Contemporary Co-Housing in Europe

Contemporary Co-housing in Europe This book investigates co-housing as an alternative housing form in relation to sustainable urban development. Co-housing is often lauded as a more sustainable way of living. The primary aim of this book is to critically explore co-housing in the context of wider social, economic, political and environmental developments. This volume fills a gap in the literature by contextualising co-housing and related housing forms. With focus on Denmark, Sweden, Hamburg and Barcelona, the book presents general analyses of co-housing in these contexts and provides specificdiscus- sions of co-housing in relation to local government, urban activism, family life, spatial logics and socio-ecology. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in a broad range of social-scientific fields concerned with housing, urban development and sustainability, as well as to planners, decision-makers and activists. Pernilla Hagbert holds a PhD in Architecture and is currently a researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Her research explores home- related practices and everyday life, interpretations of sustainability in housing and urban development, and norm-critical, alternative ways of living, as part of sustainability transitions. Henrik Gutzon Larsen teaches Human Geography at Lund University, Sweden. His research addresses urban geography and housing, political geography and history of geographical thought. Håkan Thörn is Full Professor of Sociology at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His research is concerned with social movements, urban governance and globali- zation, and he has published a number of articles and books on these topics, including Urban Uprisings: Challenging Neoliberal Urbanism in Europe (co-edited, 2017) and Christiania 1971–2011: Space for Urban Alternatives (co-edited, 2011). Cathrin Wasshede is positioned at the Department of Sociology and Work Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research addresses gender and sexuality, resistance and (urban) social movements. Contemporary Co-housing in Europe Towards Sustainable Cities? Edited by Pernilla Hagbert, Henrik Gutzon Larsen, Håkan Thörn and Cathrin Wasshede First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Pernilla Hagbert, Henrik Gutzon Larsen, Håkan Thörn, Cathrin Wasshede; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Pernilla Hagbert, Henrik Gutzon Larsen, Håkan Thörn and Cathrin Wasshede to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hagbert, Pernilla, editor. Title: Contemporary co-housing in Europe : towards sustainable cities? / edited by Pernilla Hagbert, Henrik Gutzon Larsen, Håkan Thörn, and Cathrin Wasshede. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019050110 (print) | LCCN 2019050111 (ebook) | Subjects: LCSH: Housing, Cooperative--Europe, Western. | City planning--Europe, Western. | Cities and towns--Europe, Western--Growth. Classification: LCC HD7287.72.E85 C66 2020 (print) | LCC HD7287.72. E85 (ebook) | DDC 344/.1094--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050110 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050111 ISBN: 978-1-138-32591-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-45017-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books Contents List of illustrations vii Acknowledgements viii Co-housing, sustainable urban development and governance: an introduction 1 HÅKAN THÖRN, HENRIK GUTZON LARSEN, PERNILLA HAGBERT AND CATHRIN WASSHEDE PART I Co-housing in context 21 1 Denmark: anti-urbanism and segregation 23 HENRIK GUTZON LARSEN 2 Sweden: in between co-housing and public housing 38 CLAES CALDENBY 3 Hamburg: housing movements and local government 57 DAVID SCHELLER 4 Barcelona: housing crisis and urban activism 74 HENRIK GUTZON LARSEN PART II Co-housing as sustainable urban life? 95 5 Autonomy vs. government: consequences for sustainability in co-housing 97 DAVID SCHELLER AND HÅKAN THÖRN 6 Urban activism and co-housing 120 DAVID SCHELLER AND HENRIK GUTZON LARSEN vi Contents 7 Doing family in co-housing communities 140 CATHRIN WASSHEDE 8 The social logic of space: community and detachment 163 CLAES CALDENBY, PERNILLA HAGBERT AND CATHRIN WASSHEDE 9 Co-housing as a socio-ecologically sustainable alternative? 183 PERNILLA HAGBERT Constraints and possibilities for co-housing to address contemporary urban and ecological crises: a conclusion 202 HÅKAN THÖRN, HENRIK GUTZON LARSEN, PERNILLA HAGBERT AND CATHRIN WASSHEDE Index 214 Illustrations Figure 1.1 Danish intergenerational co-housing communities and housing units, 1970–2016 (cumulative count of 110 communities) 24 Tables 3.1 Types of collaborative housing in Germany 70 5.1 Co-housing projects and relations with government 106 5.2 Social and economic sustainability of co-housing cases 113 6.1 Characteristics of post-autonomous practice 123 Acknowledgements This book is based on the research project ‘Co-housing and sustainable urban development: cases from Denmark, Germany, Spain and Sweden’, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences). We are greatly indebted to all our informants who gener- ously dedicated time to answer our questions, and in some cases invited us to their homes and shared meals with us. In addition to the project member and contributor to this book, Claes Caldenby, the editors would also like to thank David Scheller, Lorenzo Vidal and Peter Jakobsen, who all played important roles in our team by assisting with field work, participating in meetings and giving us valuable feedback on the research process. Sofia Björk provided constructive and helpful comments on Chapter 7. Co-housing, sustainable urban development and governance An introduction Håkan Thörn, Henrik Gutzon Larsen, Pernilla Hagbert and Cathrin Wasshede This book is a critical contribution to the growing research field that has emerged in connection with a new wave of co-housing that has been identified in both the United States and Europe in the 2000s (Williams 2005; Sargisson 2012; Tummers 2016; Lang et al. 2018). It provides an analysis of different forms of co-housing in relation to contemporary discourses on urban development, housing provision and sustainability, and how co-housing is realized in the context of local urban governance. With rising real estate values in cities, de-regulations of housing markets and what increasingly appears to be a permanent and global housing crisis (Aalbers 2015; Madden and Marcuse 2016), it has become even more difficult for low-income groups to access affordable housing. In addition, rising concerns over climate change and other ecological and social impacts of modern ways of living have contributed to a growing interest in developing more socially, ecologically and economic- ally sustainable modes of living. Co-housing is often lauded as an alternative housing form with the potential to meet these challenges. This book takes its departure from the need for a critical exploration of co-housing in the context of sustainable urban development. All the contributors to the book were part of a research team involved in a four- year research project centred on in-depth studies of co-housing in and around major cities in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Spain. While we do not compare co-housing in these countries according to a conventional national-comparative approach, these four countries were chosen to explore how co-housing developments can be understood and contextualized in urban sustainability discourses and policies in Europe today. In particular, aspects such as diverse housing policies, varying cultural traditions of co-housing, tenure and ownership forms, and processes of individualization, were seen as relevant starting points. However, we also argue that an analysis of co-housing needs to consider not just the national, but also the specific municipal, and the more general global context atthesametime. Our field work was carried out in a European context. In this respect, the research has a clear Western European focus, at least empirically. Never- theless, we also treat co-housing practices and their interaction with local government and national contexts as responses to, and articulations of, wider 2 H. Thörn et al. developments, particularly those that have been conceptualized as neoliberal urbanism (Mayer 2016). We argue that our research is relevant for an under- standing of contemporary housing politics, not only in Europe, but more generally in advanced capitalist countries where neoliberal urbanism has created housing crises of different shapes, and where sustainable

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