Regenerative Neighbourhoods: Is Cohousing the Answer?

Regenerative Neighbourhoods Is Cohousing the Answer?

Graeme Dow - Critical Study - Leeds Metropolitan University - 2012 Landscape Architecture - School of Art, Environment & Technology

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Contents 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Aims and Objectives 6 1.2 What is Cohousing? 6 1.3 Principles 8

2. THEORY 2.1 Social/Political Ideology 10 2.2 Environmental Ethics 11 2.3 Participatory Design 13

3. HISTORY

3.1 Building Utopia 14 3.2 Industrialisation 14 3.3 Garden City Movement 15 3.4 Co-operative Housekeeping 15 3.5 Reilly Greens 16 3.6 Modernist Radiant Cities 16 3.7 Urbanist Compact Cities 16

4. COHOUSING TODAY

4.1 Denmark 18 4.2 USA 19 4.3 Britain 21

5. BRITAIN IN CRISIS 22 5.1 Post-Industrial Decline 22 5.2 Housing Shortage and Design Crisis 22 5.3 Existing Alternative Settlement Models 24 5.4 Community-Led Building 24

6. KEY CRITERIA

6.1 Appropriate Scale 26 6.2 Relevance & Resilience 26 6.3 Diversity of Households 26 6.4 Community Cohesion 27 6.5 Local Economy 27 6.6 Affordability 27 6.7 Health and Activity 28

7. CASE STUDY: LILAC

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8. ASSESSMENT

8.1 Social Housing 32 8.2 Local Economy 32

9. CONCLUSION 9.1 High Functioning Neighbourhoods 34 9.2 Failings 34 9.3 Present Opportunities 34 9.4 Future Insecurity & Community Cohesion 34 9.5 Modular “Mosaic” Neighbourhoods 34 9.6 Financial Architecture 35 9.7 Government Support? 35 9.8 Design Frameworks 35 9.9 The Way Forwards 35

APPENDIX Regenerative Principle: Beyond Sustainability 36

REFERENCES

Books 38 Images 40 Regenerative Neighbourhoods

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1.Introduction All creatures endeavour to make their environment comfortable to live in. Humans have always created shelters, using a variety of materials and building styles. Over the ages, there have been countless designs, suited to different people and different places.

However, it is worth considering that the urban drift that has been occurring since the 1800’s may at some point reverse, leading to a repopulating of the countryside and an overall more dispersed pattern of low density settlements (Whitefield, 2004, p. 141).

This report is concerned with a model for contemporary neighbourhood shelter called cohousing. It is one of many current alternative models that endeavour to respond to modern needs and create robust, environmentally sound and enjoyable places to live.

“Cohousers are simply creating consciously the community that used to occur naturally.”

(Anderson, n.d. quoted in McCamant & Durrett, p.24)

1.1 Aims and Objectives This report will first look at the principles and theories behind cohousing, then look at relevant historical trends and precedents, before examining the practice of cohousing today. It will also briefly look at other housing/settlement models before considering the current state of neighbourhoods in Britain (including affordability, planning permission, community cohesion, housing shortages etc.), and identifying key issues to be addressed. This will produce the criteria necessary for analysing the case study, before leading to the conclusion and recommendations.

This report will not be exploring the entire evolution of settlements. Neither will it be looking in depth into projects in other countries. Although we can learn much from other times and places, this report is primarily concerned with exploring the phenomenon of contemporary cohousing in Britain. It is concerned with urban and suburban areas and has not looked into rural areas, where conditions and requirements often differ.

It is also important to note that this report is written for the present and immediate future. This means that, whilst some attempts have been made to consider future insecurities, it remains within a broadly conventional paradigm of relative economic and climatic stability, technological progress and resource availability. What lies beyond this is outside the scope of this report.

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1.2 What is Cohousing?

Cohousing originated in Denmark in the early 1970's, from where it has gradually spread across Europe. It has taken off in the USA over the last 20 years and, although slow to start, is now increasing its foothold in Britain.

Its’ aim is to combine the qualities of village life with the cultural and professional opportunities of the city.

Referring to the ideals of the pioneer, Jan GudmandHoyer, McCamant & Durrett go on to say that “neither the suburban single-family home nor the multi-storey apartment building were acceptable alternatives, because both lack the common facilities needed to create a true sense of community” (Creating Cohousing, 2011, p. 39).

A typical project will have between 15-35 households in a variety of units of different sizes, ranging from small flats to large houses. This allows for a diversity of members and is at a scale which encourages community. The site is focused on a central common house, with shared spaces and facilities. The design keeps vehicles to the periphery, allowing for a child friendly, car-free central area.

“The essence of cohousing is a combination of selfcontained dwelling units with some shared facilities.

Each household has its own front door and can live independently. Alongside this are shared facilities where residents can eat together when they wish, and often also a shared sitting room, guest rooms, laundry etc.” (Heeks, n.d.)

Below: ElderSpirit Community Abingdon, Virginia

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1.3 PRINCIPLES Affordability: Shared facilities mean that individual units can be smaller and more affordable. Sharing transport, childcare, food purchasing and production also help reduce costs. Most cohousing groups have some units available for affordable rent.

Sustainability: A cohousing group can live more ecologically than a single household. This can include car-pooling, shared shopping or sustainable energy systems. Social contacts and work opportunities reduce the need for car use.

Community: It creates many of the qualities of a traditional neighbourhood or small village. It makes it easy for people to socialise and support each other. It creates a safe and supportive setting, especially helpful for older people and young families.

Autonomy: Cohousing enables individuals and households to maintain a high degree of independence: they can choose how much interaction with the wider group they want. Whilst some group agreements are essential, these are kept to a minimum.

What Distinguishes Other Community-Based Models From Cohousing?

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Communes and Communal Living

no private cooking and washing spaces

Group Living Schemes and other Intentional Groups

too small scale

Village Life

not intentional and not necessarily social

New Settlements, Urban Villages etc.

continuing design routine that accentuates privacy from neighbours

Ecological Developments

does not necessarily include the social design principles

Housing Co-operatives

unlikely to qualify due to shared/private space arrangement

Housing Associations

not appropriate for self-management

Home Zones

not an intentional neighbourhood and no shared facilities

Gated Communities

exclusive and no shared facilities

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Opposite: Manzanita Village Plan, Arizona Below: Hockerton Housing Co-op, Nottinghamshire

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2.Theory 2.1 Social/Political Ideology 1960’s Radicalism Cohousing has radical roots, embedded in various 1960’s social change movements in Northern Europe, as described by Lucy Sargisson (2011). Known to the Danes as bofællesskaber (“living communities”), the first attempts were in the early 1960’s by Jan Gudmand-Hoyer, a deeply political man, passionate about communitarian values. His well-received, 1968 essay “The Missing Link between Utopia and the Dated One-Family House” was “critical of the present and imagining a better world” (Sargisson, 2011, p.25).

Gudmand-Hoyer was joined by another important figure in 1968, called Bodil Graae. Her article “Children Should Have 100 Parents” was explicitly feminist and challenged the nuclear family model. In it she advocates shared childcare, so that children are free to “go in and out of the homes around us…crawl under hedges…feel like they belong” (1967, cited in McCamant & Durrett, 2011, p.41).

Sargisson goes on to say, “Both of these activists believed that cities in the 1960’s were creating isolation and alienation and that urban housing played a causal role. They sought practical solutions to these problems, attempting to restore “disintegrating” community values, by creating better families and “villages” in an urban context” (2011, p.25).

As we can see from looking at these two pioneers, the early motivations for cohousing had strong ideological underpinnings. The small scale of these projects, along with being self-designed, built and managed also leads to a greater degree of autonomy, along the lines of older, more traditional settlements adapted to suit a modern environment.

Self Governance In his book, Rural, Dominic Stevens explores a traditional Irish model, which he describes as a “dense settlement system centred in small nucleated settlements called clachans and practicing a farming system referred to at the time as rundale… the landholding was organised communally… divided into strips [which] were re-distributed every few years 8

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between families to ensure a fair division of the different qualities of soil present” (2007, p. 37).

Stevens goes on to describe the rundale system as one that evolved “a sophisticated, careful and intelligent use of our landscape… Evolution allows us to respond to complex situations” and continues “we need to find a system of decision making that can happen at a local scale and in some way mimics the complexity of evolution and the diversity of place and situation” (2007, pp. 39-40).

At these smaller scales, he suggests, we can achieve a Participatory Democracy, “it is at this scale that people can remember and relearn the pleasures of helping each other, relying on one another, of a communality that existed in our past and will be essential for our future” (2007, p.42). The model Stevens describes has many similarities to the cohousing model, and illustrates just how political our settlement design can be.

As Jane Jacobs emphatically stated “our failures with…neighbourhoods are, ultimately, failures in localised self-government. And our successes are successes at localised self-government” (2011, p.

149).

Below: Planet Scale Systems Thinking has grown over the last 50 years Below left: Community Action

2.2 Environmental Ethics

Environmental Science

Land Ethic

Science has made great progress over the last 50 years in understanding the environment, most importantly, perhaps, James Lovelock’s Gaia Theory in the 1970’s. Lovelock proposed a holistic “Systems Model”, describing the earth as a self-regulating organism made up of interdependent systems. This contrasted with “reductionist science, the causeand-effect thinking that has dominated the last two centuries” (2006, p. 22). With this new model, Lovelock was providing a scientific rationale for Leopold’s integrated, environmental ethic.

In his renowned book, A Sand County Almanac (A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, 1949), Leopold explored the development of an environmental ethical framework. He says: “There is as yet no ethic dealing with man’s relation to the land…[it] is still property,” he continues “The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively: the land…I regard the present conservation movement as the embryo of such an affirmation” (pp. 203,204).

Here Leopold was laying a framework for the growing ecological conscience of the 20th century.

Over the past 40 years environmental issues have moved to the foreground. They are no longer fringe ideals and in many cases are becoming government policy, e.g. Localism Agenda (Field M. 2011), affecting, for instance, building design, transport, land use and energy policies.

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Below Group Work Participatory Design Opposite: Permaculture Ethics and Principles

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Ecological Design

2.3 Participatory Design

At around the same time an ecological design theory was being developed in Australia by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, called Permaculture, a portmanteau of permanent and agriculture. This is defined by Whitefield as:

This principle of participation echoes the traditional “Barn Raising”, where a community came together to collectively build a barn for one of their members.

This tradition involved all people of all skills, from design and construction to food preparation and childcare, all were involved. Communities would work, worship and celebrate together and the barn raising was another part of this interdependence.

“a practical method for developing ecologically harmonious, efficient and productive systems that can be used by anyone, anywhere” (2004).

As this diagram shows, Permaculture embodies Leopold’s and Lovelock’s scientific and ethical theories and develops them into a design system.

Human + Environmental Needs=Modern Cohousing?

The design of cohousing projects is ideally one in which as many of the members as possible play a part. This step of the process is seen as key in forming trust and a sense of community between all involved. As McCamant & Durrett explain, “one of the key strengths of cohousing is the active participation of the residents, from the earliest planning stages through construction”, (2011, p. 26).

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3.History “An ounce of history is worth a pound of logic” (Holmes, n.d. quoted in Gray, 2012)

3.1 Building Utopia Britain has a long history of people exploring alternative ways of living, of different utopian experiments. Some were made up just a few people on the fringe, whilst others led to whole towns being built and would go on to influence urban planning around the world.

Settlement design has always been a complex mixture of the practical, political, environmental, financial and spiritual. From the Ranters to the Levellers and from the Arts & Crafts to the Modernists, they were all groups of people striving to create the ideal settlement.

In his book, Utopia Britannica, Chris Coates says that “as far back as Gerard Winstanley’s address to Cromwell, “The Law of Freedom on a Platform”, in which he outlined what amounted to the first “communist manifesto”, plans have been issued

with proposals to transform small, practical utopian experiments into programmes for the country as whole or at least for specific groups of citizens”.

(2001, p. 194) James Harrington’s Civil War period Oceana (The Common-Wealth of Oceana 1656) (he was imprisoned after the restoration of the monarchy) James Silk Buckingham’s social-reformist Victoria (National Evils and Practical Remedies with a Plan for the Modern Town 1849) Robert Pemberton’s colonial vision of Queen Victoria Town (The Happy Colony 1854) Benjamin Ward Richardson public health inspired Hygeia (A City of Health 1876)

3.2 Industrialisation The industrial period saw enormous transformations in this country which had profound impacts on our land use and built environment. The movement of people from rural to urban areas and the overall increase in population, led to the town and city planning movement which we know today.

The early model industrial villages (Port Sunlight, Saltaire, Tilbury) were an alternative to the many cramped slums emerging at this time. It was also a time of significant developments in human rights (Worker’s rights, Abolition of Slavery, Suffragettes) and a time of new ideas, with many competing religious, philosophical and scientific models competing for attention.

As Reeds put it, “Queen Victoria’s reign brought a string of legislative and social reforms… public health, universal education…public transport, waste management, public works and housing standards… they also brought us compact, sustainable, mobile, well-serviced, community-friendly towns and cities” (Smart Growth, 2011, p. 37)

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Below Left: Howards Garden City Plan Below Right: Welwyn Garden City Opposite: Buckingham’s Victoria City Plan

3.3 Garden City Movement Ebenezer Howard’s influential book, “Garden Cities of To-morrow” (1898), issued in bold new ideas for town and city design. Joined by Unwin & Parker, these revolutionary designers “brought together for the first time elements of the model settlements at Bournville and Port Sunlight, Howard’s Garden City ideas and the Arts and Crafts architectural tradition in a form that would influence the planning and design of settlements in Britain and beyond for the whole of the 20th century” (Coates, Utopia Brittanica, 2001, p. 211).

It could be said that Howard was responding to the problems of Victorian cities (congestion of people, industrial pollution) without understanding the problems to come (breakdown of family ties, congestion and pollution from cars). His influential model has also come under much criticism, being blamed for many current problems, such as urban sprawl, car dependency and loss of community.

In spite of any problems that his design may have led to, it should be noted that his economic and political reforms, which were an integral part of the design, were not instigated. These included radical ideas such as income redistribution and decentralisation of power and could have had a significant impact on the performance of his new towns.

3.4 Co-operative Housekeeping It was the advent of the co-operative housekeeping model, in 1850, which led the way for neighbourhood design which was not attached to a place of work.

“With links to both the co-operative and early feminist movements, and later with those involved in Garden Cities, co-operative housekeeping provided a model for shared housing that lasted up to and beyond the Second World War” (Bunker et al, 2011, p. 11) Co-operative housekeeping schemes contained all of the elements for cohousing projects: •

Private and communal space

•

Shared meals

•

Shared gardens and open space

•

A common house with shared facilities

These schemes often attracted and were sometimes designed for, those in non-standard households, such as single women, families in towns away from extended family network and those with limited resources.

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3.5 Reilly Greens The co-housekeeping model fell out of favour after the Second World War, apart from one scheme by Sir Charles Reilly, known as the “Reilly Greens”, a series of elliptical greens surrounded by houses with shared communal facilities in the centre. These were eventually built but without any of the original shared community facilities and were the end of the cohousekeeping experiment in Britain.

A similar model, the Radburn Layout, has had similar problems as the Reilly Greens. As Lavelle explains, “we neglected many of the aspects of this holistic conception, most notably the ownership and community structures and the focus on management and maintenance of space” (Radburn Reconsidered, 2006). This has led to problems with crime and delinquency and many of these developments are now being demolished.

3.6 Modernist Radiant Cities Howard’s Garden City movement had significant effects abroad. In the USA, the European architect, Le Corbusier, began designing revolutionary high rise housing, surrounded by grass, his famous Radiant City.

This model both achieved the urban high density and the garden’s green space, “nature melts under the invasion of roads and houses and the promised seclusion becomes a crowded settlement…The solution will be found in the ‘vertical garden city.’”

(Corbusier, n.d. quoted in Jacobs, 1961, p.30). This was to be the city of the future, although they were not the success many hoped for.

3.7 Urbanist Compact Cities Jane Jacobs was the original urbanist. She understood how city communities worked and how many of the designs of the modern movements were detrimental to this functioning.

She became “increasingly critical of both the sprawl lobby and the modernists’ depredations on the vibrancy of city life… Gradually the diverse, lively and vital city she knew was being knocked down for motorways and mega-projects to house the poor, which strongly exacerbated racial segregation” (Reeds, 2011, p. 157). She went on to successfully campaign against slum clearance and road building in the heart of the city.

Jacobs’ urban renewal advocated: mixed uses, small walkable blocks, mingling of building ages and types, and a sufficiently dense concentration of people, in contrast to the low density, zoned models which Howard had brought into fashion and Le Corbusier had taken forwards. This was urban design with an understanding of community dynamics and heralded the arrival of Urbanism and the Compact City model.

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Below: Radiant Cities

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4.Cohousing Today Cohousing has spread, grown and changed since it began in the 1960’s. It could be viewed as a self-designed and managed version of co-housekeeping, without the servants.

It has proved to be increasingly popular response to modern city living. Whilst co-housekeeping tended to be a more fringe, non-standard option, its modern equivalent has a wider appeal and is steadily moving into the mainstream.

Cohousing certainly exists, on a smaller scale, in other parts of the world, including Canada, Australasia and much of Europe, this section will focus on these three countries as the most relevant to this report: Denmark, the USA and Britain.

4.1 Denmark Cohousing in Denmark has, since the first project in 1970, been well received and gone from strength to strength.

It has been used in private, rental, social housing and mixed tenure and at many scales, from individual projects to developments consisting of hundreds of units.

Government Support As early as 1971 the Danish Building Research Institute, a government agency, ran a competition for low rise, clustered, government subsidized rental housing (McCamant & Durrett, 2011). By 1976 this resulted in Tinggarden, the first rental cohousing development, which went on to influence many other similar projects.

The government continued their support with the Cooperative Housing Association Act 1981, which offered financial assistance to high density projects.

This was perfectly suited to cohousing, with its potential for smaller individual units facilitated by the shared spaces and facilities.

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Diversity Legislation also prioritised a diversity of unit size, which would lead to a diversity of households, from single people and the elderly all the way up to larger families. Although still largely a white, middle class phenomenon, the opportunity of rental units and the increasing acceptance by the public is leading to a wider representation of people.

High-Functioning Neighbourhoods Cohousing is seen as a high-functioning neighbourhood in Denmark, which strengthens society and supports individuals. As the architect Philip Arctander said “a community can in many situations give better help, than an institution; but the larger community, society, must supply the safety net… Cohousing has the possibility to be a part of a new way of handling society’s problems. Not privatising, not institutionalising, but collectivizing” (McCamant & Durrett, 2011, p. 47).

Expanding the Model There are a number of examples of larger schemes that use the cohousing model as the template. One of the largest of these is in Ballerup, a suburb of Copenhagen, which “divided the development into 48 resident-managed cohousing communities. The first phase, completed in 1990, included 11 cohousing communities of 20 to 30 dwellings (almost 300 units in all). Of these, 5 are non-profit-owned rentals, three are cooperatively financed, and three are privately financed” (McCamant & Durrett, 2011, pp. 45-46).

Legacy Although less than 1% of the population lives in cohousing (in spite of 40% saying they would like to), it has had a profound impact on the wider housing market. With increasing participatory design, mixed units, car free zones and obligatory focus groups, the cohousing development model is clearly evident. (McCamant & Durrett, 2011) Regenerative Neighbourhoods

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Below: Car Free Central Area, Canadian Cohousing

4.2 USA Whilst cohousing was spreading across Europe from the 1970’s, it took until the early 1990’s for it to reach North America, where it has proved very popular.

Currently there are more than 120 operating communities in the United States with more than 100 others in the planning phases (The Cohousing Association of the United States, 2012).

The North American model has an identical design, with both the participatory process and overall layout of clustered dwellings with shared facilities and pedestrianized central space.

Ideology This “second wave” (J, 2005) of cohousing has been identified, however, as being distinctly different form the original northern European movement in its ideology. It has identified itself as being less political and therefore has a wider appeal to the public and a more attractive investment to funders.

In her paper, Cohousing Evolution in Scandinavia and the USA, Lucy Sargisson notes that the American groups were “more interested in quality of life, private ownership and security… and were not interested in wider issues of social/political change” and she goes

on to say, “in continental Europe, cohousing communities almost always combine rented and privately owned homes (and some are all rented)…in North America…the bias is towards owner-occupation. In mainland Europe, some cohousing communities are state-financed (forming part of state social housing policy). This is never the case on the USA or Canada” (2011).

The works of Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett have been instrumental in bringing the model of cohousing over from Denmark and adapting it to this more pragmatic, individualistic approach. They clearly state, for example, that: “it is important to note that cohousing is not the intentional communities or communes we know of in the United States, which are sometimes organised around ideological beliefs… cohousing developments espouse no ideology other than the desire for a more practical and social home environment” (2011, p. 9).

It could be said that, if cohousing is to be more widely adopted in other countries, then this more individualistic, un-radical interpretation could be worth considering, alongside the more ideological models.

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Opposite Top: Forgebank Opposite Below: Threshold Centre Below: Springhill

4.3 Britain In spite of a late start at the end of the 1990’s, cohousing is slowly taking hold in Britain. There are now 12 communities which define themselves as cohousing and another two which are due to open later this year, with another 32 groups in the development process. There is a broad diversity in these projects: “The communities themselves range from new developments built to the most modern eco standards to conversions of everything from farms to Jacobean mansions to former hospital buildings and are in urban, rural and semi- rural locations. Some have very large land holdings as part of the community, others very little.”

(UK Cohousing Network, 2012) Four of the most notable projects are:

Springhill, Stroud This was the first Britain cohousing project. It took 5 years and was completed in 2005. Located on a two acre site, 5 minutes’ walk from the town centre, it is made up of 34 privately owned units (a mixture of flats and houses) with approximately 50 adults and 25 children.

Threshold Centre, Dorset A pioneering retrofit mixed-tenure project and sustainable education centre, it started in 2004 and was completed in 2010. It consists of fourteen dwellings, seven of which are affordable rent and shared ownership with a local housing association.

Forgebank, Lancaster (completion due 2013) This project is made up of 41 private homes both flats and houses, including workshops and office space.

LILAC, Leeds (completion due 2013) Standing for Low Impact Living Affordable Community, this is the first affordable ecological project in Britain, consisting of 12 flats and 8 houses. Its Mutual Home Ownership Society (MHOS) is a new model for making housing affordable

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Below: On our backs...

Opposite: Right to Build Flyer

5.Britain in Crisis

This section will look at current issues in Britain, in order to prioritise what needs to be addressed. From there it will look at where we need to be and identify the key criteria to be fulfilled by future settlements.

5.1 Post-Industrial Decline As a country we are in a time of great change. The Victorian colonial-industrial era was marked by increasing wealth and population and a concurrent expansion in infrastructure, including housing, utilities, transport and public services. Throughout the 20th century we gradually lost our colonies but managed to maintain a grip on resources, technology and geopolitical power.

We are now moving into a post-industrial era, with most of our income based on financial services and the service industries. We have lost the majority of our manufacturing base, import an increasing amount of our energy, food and goods and have a diminishing global presence. We are experiencing resource and military insecurity, climate change, failing agriculture and peak oil, gas and water. The shift in global power to the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) marks a profound transition “it is estimated that BRIC economies will overtake G7 economies by 2027” (Foroohar, 2009).

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If the economic/industrial narrative of the 19th and early 20th centuries was one of strength and growth, then the narrative of the late 20th and 21st centuries is of fragility and decline.

We have lived through the golden age of capitalism and are moving into unchartered territory. The Victorian’s building spree was appropriate to their needs.

The post war building projects were responding to the demands of the time. Now, in the 21st century, people are looking for ways of living that are both relevant to current needs and resilient to an uncertain future.

5.2 Housing Shortage and Design Crisis Britain currently has a shortage of housing and quality neighbourhood models being used, or “high-functioning neighbourhoods”, as the Danish government describes them (McCamant & Durrett, 2011).

“The rehousing boom of the 1960s and 1970s destroyed communities and spawned social problems that remain almost 50 years later. Local Authorities have a pivotal role in creating the 500-700 sustainable new communities that will be needed every year for the next two decades if we are to meet our housing needs” (RIBA, 2012)

y t i n u m m Co d l i u B o t t h Rig An Opportunity in the Making

The Government is planning to give citizens more rights to decide what is built in their communities, including housing, local shops and community facilities.

Proposals for the Community Right to Build are currently before Parliament as part of the neighbourhood planning framework in the Localism Bill. If the Bill becomes law any successful proposal will need to be: • from a community group such as a community interest company or a community land trust, etc

To find out more about the Community Right to Build visit:

www.communities.gov.uk/righttobuild for further information.

If your community group is interested in using the Community Right to Build and wants to be kept in touch, tell us about your plans at:

righttobuild@communities.gsi.gov.uk

• independently assessed to see whether the proposals meet specific key criteria; and

For information on community led developments, visit:

• supported by more than half of the community that vote in a referendum.

Community Land Trust Network – www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk

If you’re interested in a community-led development you should talk to your neighbours to get an idea about what sort of development the whole community would want to see. You may also want to talk to your local council, housing association or other community groups.

You may also find it useful to get advice from people who already have experience of taking forward community-led schemes.

Locality – www.locality.org.uk UK Cohousing Network – www.cohousing.org.uk Action with Communities in Rural England – www.acre.org.uk/our-work/community-led-planning Confederation of Co-operative Housing – www.cch.coop

© Crown Copyright 2011. Copyright in the content, design and typographic arrangement rests with the Crown

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Factors Contributing to the Current Housing Crisis •

High house prices- average first-time buyer in London is now 37

•

Lowering in housing benefits- a cap of £500 a week on all benefits

•

Decrease in house building- fell by four per cent between 2001 and 2011

•

Increasing life expectancy and people living alone

•

Increase in single parent families

•

Poor design contributing to dysfunctional neighbourhoods

•

Weak regulation leading to poor construction and siting (e.g. on floodplains)

•

Banks reducing lending making mortgages harder to access

•

Increasing second home ownership making rural housing unaffordable

Community Land Trusts, Housing Co-operatives, Housing Associations, Mutual Home Ownership Schemes, Private Ownership, Social Housing

•

Shrinking social housing stock- almost two million families on waiting lists

Designs

•

Homelessness- risen by more than a quarter in three years

Self-Build, Cohousing, Homezones, Retrofitting, Ecobuild, Houses, Flats, Low Impact, Ecovillages, Ecotowns

•

Empty properties

•

Negative equity

•

Failed Initiatives, e.g. Sustainable Communities Plan and Ecotowns

•

Families living in B&B’s- by 57 per cent in the past 12 months

•

Increase in renting from private landlordsfrom nine to 15 per cent

•

Unhelpful planning process (Toynbee, 2012) (Riddell, 2012)

The mosaic of design models that make up our contemporary landscape range from dense Victorian terraces to sprawling Garden City inspired conurbations, from modernist car-centric new towns to New Urbanist pedestrian focused inner city neighbourhoods (Reeds, 2011).

At this time of great housing need there is an increasing urgency to learn from our mistakes and engage in neighbourhood and community building which is not only affordable and sustainable but also regenerative, so that it gets stronger over time.

We need, not only available units, but also for these units to be a part of the “high-functioning neighbourhoods” designed according to tried and tested methods.

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Progress towards higher functioning cities has been made in recent times. The Compact City had a particularly strong influence on planning policy in Britain during the Labour Governments of 1997–2010 including the Urban Taskforce under Lord Richard Rogers, which produced the report Towards an Urban Renaissance.

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5.3 Existing Alternative Settlement Models There are many existing different ways to organise and design housing, communities and broader settlements. Many of these alternatives actively “move away from the legacy of Britain housing designs that routinely accentuate the privacy of residents from their neighbours” (Field M. , 2004, p. 17). Most of these examples reduce financial costs and increase autonomy and communality.

Organisational Models

5.4 Community-Led Building It is a time for broad strategic thinking combined with small scale action. As Martin Field says,

“The fragilities and catastrophes of recent events in the properties and finance markets have brought many concerns forward about how nonegalitarian and divisive the UK has become in its mainstream approaches to meeting social concerns”, but that this is also “a time when there is a very keen upsurge in all kinds of mutual and collaborative approaches to meeting housing and community needs, including interest at the highest political levels for how communities can take more control over their housing and neighbourhood ideals” (2011, p. 5)

Top: The Trangle, Swindon Bottom:Lammas Ecovillage, Wales

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Below: Natural or Artificial?

Opposite Top: Diversity = Resilience Opposite Bottom: Local Economy

6.Key Criteria This section will examine the key factors to be considered for neighbourhood design that will then be used as criteria to evaluate the case study.

6.1 Appropriate Scale There is a broad range of issues to consider when looking at the design and functionality of housing, towns and cities.

From the wealth of examples over the last two centuries of neighbourhood building, we can see a range of results, from better to worse. Various governments and designers have attempted to create ideal spaces on large scales, sometimes with success but often with serious unforeseen consequences.

Whilst it is certainly crucial to work on large scales when developing infrastructure, for example roads, utilities, etc., housing can be created on a much smaller scale, allowing it to respond and relate to its locality in a way that is impossible for larger schemes to achieve.

With the current growing interest in community-led, bottom-up solutions, both from the government and from the communities and groups themselves, now may finally be a time when “communities can take more control over their housing and neighbourhood ideals” (Field, 2011).

6.2 Relevance & Resilience It is clear that we need to be creating more relevant and resilient neighbourhoods, which become stronger over time and which are as flexible and selfsustaining as possible.

In his chapter “The Comfort of a Dichotomy”, Stevens explores the cultural constructs of what is natural and what is artificial in our built environment, suggesting that “the house…is understood as an artificial addition” to the landscape. After drawing parallels between human being’s relationship with our environment with, amongst other things, goats 24

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and termites, he goes on to propose that, “if we accept man as a part of the natural world it leaves us in a very different position when examining our houses and settlements, they become simply natural phenomena that are either effective for their use or not. We are just one of countless millions of interdependent living and inanimate systems that have a complex web of relationships with each other, and our survival as one of these systems depends on our ability to co-exist in a sensitive balance with others” (2007, p. 31).

Stevens describes how the architectural heritage of our vernacular buildings made them “simple, smart and easy to construct” and that, “if we learn from our past and from species around us and add to this our contemporary technological know-how and our intellectual cleverness as a species, we can once more make houses that are a balanced part of the landscape in which they are sited” (2007, p. 32).

6.3 Diversity of Households On a smaller scale people can be more responsive to their needs and that of the local area and create dynamic neighbourhoods which are affordable and appropriate. One of the current issues is inappropriate housing stock, making our neighbourhoods unfit for purpose, with a dominance of 3 bedroom “suburban monotypes” (Haylock, 2012).

This is clearly described by McCamant & Durrett, when they describe “the modern, single family detached home, which makes up 69% of American housing stock, was designed for a nuclear family consisting of a bread-winning father, a homemaking mother and two to four children. Today, this household type is in the minority… The single parent household is the fastest-growing type for the first time in American history, and for the first time ever, more than half of the women over eighteen… don’t live with a husband. Well over a quarter of the population lives alone, and this proportion is predicted to grow as the number of Americans aged 60 and over increases” (2011, p. 4).

From this example it is apparent that the make-up of our societies is rapidly changing and that this calls for an evolution in our approach to housing patterns.

6.6 Affordability “Rent taking up no more than 35% of net household income is used as the indicator of affordability", (Shelter, 2012) Housing is becoming more expensive. Mortgage repayments and rent payments are increasing, banks are unwilling to lend, new house building is at an alltime low and the gap between earnings and house prices is widening, “50 years ago the average house price was 3 x average income…Now the average house price is over 6 x average income” (Lusk, 2012).

This raises fundamental questions about access to resources, income and wealth inequality that are beyond the scope of this study. However, it is worth briefly looking at where cohousing fits into the picture.

On average, cohousing is no cheaper than conventional housing. As Meltzer clearly states “cohousing is commonly misconceived or misrepresented as a means to affordable housing.

The data suggests that it most definitely is not” (2011, p. 56). The cost and therefore affordability of cohousing varies between projects. There are numerous examples of projects which are designed to be affordable, including the Cohousing Cooperative in Australia and Tinggarden in Denmark.

There are various factors which can reduce costs: •

Limited customization of units (efficient replicated architectural design)

6.4 Community Cohesion

•

Design for adaptive reuse

Suburban sprawl and single family houses on large lots have fragmented communities. With increasing mobility breaking down family ties, more demands are being placed on individual households (McCamant & Durrett, 2011).

•

Recycling materials

•

Government funding

•

Limited budgets

•

Good project management

•

Proximity to existing resources (utilities, shops etc.)

•

Location in low cost area

This sprawl has also had a negative effect on our inner cities as a “suburban exodus stripped the towns of their youngest and brightest people, so beginning the long decline that culminated in the “inner city” problems…and deeply damaged our sense of community” (Reeds, 2011, p. 32).

There are countless examples of good neighbourhood design. With community led focus groups, projects can be custom fit to local demand. Sustainability can be achieved by building within existing neighbourhoods, linking land use and development with municipal services, transport and infrastructure.

6.5 Local Economy Employment is crucial to ensure economic viability of any neighbourhood. There are several factors (mentioned above) which look to encourage the growth of smaller scale, local economies, which would strengthen community cohesion.

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25

One reason for higher costs is the complexity of the development process and the number of consultants.

This has the possibility of becoming cheaper over time, as it moves more into the mainstream as it has in Denmark. (Field, 2011).

The ideal cohousing development in Britain is one of maximum diversity, crossing race, age, ethnicity, gender, occupation, income and wealth. One way to ensure this is to develop Mixed Tenure projects which are accessible to more types of people, for example, “The Threshold Centre in Dorset and LILAC in Leeds are the two cohousing communities in the UK that are accessible to households on lower incomes. There are a number of forming cohousing communities, both senior and inter-generational, aspiring to offer a range of tenure options, including shared home ownership, mutual home ownership, affordable and social rent.”

(UK Cohousing Network, 2012)

6.7 Health and Activity We need to design for physical and mental health as well as economic and environmental sustainability. By creating places that facilitate health and activity, we can increase our general wellbeing.

In their book, Making Healthy Places (Making Healthy Places, 2011), Dannenburg et al. diagnose how health

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problems are caused by our built environment. Their prescription for healing is building and retrofitting our neighbourhoods to encourage: •

physical exercise

•

a healthy diet

•

low pollution levels

•

accessible nature encounters

•

mental serenity

(Borys, 2012).

“The manner in which we design and build our communities—where we spend virtually our entire lives—has profound impacts on our physical, mental, social, environmental, and economic well-being…

The trouble is that in the last half century, we have effectively engineered physical activity out of our daily lives. Health is determined by planning, architecture, transportation, housing, energy, and other disciplines at least as much as it is by medical care...The modern America of obesity, inactivity, depression, and loss of community has not ‘happened’ to us; rather we legislated, subsidized, and planned it.” (Dannenburg, Frumkin, & Jackson, 2011)

Below: Active Linear Parks

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7.Case Study: LILAC This section will assess the LILAC project based on the 7 key criteria identified above.

Appropriate Scale With its 20 housing units, this project fits comfortably into the parameters of the cohousing template of between 15-34 households. It has endeavoured to fit into the existing local community, with plans for the common house to be available to the wider community for events and access to facilities.

It has also aimed for inclusivity by design, with existing sections of railings removed to increase visibility between the site and its surrounding area.

Working at this scale has enabled the group to develop strong connections with the local people and area which will hopefully result in a balanced, integrated addition to this part of Leeds.

Diversity in Households The LILAC project has a range of housing units, from one bed flats up to 4 bed houses. This will ensure a variety of household sizes and types and they have actively encouraged a wide age range in membership.

This diversity in housing units builds flexibility into the project which will help to accommodate future changes in demand.

Relevance & Resilience This project has several features which aim to make it as environmentally sustainable and resilient as possible. They use a “Fabric First” approach, which prioritises investment in environmentally friendly, efficient building materials.

Many of these techniques have been pioneered in Europe where they have been tried and tested and proved to be efficient. These techniques include: •

Construction process which stores rather than produces C02

•

Simple, modular, versatile, low cost building techniques

•

Sustainable, local materials

•

Super-insulated, low-energy Passive House design

•

Storm water management

•

Car and facilities sharing

•

Food production

•

Good public transport links

•

Environmentally sensitive design

•

Structurally strong, long lasting building design

The Mutual Home Ownership Scheme, which will be covered under the Affordability section below, also allows for a more diverse membership across the income spectrum.

In addition to these practical features, the residents also plan to work towards lower impact lifestyles,

Community Cohesion

“through avoiding unnecessary consumption and travel, excessive energy use around the home, and looking to the local area to provide as many needs as possible. The commitment of all the residents, as much as good design and technological addons will be central to achieving a truly low impact neighbourhood.” (LILAC, 2012)

Creating community is a central motivation for all cohousing projects. By using the typical high density principle of cohousing design along with the shared facilities, the members hope to maximise the community potential within the scheme itself.

This project is sited within existing established communities and aims to integrate with them, as well as introduce a new element.

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Below: Photoshop Visual of Completed Project

Local Economy

Health and Activity

By creating a high-functioning, successful scheme they will make the area a desirable place to live. This will hopefully lead to less higher achieving people leaving the area, and result in a more diverse local population with a stronger local economy.

There are a number of ways in which this project aims to increase health and activity for its members and the local community:

By using local materials and companies for the construction they have contributed to the local economy during this phase.

Affordability One of LILAC’s aims is to address the shortage of affordable housing for the intermediate market. To achieve this they have pioneered the Mutual Home Ownership Scheme (MHOS), which is designed to make the properties affordable to first time buyers and guarantee they remain affordable in the future.

The equity shares in the houses are linked to average local incomes, which reduces risk and increases affordability.

•

Natural materials allow buildings to breathe and create a healthy rather than toxic living environment.

•

Walking and cycling, proximity to local amenities reduces vehicle pollution

•

Food growing including plots for local community

•

Wildlife rich meadows and tree understory

•

Pond and attenuation basin with planting

•

Green spaces for play and leisure activities

•

Proximity to local parks, leisure centres, canal and river

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Opposite Top: Project Plan Opposite Bottom: Build in Progress, December 2012

8.Assessment From the above criteria it is evident that the LILAC project has significant potential to address many issues facing Britain’s current housing crisis.

Their priorities are made clear in the name they have chosen for the project and their 7 point vision, as stated on their website: LILAC stands for “Low Impact Living Affordable Community” Low Impact Living: According to the Energy Savings Trust, 26% of C02 emissions in the UK come from our homes. The government has set a target of all new buildings to be carbon neutral by 2019.

We respond to this challenge.

Affordable: We have chosen a Mutual model (Mutual Home Ownership Society) which keeps housing permanently affordable.

Community: Our design will maximise community interaction. It is based on a Danish cohousing model which balances people’s needs for their own private space with shared facilities LILAC’s 7 Point Vision • • • • •

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Urgent need for affordable, low carbon, low energy housing The challenge: how to create supersustainable, affordable, exemplar developments that redefine ‘best practice’?

Low impact living: design, behaviour, citizenship Need for policy ‘step change’ in sustainability, wellbeing, place making, climate change outcomes Potential for capacity building, tenant selfmanagement, mutual housing

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• •

Ensuring affordability and financial equality Replicability and growth of mutual sector

Whilst the project succeeds in meeting most of the criteria above, there are two issues that it does not directly address.

8.1 Social Housing Being a scheme with the goal to address the shortfall in intermediate housing, it has not been designed as a housing solution for those on low incomes. Being a pioneer project this was beyond the available budget.

It is, however, presenting a template for future possible projects which, with sufficient government or housing association support, could enable such schemes to be available as social housing.

Such schemes have existed in other countries for decades and have proved to be successful.

The Threshold Centre in Dorset has successfully pioneered a project which has some units available to social housing tenants with the support of a local housing association.

It is important to note that this scheme is significantly more affordable than most cohousing projects, which remain effectively unavailable to first time buyers.

8.2 Local Economy LILAC is a housing project which aims to have a positive contribution to its local community. Whilst using local contractors for the construction process and obviously aiming to use local amenities, shops and services once completed, it will not directly be an employment provider. As such, though it will be a benefit to the area, it is clearly a housing provider and not a job creation scheme.

If it succeeds in leading the way for other alternative community projects to go ahead, then it will have played a leading role in pioneering a small scale, sustainable industry sector, including designers, builders and financers. In a time of economic decline and high unemployment this could have a significant part to play in creating employment.

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9.Conclusion 9.1 High Functioning Neighbourhoods The cohousing model can create high-functioning neighbourhoods, combining privacy with shared space and encouraging a dynamic community cohesion through design.It also facilitates a more ecologically sensitive lifestyle, a principle which is becoming both more popular and more urgent to address. The small number of schemes in Britain have been heralded as great successes and are landmarks in neighbourhood design.

9.2 Failings It is, however, not an unlimited success. There have been many more failures than successes in this country. The many obstacles in the planning system, combined with wary financial institutions, prohibitive planning policy and ineffective government initiatives have conspired to stifle many attempts in communityled building. These problems have led to cohousing remaining on the fringe and effectively unaffordable to those who do not already own a property.

9.3 Present Opportunities There is growing interest at the top in how local communities can be more involved in new developments in their area. This can clearly be seen with the government’s Community Right to Build scheme, Localism Bill and Commission on Cooperative and Mutual Housing and the movement is gaining increasing political traction.

The emergence of umbrella organisations and new schemes such as the Mutual Housing Group and Community Land Trusts are creating networks and structures which enable community-led schemes to take off. Groups such as Community Build are providing what they call a “matchmaking service between individuals, groups and landowners, allowing people to purchase building plots at more affordable prices and to access larger 32

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areas of land ideal for purpose-designed self-build communities” (Community Build, n.d) The combination of political, economic and cultural climates may be overlapping to make this a time of opportunity for cohousing to play an important role in Britain’s neighbourhoods.

9.4 Future Insecurity

& Community Cohesion Cohousing offers a more communal, mutual model of neighbourhood design than the average new housing estate, whilst still retaining privacy and offering a range of tenure possibilities. This community cohesion could be increasingly important with time.

As Johnathan How states, “with oil and other resources running out fast, the future for all of us is beginning to look very uncertain. It’s clear that living within a supportive neighbourhood (where sharing is facilitated) could well turn an otherwise bleak existence into something quite pleasant. Cohousing communities will be streets ahead of everyone else and will have much to teach others” (2011)

9.5 Modular “Mosaic” Neighbourhoods As can be seen from the above case study, cohousing is a tried and tested model for small scale neighbourhoods. This, however, should not be seen as an obstacle to using it as a component in larger scale projects. These areas can be organised in a “modular” format (Northampton Institute for Urban Affairs, 2010), where they are “juxtaposed with other neighbourhood areas that could be designed on other sets of criteria – for example, as a traffic-calmed “Home Zone”, or as a setting for other “eco-housing” units” (Field M, 2011).

This approach has already been proven to be successful in the US, where cohousing projects are, in some cases, actually used to generate confidence in wider proposals. This is because the members

are effectively pre-contractual customers and similar projects have been seen to demonstrate a positive effect on local property valuations.

9.6 Financial Architecture If this model is to succeed beyond being an alternative housing model for the well-off, it is crucial that there is the “financial architecture” available to facilitate a diversity of tenure options.

As the various alternative housing models become more popular, it is hoped that the financial institutions will become less wary and, eventually, come to see these projects as a sound investment.

9.7 Government, Council and Housing Association Support?

It is clearly crucial that the government remove obstacles to facilitate community-led housing schemes. However, these sorts of initiatives have been seen to be more successful when they are smaller scale, truly community-led, with minimum intervention from above.

As this study has shown, there are many examples of over-ambitious, large scale schemes which have arguably failed in many of their aims, from the Garden Village movement to the Reilly Greens, from the Radiant Cities to the New Towns. Now is a time for smaller scale, finer grain developments, guided from the bottom-up and only facilitated, at length, from the top-down.

9.8 Design Frameworks As ecological considerations become a higher priority, cohousing projects are increasingly turning to Permaculture as the ideal design tool kit. With its systems-thinking based design principles and central ethics of earth care, people care and fair share, it is proving to be a flexible and holistic method with which to design ecological cohousing. (Telford, n.d.)

9.9 Way Forwards There are a number of crucial requirements when looking at the way forwards for cohousing: 1. A group/sector of alternative architects and developers with specialist skills at delivering cohousing.

2. Creative, long sighted and sympathetic local planning authorities.

3. Financial institutions to create enabling packages and templates for cohousing developments. (Coates, 2011) We are at a time when there is both the necessity and the desire to work at a small scale, with appropriate, community-led developments to create strong, healthy neighbourhoods. There are a variety of models to use, both independently or together as larger, modular projects. Cohousing has proven that it is a successful and deliverable model of regenerative community and one which can play an important role in the neighbourhoods of the 21st century.

“If ever the time was right to build community housing it is now, with government policy promoting community right to build and community-led sustainable building proposals” Angela Brady, President RIBA, 2011

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Appendix The Regenerative Principle – Beyond Sustainability The regenerative principle goes beyond mere sustainability and identifies a vigorous and dynamic model of ecological design.

Regenerate – bring or come into renewed existence; improve the moral condition of; impart new, more vigorous and spiritually greater life to (a person or institution etc.); regrow or cause to regrow; spiritually born again.

(Latin re-generare produce, give birth to) Sustain – support or bear the weight of (esp. for a long period); give strength/nourishment to; endure, bear, suffer, withstand; undergo; maintain continuously.

(Latin sustinere (as sub- under, tenere hold) This evolution of design principles from a flat lining, linear, enduring sustenance to a cyclic, holistic and dynamic regeneration has the potential to bring human settlements into harmony with their surrounding environment.

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This coming together, or confluence, of principles is moving us towards a more holistic design process or, as Stevens wrote a more “sophisticated, careful and intelligent use of our landscape” (Rural, 2007, p. 39).

It is well suited to the ideals of cohousing and clearly adheres to the principles of nurture and regeneration as described by McCamant & Durrett “the story of cohousing is…the story of energy generation” (2011, p. xi).

'We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.'

(Leopold, 1949, pp. 224, 5)

Below : Forgebank, Lancaster

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p.9

Participatory Design, inconnection.uk.com p.10 Planet Earth, goodfon.com p.11 Community Graphic, nmsua.edu p.12 Permaculture Design, holmgren.com.au p.13 Victoria City Design, arxitecture.org.uk p.14 Garden City Diagram, scodpub.wordpress.com p.15 Welwyn Garden City, letchworth.com p.15 Radiant City, architzer.com p.17 Canada Project, marebarenecessities.blogspot.com p.19 Forgebank, greenmares.co.uk p.20 Threshold Centre, rowanberrycohousing.blogspot.com p.20 Springhill, users.waitrose.com p.21 Turtle Graphic, blog.al.com p.22 Triangle, theurbanistspd.blogspot.com p.25 Lammas Ecovillage, globalecovillagesstourbridge.ac.uk p.25 House, adtrader.co.uk p.26 Locavore, rainshadoworganics.com p.29 City Bikes, laurenhefferon.com p.29 Lilac Image, lilac.coop p.33 Forgebank, lancastercohousing.org.uk p.37

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