The re-emergence of co-housing in Europe

Lidewij Tummers, Lidewij Tummers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317335382
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Planificación urbana y paisajismo

Across Europe, the number of co-housing initiatives is growing, and they are increasingly receiving attention from administrators and professionals who hold high expectations for urban liveability. Is co-housing a marginal idealist phenomenon, or the urban middle class' answer to the current housing crisis? And has the development of theoretical insight and research kept up with the actual expansion of co-housing as a practice? These questions were raised during the first European conference on co-housing research, which took place in Tours, France, in March 2012. Both the conference and this book aim to move beyond case-studies, and to look more particularly at the implications and wider perspective of the current co-housing trend.

Using the specific vocabulary of different disciplines and geographic regions, the contributions to this book analyse the underlying thinking behind, and the expectations projected on, diverse models of collaborative housing. The authors are aware of the qualities of contemporary co-housing, but they go beyond advocacy to investigate the conditions under which co-housing can be successful as a strategy for housing provision; can offer solutions for sustainable urban development; or indeed can contribute to involuntary or intentional gentrification. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Urban Research and Practice.

Diversity of self-managed co-housing initiatives in France

Sabrina Bresson and Sylvette Denèfle

UMR 7324 CITERES, Université François-Rabelais, Tours, France

Defining what is understood as habitat participatif (participative or co-housing) in France comes up against regulatory ambiguities and a diversity of regional contexts and micro-local situations. Taking as its starting point a survey carried out in the city of Grenoble, which has a long tradition of cooperation and participatory politics, the article analyzes this diversity to identify the common characteristics of co-housing projects and to attempt to define an ‘ideal type’. The cases are described in relation to the social changes of the twentieth century in order to illustrate the long history of the projects, which are based on a range of ideological principles, but are always characterized by three core concepts: sharing, environmental awareness, and citizen participation.

In France, the idea of pooling resources to obtain decent accommodation emerged in the cooperative initiatives of the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, and then in the anarchist and self-management worker movements of the 1960s to 1970s. They re-emerged at the beginning of the 2000s within a context of economic crisis and growing environmental awareness. The number of projects continues to rise, taking very different forms in terms of legal status, the social makeup of the groups involved, the type of architecture, urban-planning models, etc. In order to compare the French situation with situations in other European countries, it is important to clarify what differentiates copropriété (joint ownership) or colocation (co-tenancy) from what is now called habitat participatif (co-housing), and hence to identify their specific characteristics.

In French, there is a multiplicity of terms to describe housing practices, even when they are similar. Thus, the expressions co-habitat, habitat groupé, habitat partagé, habitat participatif, habitat autogéré, habitat alternatif, or even coopérative d’habitants, which is differentiated from cooperatives d’habitation, are a reflection of the wide range of regulations and the diversity of ideas and influences, notably from English-speaking countries. However, in the last few years (since 2010), the expression habitat participatif has become increasingly used to cover all these initiatives, whose common goal is to provide a response to the housing issue based on mobilizing civil society rather than on State intervention or market forces (Bacqué and Vermeersch 2007, 46). Co-housing projects are indeed based on strong collectives of residents (Biau 2010) and place users at the heart of the development and management of the project, allowing them to design their accommodation on lines other than those of private development or social housing (Special report in the journal Territoires, 2010). We will thus take this broad understanding of habitat participatif in French, or co-housing in English.

Our data are taken from a national research program that surveyed most of the co-housing projects in France in 2010 and studied about 15 geographic sites across the whole country. This research enabled us to link regional social and political contexts and the development of alternative projects. The regions of Brittany, the North, the Southeast, Alsace and Ile de France are particularly involved in co-housing projects, and to illustrate the wide range of situations, we selected the city of Grenoble,¹ which is remarkable for the variety of experimental projects carried out there over several decades, ranging from ‘bottom-up’ initiatives to ‘top-down’ approaches. The activism in Grenoble is engrained in the population of this industrial city, which has elected town councils that are sensitive to social alternatives and experiments, notably regarding housing. We studied various urban programs with specific social features by interviewing residents, elected representatives, technicians, and people working in social housing. In concrete terms, the results presented here are based on the analysis of three types of material gathered using qualitative survey methods. The first concerns documentary work, involving the existing literature about the cases under study as well as documentation produced by the towns, by nonprofit organizations involved in the development of co-housing, or groups of residents themselves. The second consists of a series of observations of co-housing projects, and the third involved interviews with co-housing stakeholders, institutional players and residents. Altogether, 25 programs linked to housing and taking an alternative approach were surveyed. They include experiences ranging from squats to co-ownership with shared spaces (gardens, workshops, community hall, guest rooms, etc.), and from social housing sites to business. This covers most types of co-housing experiments that we observed throughout the country, ensuring a homogeneous regional analysis.

After outlining the origins of co-housing in France, showing its specific characteristics, we will present the experiences in the Grenoble district during the postwar period and then at the end of the twentieth century, demonstrating that their underlying principles form characteristics that can be retained as representing an ideal type to clarify the notion of co-housing in France.

1. From nineteenth-century cooperatives to the revival of co-housing schemes in the 2000s: historical background and social changes

It was in the nineteenth century that the question of access to housing for the greatest number was first raised publicly in France, at a time when industrialization and the growth of the urban population created the need to build accommodation for workers moving into the towns. This issue was thus primarily one of providing accommodation for the working classes, and several social housing programs were set up during the Third Republic,² linked initially to corporatism before being covered by State policies.³ However, the nineteenth century was also a time of ‘socialist utopias’, whose aim was to create ideal communities, transforming society from the bottom up, without intervention by the ruling classes or the State. The best-known example is undoubtedly the Phalanstère, conceived by the philosopher and economist Charles Fourier (1772–1837); based on a critique of the unequal distribution of wealth, he imagined a harmonious city managed by a community of workers. Fourier’s ideas spread throughout the world, inspiring the foundation of many communities (notably in the United States), but only one really took root in France, namely the Familistère de Guise⁴ built by the industrialist Jean-Baptiste Godin (1817–1888) and managed by a cooperative association. This project was unique in that the cooperative form was designed not just to improve workers’ living conditions, but also to develop a collective lifestyle and inter-family solidarity, and to empower the factory workers, even giving them ownership of capital, as shown by Michel Lallement (2009).

Thus, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were marked by a number of remarkable projects backed by personalities who defended the cooperative movement and social solidarity, such as Charles Gide, Léon Bourgeois, and Emile Durkheim. However, these projects remained modest up to the end of World War II. In 1945, the dramatic housing situation in France led the authorities to authorize all initiatives taken by the people. This provided the impetus for a significant revival of the cooperative housing movement, in its social more than economic dimension. Private individuals came together, combining their efforts and resources through the cooperative movement to gain access to housing that was hard to come by in a very buoyant economic situation. The Castors movement⁵ (Boustingorry 2008), very active in the South-East, was emblematic of the postwar period and remained active up to the end of the 1960s.

At the end of the 1950s, the State, after carrying out reconstruction work, took over responsibility for housing, developing a highly proactive policy that took the form of the construction of large housing estates, some but not all of which were for social housing. In the 1950s and 1960s, this construction trend gave way to initiatives based more or less on ‘solidarism’ and social Catholicism, notably through low-cost housing cooperatives, but by the end of the 1960s France was building a considerable number of housing units every year. This policy, which sometimes led to poor housing quality, showed its limitations by the early 1970s. New neighborhoods developed in the city of Grenoble, such as Villeneuve, while in the greater urban area this was the case at Fontaine, Seyssinet-Pariset, Echirolles and Saint-Martin-d’Hères, etc. However, these neighborhoods experienced major difficulties in the 1980s due to the impoverishment of the local population.

The economic developments at the end of the Trente Glorieuses⁶ led to a change of policy, from the construction of large high-rise apartment blocks to the development of suburban residential areas that consumed vast amounts of land but that corresponded to the ideology of private property symbolized by a detached house with a garden on a peri-urban estate. This housing concept swept aside concerns for both urban density and social cooperation. Furthermore, through what was seen to be the technological progress of heating and mains water supplies, this form of housing wittingly encouraged high energy consumption, stigmatized 20 years later for being antienvironmental. Urban sprawl developed, consisting of small privately owned houses, while the high-rise estates were abandoned and then occupied by groups of people with social difficulties, ultimately leading to serious social conflicts. This national trend can clearly be seen in the Grenoble urban area. From the end of the 1970s, all the governments of the Fifth Republic systematically introduced public policies to deal with the social issues of housing, the central concern being the rundown social housing districts.

Throughout these years, notions of urban densification, cooperatives, and neighborhood amenities were left aside, and only a few militant politicians and enlightened personalities put forward other urban development models, without gaining widespread acceptance. However, a number of major integrated housing projects were implemented by several municipalities that often had a background in the voluntary sector, or in trade union or political movements committed to the worker self-management concept. This was the case in Grenoble, where a major self-management movement resulted in the election of a mayor who defended these ideals, as will be seen below (Thomé 2012).

The towns that bear traces of this activism can boast a long history of co-housing initiatives. Within the strongholds of these ideological movements, we can find projects carried out by the residents themselves, often supported by local institutions, and promoting a culture of sharing and solidarity in neighborhoods infused with a strong spirit of sociability. Notable examples can be found in the west of France, the Paris region and the Grenoble region. The significance of these initiatives lies not so much in their number but in the ideological continuity of a movement that only truly revived at the very end of the twentieth century, with renewed momentum in the 2000s. This revival was fueled by the long economic crisis of the last 15 years. The speculative rise in house and land prices, together with the job insecurity that began to affect social groups that had previously been spared, was linked to a growing awareness among those same groups for the protection of the environment and natural resources. The people affected were the middle classes, a growing number finding it increasingly difficult to find housing in the large urban centers (Cusin 2012, 2013). They were characterized by a relatively high level of education and a relatively low income due to the general employment situation. The socioeconomic difficulties experienced by these young adults gave rise to projects for a sustainable management of resources, avoiding all forms of waste – in transport, energy, natural resources, or money. Within these age groups, more or less formal activism has fostered a sense of sociability and mutual help. The notion of pooling has become almost a duty, both because it is a constant message from the public authorities and because it seems to make good sense.

We observed that, in the 2000s, all the people we met who were involved in co-housing projects followed this way of thinking one way or another. As they did not have the possibility of owning their ideal home (in the town center, large, light, with a garden, open to others, etc.), they sought to have access to a similar model, and by forgoing the idea of individual ownership they were able to satisfy their desire and at the same time put into practice the values that they defended – solidarity, the environment, involvement in city life. While these people may appear very different from the community, union or party activists of the 1970s, particularly with regard to their broad rejection of institutions and above all their wish to resolve their own problems here and now, they can identify with the grouped housing initiatives of their elders.

Thus, the cooperative movement developed at the end of the nineteenth century to overcome the difficulties of workers with few resources, whereas the post-World War II period witnessed a movement of self-management and self-help by upwardly mobile low-income groups. By contrast, the recent period, which has created insecurity for the middle classes, has led them to take over responsibility for aspects that were previously left to the market. These different social situations have led to rapidly changing regulations restricting housing practices. Nevertheless, when the housing project involves several families who agree to go beyond the individual ownership model to share spaces, values, and services, we find forms of alternative housing that are not all identical.

These changes in society can thus help understand not only the nature but also the wide variety of current co-housing projects. To illustrate this point, we carried out a survey in the Grenoble region, which, over the last 50 years, has been involved in all forms of urban planning and architectural experimentation discussed here.

2. Grenoble: self-managed co-housing initiatives of the 1970s

After the Second World War, the city of Grenoble developed at a remarkable rate, resulting in profound changes in morphology, demography, and social composition. During the Trente Glorieuses, the population of the city increased by more than 60%, but the urban infrastructure (housing, amenities, utilities, etc.) found it difficult to keep pace. As the policymakers sought how to resolve the problems of urban development, the sociopolitical context of the end of the 1960s was conducive to discussions about the ‘democratic management’ of the city. The formation of a municipal action group (Groupe d’Action Municipale (GAM)), presented as apolitical although it had its roots in socialist, left-wing Christian or third-world activism (Christiane 1965), highlighted the question of the citizens’ role in policymaking. The GAM, whose image was built around a form of humanist socialism concerned mainly with efficiency (Lecomte, Bernard, and Blancherie 1972), sought to engage the citizens in the problems of their city, for example, through consultation with intermediary organizations (voluntary organizations, unions, neighborhood associations, etc.) who could represent the inhabitants as a whole.

It was within this political context that the city of Grenoble carried out participatory planning projects in the 1960s and 1970s. When members of the GAM were elected into office in 1965, the municipal authorities promoted a modern urban development approach that no longer served only private interests and the most privileged members of society. In this way, a new city was created, L’Isle d’Abeau, near Grenoble, and many social housing neighborhoods were constructed that paid great attention to urban quality. For example, the district of La Villeneuve, although it is now stigmatized and impoverished, has an interesting urban program. In the most sought-after part of the town, other high-rise estates, which are little talked...