FACTOR

Previous chapters outlined the importance of collective housing for city development. This section explores the notion of collective housing, which emerges from many directions and in many forms, yet the essence lies in need to form communities, in need of belonging. The sense of belonging becomes crucial if we see the housing crisis as a crisis of the collective. If the housing crisis originates in neoliberalism (Farha, 2017, p. 6), a system causing alienation by prioritizing individuals’ profit to the collective well-being, we have to look for an opposite force (Monbiot, 2018).

Alienation may emerge, when we lose trust in politics, when we are not satisfied with our jobs, or when we lose connection with society. [...] If alienation is the point on which our crises converge, belonging is the means by which we can address them. (Monbiot, 2018, p. 54, p. 71) six factors of happiness (Wiking in SPACE10, 2018)

What is belonging, and how can it be implemented in architectural design? The Danish collective SPACE10 researched shared living and began with a question if happiness can help to design a better way of living. Meik Wiking (Wiking in SPACE10, 2018) from The Happiness Research Institute summarizes six factors that improve our happiness.

Wealth means not worrying about the roof over our heads and the food on the table. Trust means both in the system and with other people, for example, not to be afraid that someone will steal something from us. Freedom is about political rights, but also about work-life balance and the ability to manage our time. Number one on the list is the one that goes through cultures and is universal for all human beings. (Wiking in SPACE10, 2018)

The best predictor of whether we are happy or not, [...] is how good our relationships with other people are, that is how connected we feel to other people, and the extent to which we have the sense of togetherness and belonging. (SPACE10, 2018)

Seeking for the origins of increasing loneliness among the population, we have to question our social structures. Evolutionary biologist Bjørn Grinde describes a “mismatch” between the modern way of life and how we have evolved to live as a species. While contemporary society is mainly organized in so-called nuclear families (as of a married couple and kids), our natural living structure is a tribal community (Grinde in SPACE10, 2018) Yet, standardized housing production mainly focuses on typologies fitting the Fordist family, even though, in reality, its fractions or different structures use them (Boudet, 2017). Individualized living is not only lacking the creation of social connections necessary for our well being, but also puts an economic burden on the individual, potentially causing constant stress, and consumes more resources. The concept of co-living aims to approach these issues.

‘Co-living’, an umbrella term for different types of ‘co-housing’ setups, can loosely be defined as a home where two or more people live together who are not related. While ‘co-housing’ is an intentional community created and run by residents, ‘co-living’ may also encompass shared accommodation initiated by an external agent, such as a developer or entrepreneur. (Wood, 2017)

Subscribed For Sharing

In the core of collective living, we arrive at the notion of sharing. Sharing might be a necessity, concerning the growing global population migrating to cities, and requiring resources and space, that are limited. Seven out of ten people will live in cities by 2050 (UN, 2019), and in order to accommodate them, we have to build a New Yorksize city every month, if we follow up on the current way.

Single-person households are projected to see faster growth than any other property type in the coming decade [among] low-, middle- and highincome countries alike. [...] Fewer people remain at home with their parents until they find someone to marry. Couples tend to be older than previous generations when they do get hitched. Divorce is more common today. There is much less stigma about living as a singleton. (SPACE10 & Urgent. Agency, 2018, p. 19)

Yet, while the single household percentage grows, the level of loneliness grows. For instance, nine million Brits “often or always” feel lonely. At the same time, the UK’s Office for National Statistics showed that people aged 16–44, renters, and those less strongly attached to their neighborhood were more susceptible to feeling lonely. (SPACE10 & Urgent.Agency, 2018, p. 20) As mentioned earlier, it might even be the lack of alternatives that hold us back from better life quality around other people, and sharing might be the means to address loneliness.

To share is not an alien concept. In cities, most of our space is shared - streets, restaurants, parks, garbage systems, or energy. Many of the contemporary services that we take for granted are blending the barrier of ownership. Carpooling and car sharing, bikes and scooters, music and movie streaming, Airbnb and similar platforms, all these are shifting traditional models from ownership to subscription. (SPACE10 & Urgent.Agency, 2018) Some of these models also represent the danger of overcommercializing sharing. So why do we not share more in housing?

Barriers Of Sharing

SPACE10 and Urgent.Agency present three observations that make building for sharing difficult from the economic perspective. The complexity of the building process makes developers and community initiatives understandably rather careful than open to risks. There is also the world of building regulations that generally focuses on ensuring certain life quality; on the other hand, it does not support emerging forms of organization.

PRE-CONSTRUCTION: [...] As investors and developers are working to minimise risk and maximise profit, there is a strong tendency to keep building (and selling) what they already know [and] do not support community-generated or community-owned development projects. To bring forward new modes of living and sharing, we need to address the investment structures, business models and planning processes that define the types of buildings that are constructed.

CONSTRUCTION: [...] The design and construction of residential buildings focuses almost exclusively on “traditional” family set-ups, [and] it is considered hard to offer affordable “experimental” housing [without demanding] more of the design process and require a more long-term understanding of “value” than just an immediate maximum return on investment.

OPERATION: [...] Facility management is the art of operating and maintaining a building over time. [...] The current investor-driven model does not support community-based facility management. New models need to be developed that address questions such as: how do you ensure a feeling of responsibility for members of a shared-living project? What types of organisational set-ups promote community and sharing, while still being effective and operational?

(SPACE10 & Urgent.Agency, 2018, p. 62) small communities: The majority [...] would prefer to live in tight-knit communities of four to 10 people. The exception was couples with children, who would prefer to be part of a slightly bigger community of 10-25 people – presumably to share the workload of looking after the kids. None of the respondents reported that they would prefer to live in bigger groups, which seems to contrast with most of the corporate co-living concepts rolled out today, which are often designed for hundreds of people. diversity: up to a point: The majority [...] would prefer to live with others of different backgrounds and ages [and] would be most willing to live with childless couples and single women. The least popular house members would be small children and teenagers. privacy: [...] The majority said co-living would be a good way to socialise with others and that they would be willing to share their home. But they still worry about the potential intrusion on their privacy – and insist on their private space being off-limits to others.

We named the obstacles from the development perspective. On the other side, we must ask if there is a demand for new forms of housing. For that reason, the Danish collective conducted a non-scientific survey called ONE SHARED HOUSE 2030. Their findings can give us a hint of how people would imagine their shared living.

(13 000 people from 175 countries participated in the survey; (SPACE10 & Urgent.Agency, 2018, p. 68))