Second Conference on Economic Degrowth

for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity

March 26-29th 2010, Barcelona
Working Group 11. Reusing empty houses and co-housing
How can we change future forms of housing to occupy empty houses and develop shared (communal)
housing? How can we promote mutualisation of goods in general?

'STIRRING PAPER'
Saving by Sharing Collective Housing for Sustainable Lifestyles
Dick Urban Vestbro
Professor Emeritus,
School of Architecture and the Built Environment,
The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm,
dick-urban.vestbro@abe.kth.se

Collaborative housing
An interesting part of the alternative living movement consists of what is usually called
collaborative housing or cohousing. In Sweden the most frequent type of such housing is the
self-work model developed in the 1980s, a unit of 15-50 apartments, where the residents take
care of meal services and other tasks through communal efforts. Today about 40 such units
exist in Sweden. Cohousing residents usually favour gender equality and post-materialist
values those that give weight to parents time with children, meaningful leisure time
activities and care for qualities in nature rather than in consumer products (McCamant &
Durrett 1988; Woodward 1989; Vestbro 2000, Vestbro 2009).

Save by sharing
One of the most important aspects of sustainable living is to save on building materials and
heated (or cooled) indoor space by living in smaller housing units. In his study of US
cohousing Meltzer addresses this issue. He finds that the studied units range from 88 to 173
sqm, the average being 120 sqm. This deviates considerably from the US average one-family
house of 205 sqm (new houses built in 1993). When moving to cohousing settlements the
investigated households left houses of an average of 142 sqm behind. The reduction by only
22 sqm may seem small, but becomes more impressive if we assume that many of the
cohousers are middle class people in the process of forming a family, i.e. persons who
probably would build 200 sqm houses if they had been part of the mainstream. That residents
have made a conscious choice in favour of smaller houses is supported by the fact that
residents expressed a willingness to reduce dwellings and room sizes with reference to their
access to common facilities and the conviviality associated with shared facilities (Meltzer
2000).
To get a fair picture of the amount of space used we must add the communal spaces. In
Meltzers study the common facilities constitute an average of 15 sqm per household. The
common spaces were the following: 16 of the 18 units had a dining room, a kitchen, a workshop and some kind of social space; 15 had a kids room; 14 had a common laundry and a
guest room; 10 had a library, a pool and an office; 9 had a common TV room; 8 had a room
for teenagers; 5 had a crafts room, and 3 had an exercise room. Sharing is also done for
facilities such as lawn mowers, garden equipment, carpentry tools, washers, dryers, freezers,

TVs and video recorders. Sharing reduces household consumption and builds social relations
(Meltzer 2000).
In Swedish cohousing one of the goals is to increase access to attractive indoor space by
abstaining from some private space in favour of common spaces such as dining room,
childrens play room, guest room, sauna, workshops and exercise room. In an influential
book written by ten women it was emphasised that the self-work model is a model that
saves on material resources and liberates human resources. Programmatically it was
proposed that the private kitchen and living room can be combined into one room, and that
kitchen equipment can be reduced since residents would eat their main means in the common
dining room (BIG-gruppen 1982).
In a study from the 1980s the issue of saving by sharing was addressed. Of seven investigated units the proportion of common spaces varied from 3 to 21 % of the total amount of
floor space, representing 1.5 to 17 sqm per household. The study found that three of six
studied units had smaller apartments than normal. Between 23 and 70% of the residents
expressed a willingness to reduce apartment sizes, while 10 to 53% were ready to reduce
kitchen equipment (Woodward, Vestbro & Grossman 1989). The apartment sizes referred to
here are in the range of 55-100 sqm, which is considerably lower than the spaces noted for
US cohousing units.
In the biggest of the Swedish collective housing units of the 1980s, Stolplyckan in the
city of Linkping with 184 apartments, the working group initiating the project decided from
the start that housing costs should be the same as in other contemporary project, which in turn
meant that private apartment space was reduced in favour of communal spaces. To achieve
this, kitchens were either designed without space for a dining table or combined with living
rooms (Pedersen 1991).
One may note that the number of households per 10,000 inhabitants is higher in Sweden
than elsewhere in the world. The reason is that young people move from their parents at an
early age; that long life expectancy is combined with independent living, and that divorce
rates are high. Thus the number of one-person households has more than doubled in 25 years,
while households of more than four persons have been reduced substantially. About 75% of
Swedish households are one or two-person households. Overcrowding has been more or less
eradicated. Instead over-consumption of space is prominent. In a study from the 1980s it was
estimated that 66% of Swedish households have one room or more per person, living room
and kitchen not counted. In a study by Sanne it was found that the equivalent of 200,000
houses can be saved if households in overstandard dwellings move to houses appropriate to
their needs. The main problem to achieve this is that big old houses are cheaper than new
small houses (Sanne 1986). In this case behavioural change towards sustainable lifestyle is a
question of moving to a smaller house.

Design to promote lifestyle changes

In his study of US cohousing Meltzer uses the wider concept setting to comprise location,
site design and architecture. Site design comprises land-use, density, infrastructure and
landscaping. Among other things Meltzer finds that green belts are preserved and that
buildings are usually clustered so as to limit vehicle access. Furthermore, of the 18 units 8
have recycled building materials, 8 have super insulation, 7 have refurbished existing
buildings, 6 have programmable thermostats and heat exchangers and 3 have passive solar
design. Meltzer finds a strong improvement in recycling and composting practices, compared
to earlier residence, while repair and reuse as strategies to reduce unnecessary consumption
and waste, are not well applied (Meltzer 2000).
In the Swedish context design aspects of cohousing have been investigated by the author
of this paper. In a study from the 1980s house type, room system, number of apartments,
proportion and type of common spaces were discussed. The 45 studied units were found to
vary from 9 to 328 apartments. It was concluded that compact solutions are desirable in order
to facilitate easy access to common spaces. Concerning quality of common spaces, one of the
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conclusions was that they should be located where residents pass frequently and be provided
with glazed walls in order to promote spontaneous use (Woodward, Vestbro & Grossman
1989).
The same conclusion was drawn in a study of the Stolplyckan unit. The researcher made
the observation that intermediary spaces between the private and collective constitutes important social elements. It was concluded that the corridor (400 m long) becomes a free zone for
children and youngsters, a place where they can develop their social life within their own
group a space that provides excitement at the same time as adults feel that it is a safe
environment for the children (Pedersen 1991).

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