[p2p-research] co-housing typology

[Michel Bauwens]

hi,

I'm looking for a volunteer to produce a basic co-housing typology, as
suggested here below by john thackara:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2010/06/of_apocalypse_a.php



] Workshop on housing

I then joined a group that had ninety minutes to discuss housing: How to
organize and use the space we've already got - and how, using what
materials, to build new homes and refurbish 30 million (in the UK) existing
ones.

(By now I had realised that the function of Trasition Town encounters is to
alert people to the existence of different kinds of knowledge - not to
'solve' complex - and often unsolvable - challenges).

In this spirit, we discussed the need to distinguish between different kinds
of co-housing, co-operative housing, and intentional communities. What's
needed, we agreed, is an easy-to-understand 'palette' of shared housing
models. In our group, a consensus emerged that small private spaces, with
one's own front door, around a larger collective space containing shared
facilities, seemed right - as is the case in many African villages and
Chinese 'Hula" buildings.

Why do planners go on about the 'need' for more and more one person
dwellings, someone asked? Why don't planners and policymakers make it easier
to share resources, including space? Why indeed. Oil depletion means that
these 'needs' are not a long-term option.

But questions of 'ownership' are powerful in the culture - not least because
people value tradable assets. Besides, many local councils oppose
'studentification'.

On the plus side, we already have a lot of housing - but it needs to be
insulated. Natural materials are not necessarily the greenest insulation
choice, we are told. Modern forms of insulation are more efficient that hair
from goats, sheep - or humans. Artifical high-tech foams might be energy
intensive to make - but would they not be the best thing to spend our
remaining energy on?

A cultural battle looms. The best solution is to cover the outside of every
home in Britain with ten inches of foam.

A man from England's oldest intentional community told us about his hut made
of straw bales, timber offcuts and second hand windows. Others praised the
resource efficiency of favelas and shanty towns, where not even a nail is
wasted.

'Hopelessly avant garde', said an expert in Saxon building techniques; he
wanted Devon County Council's Mineral Planning Committee to reverse policies
that undervalue rubblestone.

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