces typically feature a common house, which may include a large kitchen and dining area, laundry, and recreational spaces. Shared outdoor space may include walkways, open spaces, and gardens. In the 1980s this concept became widespread in the United States and other parts of the world after American architects Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett visited such projects in Denmark and adapted this way of com - munal living to the United States context, coining the term ‘cohousing’. The Swedish version of cohousing, called ‘Kollektivhus’, which origi - nated in the 1930s, found new inspiration in the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s. This living form revolved around domestic tasks being shared by all members of the group, which empowered women by allowing them more time to pursue their own career or personal interests. In the Netherlands, the Centraal Wonen model was inspired by the principles of Danish and Swedish cohousing. In Germany, joint building ventures or ‘Baugruppen’ (literally, ‘building groups’) first emerged during the 1970s as an experimental way of self-providing housing. In recent years they have been regular actors in housing developments, especially amongst young people and families who want to build their own house as part of a collective project, using their own means, and make it more affordable. A model that goes beyond housing only is the Community Land Trust (CLT), which emerged in the 1960s in the United States and has gradually spread across Europe since the 2000s. CLTs are not-for-profit, community-based organisations designed to ensure long-term com - munity stewardship of the land. CLTs can be used for many types of development but are primarily a vehicle to ensure long-term housing affordability. To this end, the trust acquires land and maintains its ownership permanently. 8

Figure 3 Schematic timeline of collaborative living forms in the last 150 years in the Global North Community Land Trusts (EU) 1900 1930 1960/70 1980 2000 2015 Cooperatives Kollektivhus (SE) Cooperatives Kollektivhus (SE) Bofællesskab (DK) Baugruppen (DE) Resident-led cooperatives (FR,NL) Cohousing (EU) CPO- Collective Private Commissioning (NL) Community Land Trusts (USA) Baugruppen (EU) Kollektivhus (SE) Cohousing Utopian socialist workers’ settlements Birth of the cooperative movement (Rochdale principles) Inter-war experimentation - Central kitchen model - Garden city movement Counter-cultural movements - Participatory design - Communes - Female emancipation - Squatted housing Post-capitalist movements - Housing affordability crisis - Environmental crisis - Demographic transition - Right to housing and right to the city t Community Land Trusts (EU) 1900 1930 1960/70 1980 2000 2015 Cooperatives Kollektivhus (SE) Cooperatives Kollektivhus (SE) Bofællesskab (DK) Baugruppen (DE) Resident-led cooperatives (FR,NL) Cohousing (EU) CPO- Collective Private Commissioning (NL) Community Land Trusts (USA) Baugruppen (EU) Kollektivhus (SE) Cohousing Utopian socialist workers’ settlements Birth of the cooperative movement (Rochdale principles) Inter-war experimentation - Central kitchen model - Garden city movement Counter-cultural movements - Participatory design - Communes - Female emancipation - Squatted housing Post-capitalist movements - Housing affordability crisis - Environmental crisis - Demographic transition - Right to housing and right to the city t

1 COLLABORATIVE LIVING: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Community Land Trusts (EU) 1900 1930 1960/70 1980 2000 2015 Cooperatives Kollektivhus (SE) Cooperatives Kollektivhus (SE) Bofællesskab (DK) Baugruppen (DE) Resident-led cooperatives (FR,NL) Cohousing (EU) CPO- Collective Private Commissioning (NL) Community Land Trusts (USA) Baugruppen (EU) Kollektivhus (SE) Cohousing Utopian socialist workers’ settlements Birth of the cooperative movement (Rochdale principles) Inter-war experimentation - Central kitchen model - Garden city movement Counter-cultural movements - Participatory design - Communes - Female emancipation - Squatted housing Post-capitalist movements - Housing affordability crisis - Environmental crisis - Demographic transition - Right to housing and right to the city t

Figure 3 provides a schematic depiction of the models described above and of others that have developed in Western societies since the emergence of modern collective self-organised housing. We can distinguish at least four different periods, starting with the milestone birth of the cooperative principles in the mid-nineteenth century and a variety of utopian socialist workers’ settlements in the United King - dom, France, and Denmark. A second wave took place in the inter-war period, shaped by new urban planning ideas such as the Garden City movement and the Central Kitchen model.9 The years after the Second World War were characterised across Western Europe by large-scale housing construction, primarily for the working classes. In this period, governments in some countries, including Sweden and Norway, sup - ported housing cooperatives to meet demand, but in most countries, cooperatives retained only a modest role in overall housing provision. A third phase can be identified in the 1960s and70s with a revival of collective self-organised housing. This revival connected to wider counter-culture movements that questioned established institutions and promoted alternative lifestyles that included ideas about women’s liberation and communal living. In urban planning and housing design, this period is marked by a turn towards participatory approaches, where architects and planners included the voice of residents. With the advent of the neoliberal era in the 1980s, the market was promoted by most Western governments as the main mechanism for housing provision, leaving little room for collectivity and self-organisation in housing.

Collaborative Living Today The current and fourth wave of collaborative living began to emerge towards the end of the 1990s, in parallel with increasing globalisation and a series of crises that include worsening housing affordability, increasing severity of planetary environmental degradation, and deep social and demographic changes. All of these factors challenge the suitability of how housing and urban areas are currently developed. This might all lead us to conclude that, ideologically, collaborative living today is strongly linked to social movements claiming spatial and housing justice, as well as to post-capitalist discourses. Amongst the wide diversity of collaborative living forms that can be found across Europe today, it is useful to distinguish the main motivations for groups to self-organise. In a study 10 conducted by the TU Delft Co-Lab Research group in 2019–20 that examined

1 COLLABORATIVE LIVING: WHAT’S IN A NAME? collaborative living forms in 14 European countries, two main motivations stood out: ‘community orientation’ and ‘collective self-provision’ [see flip at the end of the book]. Both of these motivations can be found to different degrees in different projects, but there are some housing forms where one or the other motivation is more marked.

In community-oriented housing, groups deliberately seek social interaction in the day-to-day events of their lives. Community-oriented housing includes forms of cohousing, eco-villages and living groups. In projects where the main motivation is collective self-provision, groups work together to achieve their joint goal, which is to create user-defined (affordable) housing together. In this strand, although a certain conviviality may be part of the project, taking part in each other’s lives is not the main goal. In this category, we find housing forms that are collectively self-developed, such as Collective Private Commissioning or CPC (‘Collectief Particulier Opdrachtgeverschap’) in the Dutch context; self-help housing projects, housing cooperatives, and Community Land Trusts (CLT). For some collaborative living forms, we can identify sub-forms such as senior cohousing, rental cooperatives, and ownership/shared equity cooperatives. ‘ People say collaborative living is marginal, so we don’t need to measure it. And because we don’t measure it, we continue to think it’s marginal. This is very self-reinforcing.’ Carla Huisman, researcher, at the Co-Lab Mapping webinar, Project Together! How many collaborative living projects are there in Europe? Although there are no reliable aggregate figures due to the lack of common definitions across Europe, data compiled by the Co-Lab Mapping project [see the case box on the following page] show some characteristics of the sector in different countries. Figure 4 shows a selection of reliable aggregate data about collaborative living forms in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Data on collaborative living forms are scattered across countries, regions and cities, and there is a lack of standard definitions. This prevents a comparative understanding of the challenges faced by these housing forms and the opportunities they provide. Co-Lab Mapping provides a validated classification of different collaborative housing forms in Europe. This classification was jointly developed with researchers and practitioners across 14 European countries. The available data currently covers 10 countries where collaborative housing forms are wellestablished and represented by national umbrella organisations: Belgium, Denmark, England, Wales, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. The data is visualised in a user-friendly online platform. https://mapping.co-lab-research.net/ CASE BOX THE CO-LAB MAPPING PROJECT

Figure 4 Map with a selection of available data on collaborative living 500 Community Land Trusts 284 Senior cohousing 69 Cohousing 812 Community-oriented housing 151 Collective Private Commissioned housing 331 Housing cooperatives

Figure 5 Collaborative living forms in the Netherlands (selected data) Housing cooperatives (Wooncoöperaties) * Some projects overlap with Gemeenschappelijke Wonen data Source: Cooplink.nl Collaborative living form Total number ActiveD eveloping TenureL ocation Community-oriented housing (Gemeenschappelijke Wonen) (*includes Central Wonen, Woongroep, Groepswonen voor Ouderen) Source: Co-Lab Mapping project / www.gemeenschappelijkwonen.nl Collective Private Commissioning (CPO) Source: Co-Lab Mapping project / www.bouwenineigenbeheer.nl 812 696 116 151 134 17 - 1969: first documented initiative - 1970-1980: ca. 100 initiatives Peak after 2000 - 1984: first documented CPO - 1984-1999: only 6 initiatives - 2000-2023: all the rest - ownership/shared equity cooperatives (vastgoedcoöperatie and koperscoöperatie) - (management) rental cooperatives (beheercoöperatie) Mainly social rental - 143 full ownership - 8 social rental All over the country.

Higher concentration in big cities (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, The Hague) All over the country, higher concentration in big cities - 102 in Amsterdam - 66 in Nijmegen - 62 in Utrecht - 53 in The Hague - 38 in Rotterdam Most of them in smaller cities.

- 26 in Eindhoven - 6 in Breda - 5 in Rotterdam

1 COLLABORATIVE LIVING: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

In the Netherlands [figure 5], most of the collaborative living is com - munity-oriented living (‘Gemeenschappelijk Wonen’), which includes cohousing (‘Centraal Wonen’), living groups (‘Woongroepen’), and group-living for the elderly (‘Groepswonen voor Ouderen’), with over 800 projects altogether. According to umbrella organisation Cooplink, in 2023 there were 331 known housing cooperatives (‘wooncoöperaties’) for rent and for shared ownership. However, Cooplink estimates the total number of initiatives to be much higher. In addition, the CPC model mentioned above, where the main motivation is collective self-provi - sion, encompassed some 151 projects throughout the country in 2022.

WHY TOGETHER?

2 WHY TOGETHER?

In the previous chapter we referred to the two main motivations for people to engage in collaborative living. Apart from housing, research1 shows that individuals join collective-action initiatives for a variety of reasons, ranging from the pragmatic to the idealistic. The former includes, for example, the search for economies of scale in the provision of services or goods, a better collective bargaining position when negotiating with authorities, sharing risks and resources, and lowering transaction costs. On the other hand, idealistic motives, such as community building, are as–and sometimes even more–important for engaging in collective self-organisation than pragmatic motives. But unlike services, whether it be food, energy, or mobility, collectivity in housing requires committing not only to the process of producing the good or service, but to sharing space and activities on a daily basis. A home, unlike a car or food, represents the physical and permanent embodiment of the collective endeavour. It is therefore important to distinguish two dimensions of togetherness in collaborative living: on the one hand, ‘doing it together’, and on the other, ‘living together’ [figure 6]. In this chapter, we look in more detail at the continuum of motivations that can be found in current collaborative living projects, both in terms of self-provision and community-orientation.

Collaborative living Developing together Living together Design Construction Management Shared spaces Social interaction Figure 6 Collaborative living: between self-provision and community-orientation

2 WHY TOGETHER?

Doing It Together Collective self-organisation takes time and effort. Evidence shows 2 that a large number of collaborative housing initiatives are never realised: people disagree and fall out; some move to another city or country; others get divorced or even die before the project is com - pleted. In other words, life happens. And this is only considering per - sonal and interpersonal factors. If we add the difficulties faced by self-organised groups in places where the financial, legal, and plan - ning regulations do not facilitate collaborative living, realising this type of housing seems an almost unattainable goal. So, why bother? Throughout history, people have worked together to provide shelter for themselves. Across the world, collective self-organisation represents a major way of producing housing for low-income popu - lations. We saw in chapter 1 that in modern times, one of the most long-standing forms of collective self-provided housing has been the housing cooperative. In addition, there are several other forms of collective self-organisation in housing that are defined by the need to join forces with others to realise a common project. ‘Working together towards a common goal’ is usually described in terms of cooperation and collaboration. Cooperation has been defined as an exchange in which the participants benefit from the encounter; this is different from the idea of collaboration, which can be understood as working together to create something new in support of a shared vision.3 In collaborative living forms, both processes are at play. To succeed, residents need to agree on a shared vision about their common housing project. On the other hand, in order to cooperate, parties need to engage in a dialogue through which they become aware of their own views and enhance their understanding of one another. Furthermore some argue that the cooperative practices of collaborative living projects can also foster civic virtues such as tolerance and open-mindedness, thereby contributing to democratic values more broadly.4