Aim of the project and developments during the research period

The aim of the project was to analyze what learning experiences different forms of cohousing provide for social and ecological sustainability in the context of housing policy. A part of the aim was to investigate if, and how, social and ecological sustainability may contradict or support each other in the practices of cohousing. In the course of the project we decided to add economic sustainability.

Early on in the project, we realized that local governance affected the practices of cohousing, and therefore we decided to carry out case studies in four, for the project particularly relevant, cities: Hamburg, Gothenburg, Copenhagen and Barcelona. The definition of cohousing has been an on-going discussion in the project. Since different definitions vary between different actors and countries, we decided to work with an open definition that emphasized “the common”.

How the project was carried out

The project was carried out through four main studies:
1) Governance and cohousing: comparisons of how local governance affects the practices of cohousing in Hamburg, Gothenburg, Copenhagen and Barcelona.
2) Overarching mapping of cohousing: Denmark and Sweden. Method/material: surveys. (In Spain the number of cohousing projects were too few to make a survey meaningful; in Germany the number of projects were so many that the resources of the project were not sufficient to do a full survey).
3) Micro-analysis: Focusing on forms of community, family, and the roles and experiences of children.
4) Relation between social and ecological sustainability: Footprint analysis of resource consumption related to income – case studies of four cohousing projects involving the variables urban/rural and high income/low income.

The project also recruited additional researchers with research experiences in the four case countries: Henrik Gutzon Larsen, Department of Human Geography, Lund University, with experience of research on urban conditions in Denmark; Pernilla Hagbert, Urban and Regional Studies at the Dept. of Urban Planning and Environment at KTH, where she also worked with the post-doc project “Beyond GDP-growth - Scenarios for sustainable building and planning”; David Scheller, Potsdam University, Siri Kjellberg, Ph D student at Department of Human Geography, Lund University; and Lorenzo Vidal Folch, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Three most important results and contributions the international research front

Result 1: Multi-dimensional definition of sustainability

As part of our empirical investigation, we examined the meaning ascribed to “sustainable urban development” in the context of cohousing projects and local government support to cohousing and self-build projects. The result of this was a definition that included both analytical and descriptive components. On one hand, we distinguish between the meanings attached to 1) the social and ideological functions of sustainability discourse; and on the other hand 2) sustainability practices. In addition, we discerned a number of 3) inherent contradictions between different dimensions of sustainability (the ecological, social and the economic dimensions); and 4) conflicts between different definitions articulated by various actors (for a detailed analysis, see Scheller and Thörn, 2018).

1) Analyses of policy documents and of interviews with politicians and civil servants demonstrated that the concept of sustainable urban development clearly functions as an empty signifier, understood as a discursive nodal point uniting the fields of urban planning and urban restructuring. It’s social function consists in mobilizing and integrating various actors, with different interests, ideas and strategies. This means it could also have an ideological function in the sense that it can create the appearance of a broad consensus in a policy field defined by conflict and unequal power relations.

2) Such a general conclusion does not, however, imply that studies of the actual meanings ascribed to sustainability are irrelevant. Because ‘empty’ in this context means that its meaning is not fixed, it is necessary to establish empirically how the discourse actually works––and varies––when it is translated into governing strategies and practices in the local contexts of urban governance. We discerned the following definitions:

Ecological sustainability:
- buildings constructed should have low climate impact (self-build cohousing projects),
- resource-saving forms of living associated with cohousing as a collective form of living, emphasizing urban sharing

Social sustainability:
- socio-economic: affordable housing
- creating community
- self-government (autonomy/democracy)
- social mixing
Economic sustainability (see (3) below)

3) The meaning of ecological sustainability in this context was quite coherent and shared by politicians, planners, architects and cohousing associations. The same applies for three aspects of social sustainability – community, mixing and autonomy. There is a shared view concerning reasonable housing costs, but with an important conflict regarding the weight applied to this goal. Residents tend to define this under the category of economic sustainability; from their perspective, the most important goal of cohousing is first and foremost the challenge to create a stable economy that enables affordable (and, thus, non-speculative) housing. Politicians and civil servants, on the other hand, define economic sustainability in terms of economic growth.

4) With regard to the derived purpose (see the introduction of this report), we found that there was a distinct contradiction between economic sustainability as growth and social sustainability, primarily concerning housing costs but also autonomy and social mixing (understood in terms of groups with different income levels). On the other hand, and opposite what is usually assumed, we found that there is not a necessary contradiction between ecological sustainability and social sustainability in form of affordable housing costs.

Result 2: The problem of realising (sustainable) cohousing due to prevailing urban development pattern

An important result is that the fundamental conditions for realising cohousing in urban environments have changed profoundly compared to the first post-war wave, as there today is lack of affordable housing and in some cities a general housing shortage. We found that this results in (a) that new cohousing communities also constitute themselves as self-build projects, which is to say that the construction process is carried out in cooperation with housing companies, architects and often municipal civil servants; and that (b) the prevailing urban development pattern – characterised by rising land prices, property speculation and gentrification – makes it difficult if not impossible to build and live collectively in affordable new-build housing. The result is that new cohousing tends to be a middle-class phenomenon and risks contributing to gentrification. We also found (c) where there was a strong political will to support self-build projects and cohousing as part of an overarching sustainability strategy (Hamburg), this was not sufficient to counteract the above-mentioned tendencies.

Result 3: Tenure forms as the single-most important factor for sustainable cohousing

Tenure forms differ considerably between European countries, but we observed the following cohousing forms: (1) individuals own flats or shares in cohousing; (2) individuals or groups rent from a private, municipal or cooperative housing company (with reduced rent for self-management; (3) groups own the building as a cooperative. The most important consequence for sustainability is that type 1 affects social sustainability negatively, due to the possibility of individuals selling their unit, and that type 3 has the greatest possibilities of realising sustainability goals, as the group here can affect all aspects of housing.

New research questions generated by the project

On the basis of these results, particularly Result 2, we find it highly interesting and relevant to ask the same questions as those posed in this project (which concerned urban cohousing) in relation to cohousing in rural areas and smaller cities, as a range of preconditions for realising sustainability goals here are different from those found in large cities.

International dimensions of the project

- Meetings and continuous contact with central members in the international network for research on cohousing, CORE-COHO, and participation in international conferences and conference sessions organised by this network.

- Cooperation with the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Potsdam University.

Dissemination of results

This has happened in the following ways:

Scientific conferences:
- Annual meeting in the Association of American Geographers, San Francisco, March 2016.
- European Network for Housing Research (ENHR) 2016 Conference, Belfast, June 2016.
- 7th Nordic Geographers Meeting, Stockholm, June 2017.
- ENHR 2017 Conference, Tirana, September 2017.
- ENHR 2018 Conference, Uppsala, June 2018.

Outside academia:
- Two one-day conferences and a public seminar with participants from cohousing, politicians and civil servants.
- Study visits in cohousing, meetings and interviews.
- Popular-scientific articles.
- Texts in handbook for renters, Rätt att bo kvar (The right to stay put).
- Popular-scientific publication in English and Swedish (see below).
- Presentation of project in Dagens Nyheter, “God morgen världen” (Swedish Radio), Göteborg-Posten, ETC Göteborg and Pam a Pam (interviews with project participants).
- Presentations at housing-political conference organised by Barcelona Municipality and at Solidarity Economy Fair of Catalonia.