Cohousing•S Relevance to Degrowth Theories
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Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 576–580 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro Cohousing’s relevance to degrowth theories Matthieu Lietaert European University Institute, 50014 Florence, Italy article info abstract Article history: In a context of ever faster globalisation, citizens and their environment are clearly put under pressure. Received 12 December 2008 This article introduces the cohousing movement as a model to make life more social and greener in an Received in revised form urban context. Cohousing communities are neighbourhood developments that creatively mix private and 20 November 2009 common dwellings to recreate a sense of community, while preserving a high degree of individual Accepted 20 November 2009 privacy. In that respect, cohousing fits perfectly well with degrowth economic theories. Yet, cohousing Available online 16 December 2009 goes beyond theory as this phenomenon that started in Scandinavia 30 years ago is now spreading in the Anglo-Saxon world since the 1990s, and more recently in the rest of Europe and in Japan. Keywords: Urban design Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Degrowth Cohousing Intentional Community Social Movement Ecovillage 1. Introduction1 I argue in this article that cohousing is strongly related to the degrowth movement, especially at the micro level of urban neigh- At the dawn of the 21st century, urban citizens have to face a list bourhoods. In fact, degrowth economists and activists criticise the of problems that does not seem to stop growing: an increasingly unsustainable and contradiction-based overproduction of the flexible labour market, changes in family structure, the hyper- current economic system. Professor Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen isolation of individuals, mobility problems, the ongoing rise of was among the first to explain in The Entropy Law and the Economic stress levels, and an ageing population to name only a few. On top Process (1971) that economic theories do not take into account the of that, urban western residents’ consuming habits are not only problem related to the dispersion and loss of energy in the system. unsustainable in the long run, but in many ways are connected to He argued that understanding economics is much broader than the problems listed above. One answer to some of the problems mere market exchanges and prices and that the sustainabilility of citizens face is cohousing. Cohousing communities are neighbour- a (sub)system is assessed on the sustainability of the entire system hood developments that creatively mix private and common containing it. For this he talked about bioeconomics. Contemporary dwellings to recreate a sense of community, while preserving economists, like Serge Latouche and others [2], elaborate therefore a high degree of individual privacy. This movement clearly shows ways to put into practice a gradual decrease in economic output, and how human beings can, to huge advantage, work among them- manage a true globally sustainable society. Above all, degrowth selves by developing non-market relationship when possible and makes it possible to think beyond the orthodoxy of the growth practical. The strength of cohousing is that it is based on a trial and economic theories. This is key at a time when society as a whole, error method. Its success is mainly due to its high degree of flexible from school children to CEOs, are assessed in terms of their daily bottom-up approach, making it possible to adapt each cohousing production, while paying little attention to the consequences of it. community to its particular cultural context. The cohousing model, as a bottom-up movement and living organism, offers an existing practice to reflect on. As the French newspaper La De´croissance:le journal de la joie de vivre tells, degrowth is about reaching a greater quality of life. In many ways, this is what cohousing is all about too. E-mail address: [email protected] The article is structured as follows. First it analyses how 1 This article is based on a research which is also available as award winner video community is disappearing in urban contexts. Second, it tells what reportage (http://stores.lulu.com/mlietaert). The author would like to thank the reviewers for their comments on earlier draft as well as Maria Brenton for her cohousing is and where it comes from. Finally, it gives some concrete help with the editing. examples of how cohousing changes the life of people and fosters 0959-6526/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2009.11.016 M. Lietaert / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 576–580 577 degrowth by increasing the quality of social relations; the efficiency What should we think about the city today? Just like firms, of daily time management; and group consumption patterns. states and any institutions from the school to the church, cities are put under pressure by powerful global dynamics [7]. This in turn 2. Setting the context influences the life of citizens on a daily basis. The city has hence become like a centaur: on the one hand, it fascinates mostly by its To start with it is essential to stress that the cohousing model did ‘‘allure’’, available work, cultural and social activities; on the other not arise by magic. Instead it can be described as a grassroots and hand, cities are dangerous places to live as they simply swallow innovative answer to very specific problems that many citizens are people’s time and energy, forcing them to rush all the time to make increasingly facing, mainly in northern western society. Cohousing ends meet. And the rate at which people living inside cities are left has helped people to recreate village-like communities in imper- outside of the market system is growing faster every day [8]. sonal urban contexts. Working distance, flexible working conditions and above all rising individualism are factors that have made it hard for communities to 3. Neo-liberal globalisation survive in an urban context since the 1980s. Even the family, which one could define as the closest community to an individual, was far There is no doubt that the rise of capitalist society, followed later from protected and it is not a coincidence that the number of single by the first and the second industrial modes of production, deeply parent families and single householders is in sharp increase in influenced the relationship between human beings and their urban contexts [9]. As cohesion inside communities was slowly but environment. In the mid 1970s, economic historians noted a para- surely decreasing, the community buffer soon appeared unable to digm shift from the Keynesian economic model, based on state defend individuals from external threats as much as before. The city intervention to regulate the market economy for social purposes, to had shifted from being a place for protection, social life and a neo-liberal or monetarist economic model, based on a progressive happiness to a place for production, competition, stress and tele- – and sometimes radical-withdrawal of the state to let the free rather than face-to-face communication. One of today’s main market economy operate by itself [1]. consequences of this is that loneliness is a main characteristic of For the last three decades the so-called freedom of the market urban life [10]. economy has become a religious faith for politicians whose obses- Cohousing communities are neighbourhood developments sion is more to increase the GDP, the competitiveness of economic where private and common facilities are combined in response to actors, the flexibility of the job markets, than to focus on better the social and the practical needs of contemporary urban citizens. living standards for the majority, and to protect the environment. Cohousing makes life more fun and easier while preserving the The main fallacy of the market theory is to believe that the market is privacy of each individual adult and child. The magic is that nothing self-regulated and that there is no reason to worry about social and is rigid in such a place: it all depends on what the community can environmental problems. However, one can easily see the funda- afford and wants to create. What is fundamental is that cohousers mental contradiction between an economic model fostering themselves are the driving force behind the process. Cohousing unlimited growth rates, and environmental and human resources communities gather together on average between 15 and 35 fami- which are by definition limited. lies, that is 50–100 people, in order to work optimally. Smaller or On the basis of governmental statistics from the EU and the US, bigger ones tend to create problems [11]. a school of economists [3] corroborated the clear link between higher economic growth and lower individual happiness by 5. Cohousing, a part of the solution including non-economic elements in their analysis. The Easterlin Paradox is a relevant piece of research showing that, in interna- 5.1. What is cohousing? tional comparisons, the average reported level of happiness does not vary much with national income per person. In other words A characteristic of these particular housing models is that they GDP per capita has little to do with greater happiness. The collapse are often set in an urban or semi-urban context. In that sense, they of individual happiness is in fact a deep structural change of our are not like ecovillages that tend to be more rural. It is however time which testifies to a sharp increase in consumption of tran- difficult to draw a strict line between these two types of commu- quilisers and narcoleptics to face stress related diseases, something nities and similar benefits can be noticed. By being largely an urban the World Health Organisation highlights as the most widely phenomenon, cohousing communities have shown a constructive spread disease in the 21st century.2 Governments all over the EU alternative to the growing atomisation and loneliness of individuals are already concerned about the fact that workers increasingly take in large cities.