8 minute read
Finding common ground in the landscapes of housing
Front gardens without fences provide a permeable buffer between individual homes and the shared street at Hazelmead. © Jim Hudson
The UK’s biggest cohousing project, Hazelmead in Bridport, was built this year with 53 affordable eco-homes, car-free streets and shared outdoor spaces.
Cohousing is a form of community-led housing driven by a group of people who have come together to develop a solution to their housing needs – whether for reasons of affordability, ecological principles, or finding mutual support for child care and in older age. For most groups, however, underpinning these drivers is a shared ambition to build housing that can support ways of living as a community. The cohousing model differs from other types of communal living arrangements because each household lives in and purchases their own home. The site, on the other hand, is owned collectively through a shared ownership model, for example Mutual Home Ownership Schemes, Cooperatives, or Community Land Trusts. This allows a site to be collectively purchased and developed with shared facilities and spaces, including a common house or room, where residents hold shared meals, events, and meetings. However, it is in the landscapes of cohousing – the shared spaces between the homes –where the collective life and vision of the community is realised.
Cohousing remains something of a pioneering model for new housing development in the UK, with currently around 30 built cohousing projects, and many more groups in formation. Existing schemes range from 4 to 53 homes, but typically comprise around 10 to 30 dwellings. While the community-led approach means that members are a part of the whole development process, from procurement to implementation, it can be a time-consuming, complex, and expensive process.
Cohousing remains something of a pioneering model for new housing development in the UK, with currently around 30 built cohousing projects, and many more groups in formation.
The first cohousing developments in the UK, from the 1970s onwards, involved retrofitting existing buildings, avoiding some of the complexities of newbuild development. These schemes tend to be more rural, consisting of a single larger building converted into multiple dwellings and set within extensive shared grounds, providing opportunities for community food growing and even small-scale farming. In 2002, Springhill Cohousing became the first purpose-built cohousing development in the UK. Further newbuild schemes followed: LILAC in Leeds, which adopted an affordable ownership model, and recent developments such as Marmalade Lane, Cambridge and Hazelmead, Dorset, demonstrating the possibility of larger-scale cohousing.
There are increasing examples of cohousing in towns and cities, presenting a more challenging and competitive context to find appropriate sites. As such, groups may select sites that are less attractive to developers, but present greater development challenges, such as steep topography, rights of access issues, and land contamination. However, these limitations have also given rise to innovative, sustainable design solutions, for example at Springhill Cohousing. For example, at both Springhill in Stroud and Cannock Mill in Colchester, sustainable urban drainage systems slow the flow of water down sloping sites, becoming key features of their landscapes.
Despite these sometimes challenging sites, cohousing developments are typically arranged in layouts that promote neighbourly social interaction. Marmalade Lane is one such example where houses face inwardly around a central courtyard and internal street, promoting natural surveillance and connection to the shared landscape. The common house and other shared facilities are positioned along central paths at key entrances and access points, creating frequent opportunities for neighbours to bump into each other. Locating car parking towards the edge of the site, rather than in front of homes, is crucial to creating safe outdoor spaces for children to play, and for residents to gather: a takeaway lesson for landscape architects and housing developers.
Encouraging interaction is important in cohousing, but so too is ensuring a balanced level of privacy. Residents can retreat to the privacy of their home, but narrow gardens, balconies and patios provide a permeable buffer between the inside and shared outdoor spaces. This is important for creating a comfortable transition between private and communal and offers a space to dwell and personalise. Where traditional front gardens are normally defined by a picket fence or privet hedge, in cohousing these spaces tend to be more open and fluid. This not only maintains the line of sight between inside and outside, but also allows social activities to spill out across the entire outdoor space during community events, so front gardens become part of the shared landscape.
Acceptable levels of privacy vary from person to person, and even for residents who have chosen to live in cohousing, some may find this level of openness uncomfortable. Allowing for some level of adaptability in these transition spaces can help to address this. But where this isn’t possible, some groups have built ‘quiet nooks’ or ‘pocket retreats’, small seating areas tucked away in quieter areas of the site where residents can find solitude.
The outdoor spaces provide residents with a wide range of opportunities to adapt and shape their environment, through regular community workdays, committee meetings, outdoor events, and activities. Food is an element that frequently brings residents together, through growing, harvesting, cooking, eating, or skill sharing; it is nearly always the basis for celebrations and community traditions. As such, the landscapes of cohousing are never static, but a constant evolving process of adaptation and recreation, reflecting the changing vision and needs of residents over time. This presents a challenge for design practitioners, whereby their role is to facilitate residents’ involvement in the design process and build in capacity for future adaption of the site. This may involve leaving some spaces undesigned, a longer process of getting to know the group, transferring knowledge and skills, and acting as a go-between the community and other stakeholders.
Cohousing is increasingly recognised as providing a setting in which forms of mutual support and neighbourliness can benefit families with young children and those later in life. Overlooked shared outdoor spaces are ideal for children to play, where parents and neighbours can keep an eye over them, while leftover spaces and ‘wilder’ areas provide plenty of opportunities for imaginative den-building and ‘DIY play’. Being able to share a garden with your neighbours and friends is certainly a unique childhood experience.
The design of the site for the provision of shared facilities and social interaction also provides frequent opportunities for neighbours to check in on and look out for each other in older age. Private gardens tend to be small, and residents share responsibility for maintaining the site; a potential benefit for residents who do not wish to maintain a large private garden of their own. Managing large areas of shared landscapes, however, can become more challenging as residents age. For both intergenerational communities and those who have intentionally chosen to live together in older age (New Ground Cohousing in London for example), adaptable accessibility to the landscape needs to be considered from the outset.
The inward-facing nature of cohousing has been criticised by some for resembling a gated community. It is true that cohousing can look very different from its surroundings, in both layout, materiality and intention. However, in many of the groups I’ve visited, the inward facing layout is countered with an outward facing mind-set. This is reflected in the design, perhaps by leaving entrances to the site ungated or unlocked, and some schemes incorporate informal rights of way through the site. Communities may also host regular public events and open days, with the shared spaces becoming ‘quasi-public’ at these times. However, these landscapes serve a primarily communal function, and therefore shouldn’t be treated the same as public spaces, allowing communities instead to take control over how open or enclosed they become.
The landscapes of cohousing form the common ground between individual households, where the collective endeavour of residents and their shared intentions can be realised. They are the spaces in which residents bump into and check in on each other, traditions are established, food is grown and eaten, structures and furniture are built, and new skills are developed. To do so, these spaces must work hard to respond to a shifting balance between privacy and sharing, flexibility and function, openness and enclosure, for the young and old. Achieving this can be challenging; shared decision making over how the outdoor spaces are designed, used, and managed isn’t easy, and risks disagreement. For landscape architects, community-led approaches to residential landscapes demand a facilitative and collaborative approach. Finding common ground in shared landscapes is a constant balancing act, presenting challenges, but also opportunities for finding resolution, celebrating connection, and realising shared ambitions.
With special thanks to Jim Hudson for his contribution.
Aimee Felstead is a Lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Sheffield, researching urban commons and residential landscapes.
