Beyond collective property: a typology of collaborative housing in Europe

Abstract

Collaborative housing is generally defined by what it is not: it is neither solely private tenure nor fully state-run public housing. As a result, housing studies have not fully captured the great diversity of collaborative housing forms. This article develops a complex typology of collaborative housing based on an analysis of 100 cases from Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany. We identify differentiating features across three key dimensions: the architecture of the estate, the institutional set-up of its property rights, and the values motivating the collective inhabiting and managing of the estate. We then apply our typology using the case of the 4Stelle Hotel, a collaborative housing estate in Rome. This study lays the foundations for future international comparative research that moves beyond the reductive understanding of collaborative housing as property sharing.

Keywords:

• Collaborative housing
• housing commons
• housing cooperatives
• sharing
• co-living

Introduction

Critical housing scholars and progressive politicians alike consider collaborative housing to be a viable solution to the affordable housing crisis. The model moves beyond privately-owned and state-owned tenures by engaging in complex constructions of property relations where public, common and private tenure coexist (Balmer & Bernet, 2015; Mullins & Moore, 2018). Unlike private ownership, collaborative housing is poised to offer a model of living beyond individual property rights, financialisation, and speculation. In contrast to state housing, it proposes a socially conscious mode of housing provision geared to protect the autonomy of inhabitants through processes of democratic decision-making, and bottom-up management (Vidal, 2019). In practice, however, collaborative housing always involves an articulation of state, cooperative, and private property relations (Ferreri & Vidal, 2022). Existing research hardly shows the large variety of these combinations, like the multiple tenure structures and architectural forms that exist today. To fill this gap, this paper surveys the variegated landscape of collaborative housing in Europe to move beyond existing definitions that exclusively hinge on formal property rights or architectural design.

The collaborative housing landscape is extremely diverse. Previous studies have identified communities that self-organise living spaces to resemble a close-knit urban-village-like community or that counter consumerism by living ecologically (Chatterton, 2016; Jarvis, 2019). Some of these communities are inspired by imaginaries of commoning and degrowth and are oriented towards low impact living (Cattaneo, 2018; Ferreri & Vidal, 2022; Nelson & Schneider, 2018). Studies have also identified collaborative housing communities that organise around affordability, often pursued through large-scale housing organisations (Balmer & Bernet, 2015). Others show stronger identity elements and are led by and for people that do not have legal access to the housing market, such as undocumented migrants (Grazioli, 2017). The existing collaborative housing literature does not yet have sufficient tools to analytically compare the diversity of collaborative housing across countries because it has often relied on a single country in-depth case study.

This paper proposes a typology of collaborative housing. We define collaborative housing as a modality of dwelling that meets three criteria: (a) a complex form of ownership that surpasses solely individual or state property, and that includes some degree of collective or cooperative tenure; (b) collective (self)management involving the dwellers in the estate; (c) and an architectural design that promotes everyday sharing of space. Building on a sample of 100 housing estates in Europe, we design a typology of collaborative housing along three dimensions: 1) the architecture of the estate, 2) the institutional set-up of its property rights, and 3) the internal values motivating the self-organisation of the collective.

The next section argues that existing housing studies do not sufficiently consider the political values of the collaborative project or their effects on the institutional and organisational set-up. We then detail our methodology and introduce a new typology of collaborative housing based on a content analysis of 100 cases from Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria (see Table 1). Next, we apply our framework to an unconventional collaborative housing initiative, the 4Stelle Hotel in Rome, to showcase its heuristic value for comparative collaborative housing studies. We conclude by calling for a more politically sensitive understanding of collaborative housing within housing studies – one that can appreciate the variegated repertoire of values and practices that govern living beyond individual private ownership.

Table 1. List of cases.

Case number	Name	Country	City	Case number	Name	Country	City
1	Scharni 38	Germany	Berlin	51	Urban Village Bovisa 01	Italy	Milano
2	Rigaer 78	Germany	Berlin	52	Cohousing Chiaravalle	Italy	Milano
3	Seume 14	Germany	Berlin	53	COventidue	Italy	Milano
4	Grüni	Germany	Berlin	54	Urban Village Navigli	Italy	Milano
5	Bödi 9	Germany	Berlin	55	La Corte dei Girasoli	Italy	Milano
6	Rathaus Sterne	Germany	Berlin	56	Base Gaia	Italy	Milano
7	Reiche 114	Germany	Berlin	57	Progetto Zoia	Italy	Milano
8	Linie 206	Germany	Berlin	58	Residence Sociale ALDO DICE 26 × 1	Italy	Milano
9	RaumPlusX	Germany	Berlin	59	San Giorgio (Solidaria)	Italy	Ferrara
10	Offensiv Altern leben	Germany	Berlin	60	Numero Zero	Italy	Torino
11	IBA-Berlin Emanzipatorisches Wohnen	Germany	Berlin	61	Mondo 10	Italy	Torino
12	Ligsalz 8	Germany	München	62	Autorecupero cohousing le Torri	Italy	Firenze
13	Autofrei Wohnen II	Germany	München	63	EcoSol	Italy	Fidenza
14	Frauenwohnen	Germany	München	64	Ca’ Nostra	Italy	Modena
15	Nachbarschaftlich leben für Frauen	Germany	München	65	Cohousing il Frullo	Italy	Castenaso
16	Bremen Beguinage Model	Germany	Bremen	66	aflorEM	Spain	Badalona
17	Wohnen mit Alt und Jung	Germany	Köln	67	Las Carolinas	Spain	Madrid
18	Eco-village Hannover	Germany	Hannover	68	Vallekas	Spain	Madrid
19	Frauenwohnprojekt	Germany	Hannover	69	La tercera fase	Spain	Madrid
20	Villa Kunterbunt - von Frauen für Frauen	Germany	Essen	70	La Manzana	Spain	Madrid
21	Stadt and Frau Modellprojekt	Germany	Freiburg	71	La Borda	Spain	Barcelona
22	Wohnen mit Kindern	Germany	Düsseldorf	72	Arenys de Mar	Spain	Barcelona
23	Kraftwerk 1 Zwicky	Switzerland	Zürich	73	Llacuna39	Spain	Barcelona
24	Hunziker	Switzerland	Zürich	74	La Balma	Spain	Barcelona
25	Wildbachstraße 3	Switzerland	Zürich	75	Cireres Florits	Spain	Barcelona
26	Heinrichstraße 133	Switzerland	Zürich	76	La Regadora	Spain	Barcelona
27	Felsenrainstraße 78	Switzerland	Zürich	77	Quinta Força	Spain	Barcelona
28	Ackersteinstraße 79	Switzerland	Zürich	78	Sotrac Habitatge	Spain	Barcelona
29	Kalkbreite	Switzerland	Zürich	79	Princesa49	Spain	Barcelona
30	La Codha	Switzerland	Geneva	80	Lleida urbà	Spain	Lleida
31	Westhof im Hochbord	Switzerland	Dübendorf	81	La Titaranya	Spain	Valls
32	Giesseri	Switzerland	Neuhegi	82	La Raval	Spain	Manresa
33	Türkis Rosa Lila Vila	Austria	Vienna	83	Clau Mestra	Spain	La Floresta
34	Herzendorferstraße 138	Austria	Vienna	84	Can 50/70	Spain	Cerdanyola del Vallès
35	Karl Marx Hof	Austria	Vienna	85	Cohabitatge Sarrià	Spain	Barcelona
36	De Torteltuin	Netherlands	Amsterdam	86	Ruderal	Spain	Barcelona
37	De Nieuwe Meent	Netherlands	Amsterdam	87	Llar Jove Marina Prat Vermell sccl	Spain	Barcelona
38	De Warren	Netherlands	Amsterdam	88	La Magrana	Spain	Barcelona
39	De Waterspin	Netherlands	Den Haag	89	La Diversa	Spain	Barcelona
40	Groene Mient	Netherlands	Den Haag	90	Can 70	Spain	Barcelona
41	Iewan	Netherlands	Nijmegen	91	La Xarxaire	Spain	Barcelona
42	NieuwLand	Netherlands	Amsterdam	92	La Morada	Spain	Barcelona
43	Bajesdrop	Netherlands	Amsterdam	93	La Tramuntana	Spain	Barcelona
44	Porto Fluviale	Italy	Roma	94	Cal Gramenet	Spain	Santa Coloma de Gramenet
45	4Stelle Hotel	Italy	Roma	95	aflorEM	Spain	Badalona
46	Metropoliz	Italy	Roma	96	Las Carolinas	Spain	Madrid
47	Sans Papiers	Italy	Roma	97	Vallekas	Spain	Madrid
48	Villa de Luca	Italy	Naples	98	La tercera fase	Spain	Madrid
49	Porto 15	Italy	Bologna	99	La Manzana	Spain	Madrid
50	Oasi	Italy	Bologna	100	La Borda	Spain	Barcelona

Existing definitions of collaborative housing and their limits

The term collaborative housing encompasses a large subset of dwelling practices. Housing studies often use the terms co-housing, collaborative housing, cooperative housing, self-organised and shared housing interchangeably depending on the specific dimension of focus. These terms all share a degree of collaboration among dwellers in the running of estates but refer to different forms of institutional organisation (Mullins & Moore, 2018). The term collaborative housing tends to emphasise the presence of a degree of collaboration among its residents in the way the estate is managed, financed or used. Differently, cooperative housing is mostly used to underline the type of estate ownership (Vestbro, 2010, p. 29). Cooperative housing has a specific legal property structure (based on full or limited-equity co-ops) but is not always designed to promote sharing or self-management. Co-housing instead underlines the presence of a degree of shared living practices within a community of dwellers that is often self-selected (Chiodelli & Baglione, 2014). While co-housing always involves some collaboration, collaborative housing does not always entail communitarian dynamics, nor is it exclusively organised through cooperative legal arrangements (see also Lang & Stoeger, 2018).

These definitions are also country dependent. In the United Kingdom, community-led housing has become an umbrella term combining ‘actors from co-housing, cooperative housing or community land trust while the type of housing and sharing involved might be very different’.¹ Here, Community Land Trusts (CLTs) are currently the most common legal infrastructure to produce collaborative housing. Yet, each CLT project shows different features and degrees of collaboration being affected by local political struggles (Engelsman et al., 2018). In the Netherlands, the cooperative housing sector refers to a minor stock of housing properties that are co-owned by the dwellers or that are self-managed by renters of third-party properties. In Switzerland, instead, housing cooperatives have produced large-scale stock that successfully provides long-term affordable housing with a low level of self-management using a cost-rent model (Baiges et al., 2020; Balmer & Gerber, 2018). These differences reveal how national legal frameworks and city planning cultures influence the production and definition of collaborative housing (Tummers, 2015).

In a recent paper on European terminology, Czischke et al. (2020) conclude that collaborative housing is the most effective international umbrella term for all its sub-types. It works well because it highlights ‘the presence of a significant level of collaboration amongst (future) residents, and between them and external actors and/or stakeholders […] the term collaboration stands for coordinated action towards a common purpose’ (Czischke et al., 2020, p. 6). What distinguishes this housing form is the presence of a coordinated action towards a common purpose among its users, which can span both physical features (e.g., living together, sharing facilities and collective property) to political values and social practices. Collaboration entails a degree of internal cohesion among the dwellers which, as we will show later, is built around common values. Yet, these values can be very different and lead to different results in the daily life of the housing estates.

Tummers (2016) provided one of the first cross-country inventories of co-housing (defined as cooperative self-managed housing). She differentiated co-housing projects along two features: participation vs. hierarchical and collective vs. isolated. In her analysis, co-housing initiatives differ significantly in terms of inclusivity and diversity. Most are inhabited by well-educated, middle-income, predominantly white households. While the buildings may offer shared facilities, they are generally inaccessible to outsiders (Tummers & MacGregor, 2019). Chiodelli (2015) and Ruiu (2014) also note the risk of enclaving – the process of enclosing housing communities using both architectural (e.g., walls around gardens) and identitarian boundaries (e.g., income or ethnicity). In their study of co-housing specifically, Chiodelli and Baglione (2014) show that high degrees of collaboration for shared spaces may also characterise gated communities. In sum, the ever-present risk of enclaving in collaborative housing asks for an analysis that can appreciate diversity across organisational structures, legal tenures and the political views of dwellers (see also Savini, 2020).

Recent typologies of collaborative housing are more sensitive to the multiplicity of ways of organising living – from the everyday sharing of space to the long-term management of income. Bossuyt (2022) and Savini and Bossuyt (2022) unpack the internal organisational structure of collaborative housing in terms of tenure structures. Collaborative housing tenure here is understood as ‘hybrid arrangements, featuring elements of private and common property’ (Bossuyt, 2022, p. 4). Ferreri and Vidal (2022), instead, focus on how the articulation of private and common properties differs between the various phases of the life of a cooperative. They identify three phases: production, access and management, and maintenance over time. While Ferreri and Vidal (2022) delineate temporal phases, Savini and Bossuyt (2022) distinguish between commissioning, income, and management rights. Taken together these typologies indicate that in a private tenure, individual tenants lack commission rights and income rights because they do not decide upon the production and maintenance of the estate nor benefit from the monetary income of its sale. In contrast, in a common housing regime, all rights are held by the collective living in and managing the estate. Importantly, variations of estate management and ownership models exist along the spectrum between these two regimes.

These recent works build on efforts in housing studies to understand collaborative housing as a complex model of dwelling involving multiple combinations of state, individual and collective property relations. However, these studies do not consider why some communities explicitly embrace certain collaborative modes or the internal values mobilised. Looking exclusively at the institutional set-up of collaborative housing cannot explain the variety of collaboration practices enacted by communities. As a result, existing multi-case comparisons are not equipped to undertake cross-country international comparisons.

Methodological note

To create our typology, the authors undertook an empirical study from January to September 2021. We first conducted a review of existing collaborative housing typologies to consider knowledge gaps and geographical biases. We then identified the most recurrent organisational elements: architectural design, institutional framing relative to public or private stock, and democratic performance. The team then created an inventory of cases from Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and Austria. We selected these countries based on the language skills of the research team. We identified 100 existing collaborative housing initiatives (see Table 1) to inform our typology. They have been selected following the definition of collaborative housing provided above, including forms of collaborative (self)management, shared ownership or shared living without legal entitlement to the estate. We excluded high-end commercial co-housing but did include some high-end service-oriented and very minimally shared collaborative housing.

We conducted a content analysis of these cases’ websites and social media pages. Particular attention was given to the self-defined values, political position, and practices of internal democracy. We determined the essential organisational features of each case and identified recurring elements. We then conducted interviews with ten collaborative housing experts in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. These interviews tested our typology’s effectiveness across geographical contexts. Finally, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the 4Stelle Hotel in Rome to test the typology against the complexity of a single case. This case was selected for its unique characteristics relative to our sample. It is a large-scale squatted (but tolerated) estate self-managed by families with migration background. Finally, being primarily a desktop-based study of a large set of cases, our analysis did not dive deeper into the way single initiatives enact their values in practice, nor how these values may change in time. We flag this as a potential for future research informed by our typology.

Towards a complex typology of collaborative housing

Our typology aims to capture the organisational and institutional diversity of collaborative housing and facilitate international, particularly European, comparison. We identified three key dimensions of collaborative housing: the architecture of the estate (i.e., architecture), the institutional set-up of its property (i.e., institutional set-up), and the internal values that guide the self-organisation of the collective sustaining the estate (i.e., organisation).

Architecture refers to the built estate elements that shape everyday living. Both size and design impact practices of democracy, conviviality, and solidarity, and reflect the internal values and motivations of the collective managing the estate. The institutional setup considers how formal legal property titles are distributed across state and market. With this dimension, we recognise that ownership, management, and financing of these projects is never fully public or private. Status denotes the legal position of the estate in relation to its institutional context, while tenure refers to the legal arrangements amongst the dwellers or between the dwellers and external parties. Finally, the organisation of the collective refers to the formal and informal internal arrangements for the self-management of the estate. Organisation includes three sub-categories: value, commitment, and management. Value explains the internal motivation to form and run the collective, as defined by the collective itself; commitment refers to the self-defined socio-political mission of the collaboration (if any), which is the way the collective sees its role within the broader political context where they operate; while management includes the ways in which the internal day-to-day management of the collective is organised.

The architecture of sharing: size and design matter

Architectural design contributes to a sense of community by actively promoting interaction amongst the residents (Chiodelli & Baglione, 2014; Tummers, 2017). Though often overlooked in the existing literature, the size of collaborative housing projects is an important factor in their long-term viability and it is generally assumed that smaller collaborative housing is better for democratic functioning.

We identified four categories of co-housing: small, medium, large, and extra-large. Small initiatives, with fewer than ten members, included a high level of sharing for both essential and functional facilities. Most of the 100 cases were of medium size, hosting between 10 and 30 residents. Large co-housing estates had 30 to 100 residents, while extra-large projects had over 100 residents. The size of the collective directly influenced the design of collaborative housing spaces. However, it is not a given that small size estates include more sharing of space (or vice versa). We found no direct correlation between size of the estate and the amount of shared space in specific.

We identified two regimes of sharing: 1) only sharing extra spaces (e.g., gardens, parking lots, or sport facilities) and 2) sharing functional and essential spaces (e.g., kitchens, laundry facilities, or dining rooms). These shared spaces are not public, but private spaces held in common. For example, shared gardens are not usually accessible to people outside the building. They are complex private spaces with a common yet exclusive character (Chiodelli, 2015).

Most cases we examined had shared laundry facilities, gardens (or terraces), and multi-functional rooms (e.g., Entrepatios in Madrid and NumeroZero in Turin). However, in some cases essential facilities were also shared. De Nieuwe Meent in Amsterdam, for example, organises residents into ‘living groups’ of 4 to 6 individuals that share a kitchen, living room, and bathrooms. Collaborative housing with functional and essential shared spaces generally stressed the value of living together and reduced private spaces to enable community building and solidarity. Alternatively, the minimum amount of sharing is exemplified by the Beguinage Model in Bremen. This cooperative-owned three-storey building has 85 apartments but residents only share the underground parking lot, and one 25 square metre room for meetings, and board games (Frauenwohnprojekte, n.d.).

Institutional set-up: the multiple layers of ownership

Two dimensions of institutional setup are relevant to distinguish collaborative housing initiatives. The first considers how collaborative housing projects relate to their institutional environment, namely municipal and national housing provision regulations. The second examines how a specific collaborative housing project (self)organises its internal boundaries. This includes membership, income rights, and use rights of the collective’s space (for a more extensive explanation of institutional analysis in commoning, see De Angelis, 2017). We term these dimensions legal status and tenure forms, respectively.

Status: legal and trans-legal

There are two major groups of co-housing in Europe: those with legal status and those with trans-legal status. Collaborative housing estates with legal status are recognised by the legal code, while trans-legal estates are tolerated (temporarily or indefinitely) but not legally recognised. There are different degrees of trans-legality and a project’s status can change over time. Many housing squats in Europe, for example, have existed for years under constant threat of eviction (Van der Steen et al., 2014). The sincerity of the threat varies depending on the political administration in power and the culture of the specific city. Squats can undergo processes of legalisation in which they are granted legal status but maintain the essential internal features of a squatting collective (Delgado, 2012).

This transition is illustrated by Seumestraße 14 in Berlin, a formerly squatted house that was legalised into a collaborative housing community after the occupation was threatened with eviction (Seume14, n.d.). In Italy, many currently existing squats came into being in the early 2000s in response to the inaccessibility of social housing for Italian and migrant families alike. Extra-large squats in Rome and Milan include Porto Fluviale, 4stelle Hotel, Metropoliz, and Residence Sociale Aldo Dice 26 × 1. We found 19 cases of squats or trans-legal initiatives that were later formalised into co-housing projects.

The legal or trans-legal status of collaborative housing influences how the collective is organised, and the trans-legality often reinforces political commitment. Squatting is an active appropriation of the built environment, either for self-provision or as an intentional and value-driven act of resistance (Pruijt, 2014). The occupation of abandoned buildings simultaneously offers homes for those in need and critiques the structural conditions that created inaccessible housing markets (Tsavdaroglou & Kaika, 2022). Indeed, many collaborative trans-legal housing squats are intentionally anti-capitalist communities (Cattaneo et al., 2014). After eviction in 2018, the community of Bajesdorp in Amsterdam, for example, re-established itself as a housing cooperative and is currently building a fully ecologically neutral, collectively owned, and autonomous communal living space to ensure a long-lasting affordable living space in the city (Bajesdorp, n.d.).

Tenure forms: dispersed and concentrated rights

The legacy of trans-legal squats reveals that the status of collaborative housing influences its internal organisation. Yet, there is also a large variety within legal and trans-legal status. This section considers different types of tenure, which is the set of instituted social relations between subjects in the housing estate (Bossuyt, 2022). Tenure is often associated with a title, with private ownership or tenancy being the most common. However, in the realm of collaborative housing, atypical regimes of ownership are the norm. In their study, Chiodelli and Baglione (2014) noted that all forms of co-housing are private legal forms even if they include cooperative legal arrangements. Yet, the property regimes of collaborative housing can also include public ownership. A collaborative housing estate can include different legal subjects that (co)own different parts of it, such as the single dwelling unit, the estate, the collective or even the network of collectives. The owner of the building may be a collective private entity (a cooperative), a public subject (a public housing provider) or a hybrid subject (a housing association). Yet, the ownership of the dwellings may be further divided among other collective subjects (a sub-cooperative, or tenants themselves). To illustrate, in publicly owned or developer-led houses with a recognised self-managed collective, the estate’s property rights may not be in the hands of the collective that self-manages it. The European housing cooperative, Living in Metropolises (LiM), developed Ewaldstraße in Berlin with various stakeholders, but not necessarily future inhabitants. Once completed, it was rented out to a self-managed collective, but LiM maintained ownership of the building.²

Because ownership can be multi-layered, we propose dividing tenure into two forms: dispersed and concentrated. These forms differ by the degree to which the rights to run the estate are distributed across subjects (Bossuyt, 2022; Savini & Bossuyt, 2022). Rights are dispersed when the estate’s property legally belongs to a subject that does not directly use, manage, and run the estate. In dispersed ownership, the right to raise income and monetary interest on the estate may be in the hands of the users – organised into a legal subject that is different from the owner of the estate (e.g., the common use regulation in Naples). In other cases, the estate may be managed and developed by an external company, but residents own their dwelling and can sell it for profit. Another form of rights distribution is found in the Mietshäuser Syndikat in Germany and the Vrijcoop in the Netherlands. The property rights of these estate dwellings are shared across two collective subjects: the cooperative of renters (the inhabitants) and the cooperative of owners (the association). The latter is an overarching network of associations to which any legal subjects (e.g., individuals or cooperatives) can become members. This dispersed ownership structure reduces the risk of individual property speculation (Card, 2020).

Rights are concentrated when they are all held by a united group or subject. This includes private cooperatives of owners, or when the cooperative (consisting of its members) holds all the rights (yet does not share rights with an overarching association). Collaborative housing using this tenure regime includes those where individual renters own an apartment and a share of the common properties (as is the case in Denmark or the UK). In this case, residents are the owners of their apartments but also co-own common spaces through a cooperative structure. The large-scale Zürich housing cooperative association Wogeno, for example, owns 72 properties with 498 apartments; their members each own an apartment privately and hold a share in Wogeno’s common properties.

Organisation: the multiple identities of collaborative housing

Intentional communities are ‘created and developed on the basis of certain values’, which could be ‘more or less powerful or explicit’, depending on the situation, actor or context (Chiodelli & Baglione, 2014, p. 23). All collaborative housing projects express some internal values. The values and motivations of the collective living in an estate are reflected in the selection criteria for new residents, the design, and the tenure of the estate. Even when collaborative housing is assumed to be value-free, as in gated communities, the internal organisation reflects underlying social, political, or even ethnic values. The political identity of a community is one of the most influential factors in shaping how it works and the extent to which it provides affordable and accessible housing.

Values: the reasons behind collaboration

We identified five collaborative housing value orientations: eco-communitarian, intergenerational, identity, affordability, and service provision. While some projects embody a clear, unified value scheme (e.g., anti-capitalist, multi-ethnicity), collaborative housing generally has overlapping values (i.e., inclusivity, non-binary, multi-culturalism). Our categories are not mutually exclusive, as it is often challenging to classify a project into a single value scheme. The labels used to identify the values are extrapolated from the way the cases express their mission on their public profile.³ While this technique has advantages for making sense of a large set of projects, it may downplay the dynamic nature of values, and it does not grasp how or if these are enacted in practice. For this purpose, in-depth case studies are more appropriate (see, for example Huron, 2018; Noterman, 2016; Tummers & MacGregor, 2019).

Eco-communitarian housing connects community-building with ecological wellbeing. These projects could present themselves as radical housing initiatives hoping to ‘dismantle privatised and conspicuous consumption […] and demonstrate a constructive alternative to the growing atomisation and loneliness of individuals in large cities’ (Jarvis, 2019, p. 257). For example, LILAC (Low Impact Living Affordable Community) in Leeds aims to build a better society by intentionally building collaboration around ecologically conscious consumption and human relations of care (Chatterton, 2016). Most eco-communities share a combination of material reduction and social innovation goals (Pickerill, 2020, p. 5). Collaborative housing of this type aims at reducing environmental impacts by co-managing urban gardens or larger agricultural spaces, using sustainable and low-impact forms of construction, and promoting educational programmes about ecological living. Projects translate the broad notion of sustainability into different priorities. For example, the Netherlands-based cooperative, Iewan, lists its three core principles as ‘sustainability & ecology, social & communal and educational & inclusive’ (Iewan, n.d.). Similarly, Entrepatios in Madrid acknowledges that ‘our work budgets are somewhat higher than those of a conventional building, but our monthly expenses are lower’ (Entrepatios, n.d.). Their decisions go beyond economic calculation: ‘measures related to greener materials are difficult to quantify economically, but they are directly related to more health for people and less pollution for the planet’ (Entrepatios, n.d.).

Another value orientation is intergenerational housing. This includes collaborative housing built specifically to meet the needs of multiple generations within a shared estate. It addresses the challenges of housing an ageing urban population that increasingly suffers from loneliness (Labit & Dubost, 2016). It pairs elderly accommodation with other generations struggling to access the housing market. Examples include the Wohnen mit Alt und Jung in Köln which address affordable housing for young adults, and the Wohnen mit Kinder in Dösseldorf which houses single mothers (Netzwerkagentur Generationenwohnen, n.d.). These German projects are state subsidised through programmes to stimulate intergenerational collaboration (e.g., Mehrgenerationenwohnen in Germany, see Droste, 2015) as is also the case for similar projects in The Netherlands.

Intentional communities also define themselves via identity, referring to specific life situation of the people living in the estates. This includes single-parents and low-income families, but also communities facing discrimination based on sexual preference, belief, gender, or nationality. This variety of collaborative housing ‘question[s] the nuclear family […] the individualised housing provision […] and [encourages] the desire to move towards solidarity and social economies of living’.⁴ Collaborative housing can explicitly contest the monoculture of the existing privatised housing stock. For example, Türkis Rosa Lila Villa in Vienna is a collaborative housing for LGBTQIA + people(s) to build ‘a utopian alternative to the dominant mainstream concepts of heteronormativity, patriarchy and binary constructions of identity’ (Rosa & Villa, n.d.).

These projects combine – often but not necessarily – their identitarian motivation with a commitment towards political activism (see following section). For example, the Kollectivhus in Sweden played an important role in the women’s emancipation movement due to its shared kitchens, which broke with societally ingrained gender divisions (Vestbro, 2010). By collectivising gendered spaces, such as laundry rooms, kitchens or child-care, collaborative housing can re-negotiate expectations around reproductive labour (see also Federici, 2011). Alternative women-friendly housing, such as the German nationwide Frauenwohnprojekte network, was built ‘in accordance with the needs of women’ (Frauenwohnprojekte, n.d.). This network critically engages with the male dominated mode of design and architecture and it includes 19 collaborative housing groups created by and for women.

About 20 per cent of our 100 cases does not identify with specific lifestyles, social groups, or political visions. However, they still justify their existence as providers of facilities and services that are lacking in their cities. We label these projects ‘service providers’. Service provision includes both spatial and societal services: spatial services include gyms, swimming pools, and multi-functional rooms, while societal services include facilities to increase community cohesion, an environment that facilitates meaningful interaction between residents and their children, and resource sharing practices. Examples of extensive service-providing collaborative housing include Co-housing Bovisa 01, Urban Village Navigli, Co-housing Chiaravalle, and COventidue. Essentially these services are created with the purpose of simplifying residents’ lifestyles and enhancing good neighbourly relations, which also represents the main reason to join the project.

The shared services that these projects refer to are complementary to the dwelling, and for this reason, the projects of this type are not always affordable. We found instead a large share of projects that specifically identify themselves with the goal of affordable housing provision (with or without facilities). The value of affordability is almost always coupled with other values but it is in these cases presented as a primary priority. Most Swiss cases, however, indicated this value as the unique reason for the housing estate. In Switzerland, the system of direct democracy and regional decision-making allows the public to implement a legal framework that forces the non-profit housing sector to use the cost-rent model (Lawson, 2009). This model couples rent to the costs of building and thereby regulates capitalisation on housing and ensures that no profit will be generated (Balmer & Gerber, 2018). For example, we found large-scale cooperative projects of about 2,000 units in Switzerland (e.g., Kalkbreite and Kraftwerk1). While these projects self-identify with other values (e.g., sustainability, diversity), their primary focus and main criteria for selecting residents is not-for-profit housing.

Similar affordable collaborative housing can be found elsewhere in Europe and several collaborative housing projects showcase their units reserved for social rent. In the Netherlands, collaborative housing such as Iewan and de Nieuwe Meent explicitly demonstrates at affordable living through social rent units even though they are not part of the state-led social housing allocation system. Moreover, many housing communities have a solidarity fund to cover the cost of entry (e.g., bonds or membership fee) for those without the means to pay upfront. Others allow alternative payments such as community work (see also Larsen, 2020).

Commitment: collaborative housing as a practice of political activism

Commitment as a feature of internal organisation considers the degree to which a collaborative housing project enacts practices of socio-political activism in their local context. Projects are differentiated between those with elements of political activism and those that focus on (self)provision for their renters.

We recognised that collaborative housing is often born out of social movements and envisioned to change society. Many projects stress their role in countering urban neoliberal trends and, in turn, relate these phenomena to the everyday lives of citizens. The recent surge of cooperative housing in Barcelona, for example, is often framed around the city’s housing crisis and its history of urban activism (Larsen, 2020). The association Sostre Cívic promotes cooperative housing in Catalonia to create affordable housing beyond speculative logics through the cession of use model (i.e., the right to use space) and environmental respect (Cabré & Andrés, 2018). Their collaboration with collectives has already resulted in nine ongoing projects, with several more in the initial stages. The largest collaborative housing community in Europe that began as squatting and continues to fight for the right to the city is the Mietshäuser Syndikat in Germany.

In our study, it was hard to survey how specific collectives enact their political commitment in practice. Yet, we found clear differences between projects that present their role as active within their socio-political context and those that instead refrain from such statements. Example of the former are those projects whose webpages link to political associations (and relative website) or include blog feeds/commenting on political events. The most active projects have a related page on social media and they tend to show a unitary narrative on their role as prefigurative examples of a different form of living. The 4Stelle Hotel in Rome – please see below – offers an example of how this political commitment can be enacted in practice. This project is co-managed by its inhabitants together with a larger city-wide association for migrants’ rights. It has a website that links to that association and presents itself as a project devoted to defending housing justice.

Management: from self-managed to professionally managed

We distinguish between self-managed and professionally managed collaborative housing. These categories conceptualise the degree of control individual dwellers have in the processes of development, management and day-to-day decision making. Collective housing projects inherently rely on and actively pursue collaborations between people. The level of individual commitment required by a housing project depends on the nature of the project and its degree of direct democracy and deliberation.

In self-managed collaborative housing, members have an active role in decision-making about structural issues and day-to-day space management. Self-managed collaborative housing hinges on the principle that no one – regardless of position or expertise – should have more influence than others. Conversely, in professionally managed collaborative housing, coordination is external to the collective, often led by developers (and their related agencies) or architects. While a certain degree of consultation might take place, the agenda setting and ultimate responsibility rests with the managing company. This occurs in many projects of affordable collaborative living, where major structural decisions regarding the estate remain the responsibility of the housing association/corporation. This resembles the procedures common in privately owned dwellings, such as the Italian condominiums (assemblea dei condomini) or the Dutch VvE (vereniging van eigenaren). However, even in self-managed housing, minor decisions are often made by smaller (work)groups assigned to certain issues. This is the case in the Nieuwe Meent, where working groups (e.g., finance, community, and design) bring their issues and decisions to all the members during regular plenary assemblies.

Applying the typology: the case of the 4Stelle hotel in Rome

Our typology serves as a heuristic tool to make sense of the vast, often underestimated, diversity of collaborative housing in Europe. In this section, we provide an example of the typology in action by examining The 4Stelle Hotel (i.e., 4star hotel), a collaborative housing project located in Rome’s periphery. It is an unconventional example of collaborative housing in Europe because it is organised around clear identity values and is relatively large (for a documentary, see Muscella & Palermo, 2014). Table 2 summarises our analysis of the case.

Table 2. Applying the typology to the 4Stelle Hotel.

Architecture	Design	Essential and non-essential shared spaces
	Size	Extra-large (179 units)
Institutional set-up	Status	Trans-legal
	Rights	Dispersed
Organisation	Value	Identity, affordability, solidarity, inclusion
	Commitment	Both activist and self-provision
	Management	Self-management

In 2012, the former Eurostars Roma Congress Hotel & Convention Centre was squatted. It was transformed into the 4Stelle Hotel to house around 200 families, most with a migration background from North, Horn, and Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Eastern-Europe (Muscella & Palermo, 2014). The occupation was supported by the activists from the housing-rights movement ‘blocchi precari metropolitani’. The economic precarity of 2012 – combined with the minimal social housing stock, rising rents, and precarious jobs in the city – pushed families to consider collaboration to avoid homelessness. Currently, the 4Stelle Hotel hosts around 180 families in private dwellings adapted from former hotel rooms and allocated according to a family’s needs and size.

One of the many shared spaces is a large assembly room, which hosts internal meetings and events such as (birthday) parties and religious ceremonies. Use of the assembly room for festivities and other activities must be approved by the assembly. The space allows various religious congregations to interact and integrate, with no space being dedicated to specific religions. To avoid divisiveness, all ceremonies and events are open to everyone regardless of religion and national belonging. Another common space is the library and game room–previously a gym–used by the many children living in the building. There is also an informally managed kitchen on each floor for those who do not have one in their unit.

The hotel has a trans-legal institutional set-up and a tenure form in which the rights to manage the building are separated from legal ownership. 4Stelle is self-managed and oriented to specific core values. The collective facilitates self-management, self-determination, and inter-ethnic and inter-religion community-building. Self-management allows autonomy from the city’s institutions and enhances the dwellers’ capacity to pursue collective decision-making. The principles of self-determination, solidarity, and inclusivity are part of the self-made identity of the place. Affordability is the main priority for the people living in the estate but, as we show below, the project also became a leverage for housing rights movements in the city. In this estate, residents do not transfer rents to the formal owner of the building but use their resources to cover expenses such as sports training or school books for their children.

After the occupation, a group of residents grew more conscious of the wider struggle for housing rights in the city and further politicised the project. The collective running the estate connected with wider political movements like the blocchi precari metropolitani. While it remained focussed on the values of self-provision, it also endorsed housing justice movements in the city, evidencing how different values can be articulated within one project.

Despite being a relatively large-scale estate, the 4stelle Hotel is self-managed. Self-management is organised by the assembly, the main decision-maker in the estate. The assembly is composed of occupants and activists from the blocchi precari metropolitani and is called upon to discuss a wide range of issues, from the internal management of the common facilities to the position of the estate vis-à-vis official authorities. During the assemblies, the activists who do not live in the 4Stelle have the role of facilitators. However, in practice, management is self-organised without a standard procedure, though decisions are based on consensus.

It is important to stress that the values driving the community behind the project are neither unitary nor static. They overlap (i.e., affordability and social justice) and differ between the individual and the collective level (i.e., priorities of sheltering for some and commitment to inclusive policy-making for others). Moreover, both the commitment and values of inhabitants can change over time depending on the status of the specific household. For example, newcomers with no jobs may show less energy for political commitment and focus more on internal care networks.

Concluding remarks

Governments, activists, private corporations, and researchers have all expressed interest in the development of collaborative housing to deal with affordability crises, social cohesion and sustainable development. However, there is no common understanding of collaborative housing because there are multiple ways to realise it. Collaborative housing is variable, both in internal and institutional set-up and in political motivations. Because of this variety, our study built a roadmap for cross-case comparisons across countries using a content-based analysis of 100 cases in Europe.

We developed the typology to dissect the multiple architectural, institutional, and organisational forms of collaborative housing. Architecture refers to both community size and the proportion of essential and functional spaces that are shared. Institutional set-up distinguishes legal or trans-legal status and the distribution of tenure rights across state agencies, the community of dwellers and private agencies. Collaborative housing can be owned by third parties and managed by renters, with or without the formal support of other organisations; alternatively, the inhabitants may be the managers and owners of the estate. The organisational dimension considers the values mobilised by the collective, its political commitment, and its approach to self-management. There was a great variety among the cases: many projects were explicitly based on eco-communitarian or intergenerational values. A fifth of projects stressed how collaboration primarily enables the provision of shared services for the community. Most cases explicitly self-identified as affordable housing providers within their cities. The collectives also showed different degrees of political commitment. Some expressed their will to, for example, change the housing market, provide real-life alternatives or stimulate other projects to join a cause. Others, instead, presented themselves as an expression of a specific collective self-providng its own housing. Finally, some cases strove for a high degree of internal, often deliberative, self-management, while others (generally larger cooperatives) procured management from professional agencies.

From this set of characteristics, it is possible to identify a multiplicity of collaborative housing projects showing different combinations of features. This paper does not seek to arbitrarily label each type, and the sample used is not representative of all housing in Europe. Instead, this typology can be used in international housing research (and policy) to make sense of the challenges encountered by each project. The case of 4Stelle Hotel in Rome revealed how our criteria can be used to describe the inner workings of every single initiative. Within our sample, the 4Stelle Hotel shows an unconventional combination of characteristics: it is a large estate, with a high degree of sharing, strong internal democratic features, a political commitment to the city, and a self-management organised around dwellers’ assemblies and external non-for-profit organisations.

Overall, our study confirms some beliefs about collaborative housing but also disproves others. Internal democracy and self-management seem to thrive in smaller projects, but it is not limited to those. Moreover, projects that do not explicitly refer to social equality can still show a clear identity and political commitment, such as those addressing affordable or intergenerational living. Finally, not all projects with internal democracy are also cooperatively owned by the dwellers.

The purpose of the paper is to offer a tool to facilitate comparative research on collaborative forms of housing across national contexts. Yet, the relatively large sample selected and the desktop-based content analysis performed also pose limits for a further understanding of how collaboration works in practice. Our methodology did not allow us to grasp if and how values are enacted, the actual degree of participation in internal management processes nor the influence that changing political contexts have on the choices of the collectives. Nonetheless, with this study, we show that to critically examine the inner workings of collaborative housing, comparative studies must move beyond simplistic assumptions about the intrinsic virtue of housing collaboration and embrace its complexity in Europe and beyond.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 M. Ferreri, personal communication, May 14, 2021

2 K. Höller, personal communication, April 28, 2021.

3 This is the reason, for example, why the provision of affordable housing, the most essential of services, is distinguished from the value of ‘service provision’.

4 M. Ferreri, personal communication, May 14, 2021