Collaborative Housing: A tool for social integration and increased sustainability

All over the world there is a shortage of adequate, affordable housing that enables social integration and sustainability. Many individuals and households have access to housing but live in different kinds of involuntary isolation with respect to age, gender, income, culture and ethnic background. There is a lack of housing forms that can contribute to solving these societal challenges through different forms of tenure such as rental and housing cooperative. In Sweden, there is an urgent need to solve societal challenges and increase housing provision due to unwanted isolation, segregation and a housing backlog
of more than 600,000 units. The production of new housing offers an opportunity for innovative housing solutions and a more connected society.

There is an increasing interest in learning from recent experience of collaborative housing as a tool for social integration and increased sustainability. Collaborative housing in Europe seems to reappear during economic, social, cultural or ecological crises. This report is based on the research project Sustainable living in community: a step towards integration and reduced climate impact conducted by the authors. Collaborative housing projects in Sweden have been studied using systematic literature review, space syntax analysis, observations, questionnaire surveys, online diary, interviews with residents and
professionals. In addition, recent examples of collaborative housing in Denmark and the Netherlands have been studied. A concluding workshop with different stakeholders in order to receive feedback to the preliminary findings has been conducted.

This Building Issue highlights the concept of collaborative housing, as a housing form where residents collaborate within different stages of the project – from design to daily self-management of the building, agree on a common purpose and have social interaction among themselves. Collaborative housing can contribute to addressing several aspects related to social sustainability and social integration. Common spaces in a building can be designed to favour social integration of people with different backgrounds, ages and living conditions. Collaborative housing can embrace different forms of tenure and collaboration
with external actors and enables residents to exert their individual and collective
effort to make decisions concerning their living environments.

The aim of this study is to contribute with practical knowledge regarding collaborative housing as a system and as a process to achieve adequate and affordable housing as well as for building bridges between people with different backgrounds and living conditions. The aim is also to show how the design of collaborative housing can encourage social interaction among residents as well as sharing practices. This report offers recommendations to different actors within the housing sector and civil society such as starter groups for new projects and professionals from the private and public sectors.