Co-living, co-housing & intentional communities

A variety of approaches and movements have the aim to provide affordable, ecological or community housing in both urban and rural contexts. They have in common that it is a group of people who live together or share common facilities and who regularly associate with each other on the basis of explicit common values.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

Shapes, sizes and applications

The concept of cooperative housing has a long history. According to the TRANSIT project (Picabea et al. 2016 ) the first independent housing cooperatives date back to the mid 19th century. In some countries cooperative housing is an important part of the housing market. Although housing cooperatives can be found all over the world, percentages differ per country. Cooperative housing, that was studied as part of the TRANSIT project, is part of a global movement of cooperatives that have been existing since 1895. Housing cooperatives can have many forms with their own characteristics.

Housing cooperatives can be found in both urban and rural contexts. In the TRANSIT project two examples of co-housing were studied in depth: El Hogar Obrera in Buenos Aires City Argentina and Vauban District in Freiburg. El Hogar Obrera built more than 15.000 homes while Vauban Freiburg is “a special model district of sustainable living and participatory planning” with 2000 housing units.

Looking at Ecovillages they also come in many shapes, sizes and sorts. The size of intentional ecovillage communities range anywhere between 8 to 250 residents.

Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice

Many of the co-housing initiatives and intentional communities directly address several aspects of sustainability. Some pay attention to ecological aspects of building and living, e.g. through recycling/repairing/reusing materials or the production of renewable/cleaner energy). While others focus more on economical aspects of living and providing affordable housing, e.g. through developing community land trusts. And others focus more on social aspects, such as living in a community where people share spaces.

Narrative of change

According to Picabea et al. 2016 , the global network of the cooperative housing movement is oriented to: “First, the movement proposes cooperation against competition. That is, their main objective is to strengthen the cooperative values and cooperation between cooperatives at local, regional and international levels. The aim of the movement is no competition and overcoming other (in terms of zero-sum game), but social cooperation for mutual benefit. Secondly, the cooperative movement despises the spirit of individual gain (in fact cooperatives do not generate profit rate) in order to activate dynamics of economic and social welfare” (p.6). Following this TRANSIT study, empowerment of communities in terms of decision making about where, when and how people want to live is part of their narrative of change.

Given the rich diversity of ecovillages across the world, It is impossible to generalise one narrative of change for all ecovillages. There is however a shared narrative used by the Global Ecovillage Network , which e.g. on its website claims to “envision a world of empowered citizens and communities, designing and implementing pathways to a regenerative future, while building bridges of hope and international solidarity”.

A commonality of the narratives of change for housing cooperatives and ecovillages is the need for more decentralized or self-organized systems to enable access to or the generation of housing that is more affordable, ecological or social.

Suggested reading

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